Ep. #11- Jared Aulin

Audio Clip Found @ 1:11:39

I hesitated a bit when trying to put the Golden Nugget from my conversation with Jared into words. Mainly because the lesson may come across as obvious, but let’s face it, the most important lessons aren’t just learned and then magically integrated for the rest of our lives. Sometimes a story can really resonate and bring a lesson back into focus as more “true."  

Jareds unique perspective on prejudice hit me to the core. He talks openly about how much of a barrier being the son of a wealthy business man was in his life. I personally grew up in a lower middle-class family, and I can tell you with certainty that when I was younger, I looked at the quote unquote “rich kids” and assumed their lives were easier, and that they didn’t have to work as hard to make the teams. It took Jared opening up about his experience to make me realize how untrue that line of thinking was. 

It’s all too easy to confuse "coming from wealth” with “underserving of success." This creates challenges when it’s an unconscious belief held in the minds of those who hold your future dreams in their hands. 

Jared’s deep belief against judging somebody before you know them, or assuming you know their story, is obvious though our discussion. It comes from a privileged place, and he'd be the first one to admit that, but his perspective reveals that we need to be aware that NOBODY, EVEN the wealthy, is immune to challenges in life. 

Prejudice is a hot topic right now, and it would be easy to belittle Jared's experience in comparison to others suffering from prejudice in the current social justice movements such as Black Lives Matter. But this would go against the core of this golden nugget, that we all tend to make our minds up too fast about others, with too little information. As Jared mentions in the episode, "you just never know the other person’s story.”