How to Alleviate Stress & Depression | Dr Chidi Ngwaba

Summary

In a thought-provoking talk by Dr. Chidi Ngwaba, he addresses common psychological challenges—stress and depression—and emphasizes the complex nature of the human brain. He elaborates on how depression can be triggered by life events, adverse childhood experiences, and internalized emotions. Dr. Chidi advises on holistic approaches to mental well-being, highlighting the importance of hydration, nutrition, forgiveness, and compassion towards oneself and others. He underscores the power of sharing emotions and supporting one another to break the cycle of stress and depression.

Highlights

• The human brain's vast complexity surpasses any technological marvel we've created. 🏗️
• Depression stems from life experiences and often requires emotional healing, not just medical intervention. 🌱
• Proper hydration and nutrition play significant roles in maintaining brain health. 🥤
• Forgiveness and compassion towards oneself are vital in mental health recovery. 💞
• Breaking the cycle of self-focused thoughts by helping others can alleviate depression. 🤝

Key Takeaways

• The human brain is incredibly complex, with around 100 trillion connections! 🧠
• Depression is often triggered by anger turned inwards or emotional roots related to specific life events. ⚡
• Hydration, leafy greens, and fruits like bananas are key to better brain function. 🥦🍌
• Learning to forgive and letting go of past traumas is crucial for overcoming depression. 🕊️
• Sharing your feelings and being in supportive environments can aid healing. ❤️‍🩹

Overview

Dr. Chidi Ngwaba sheds light on the intricacies of stress and depression, topics that touch almost everyone's lives at some point. Speaking to the astounding complexity of the human brain, he underscores how depression is more than a chemical imbalance—it involves deep emotional roots. According to Dr. Chidi, understanding these roots and forgiveness can significantly aid in mental health recovery.

Highlighting the importance of proper nutrition and hydration, Dr. Chidi explains how our daily habits influence brain function and mood. Bananas, rich in tryptophan, can help boost mood-related hormones, while the inclusion of exercise and smiling can do wonders for our mental health. He reminds us that breaking a cycle of negative self-thought is crucial.

Finally, Dr. Chidi emphasizes the role of forgiveness and sharing in healing. By fostering environments where people feel safe to express their faults and embracing compassion and gratitude, significant strides in mental health recovery can be made. This talk encourages listeners to look forward with hope, back with forgiveness, around with compassion, and up with gratitude.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction The speaker introduces the topic of the discussion, emphasizing the significance of colors and diseases. They mention previous topics covered, which include diabetes, obesity, cancer, autoimmune disease, heart disease, and hypertension. The focus shifts to depression and stress, highlighting their universal impact on people's lives. The speaker concludes with a wish for stress to be a thing of the past.
• 00:30 - 03:00: Complexity of the Human Brain The chapter titled "Complexity of the Human Brain" discusses the unparalleled complexity of the human brain. It starts with a relatable sentiment, suggesting a common desire for relief from depression. The narrative then emphasizes that the human brain stands as the most complex entity in the known universe, surpassing all other discoveries in intricacy. The discussion hints at the brain’s intricate capabilities, though specifics of its complexities, such as its structure or functions, are not detailed in the provided excerpt.
• 03:00 - 07:00: Understanding Depression The chapter 'Understanding Depression' begins with an exploration of the brain's complexity, emphasizing its vast network comprising a hundred billion nerve cells. Each nerve cell makes approximately a thousand connections, resulting in about a hundred trillion connections overall. The enormity of this number serves to illustrate the intricate nature of the human brain, which is a foundational aspect in comprehending the biological underpinnings of depression.
• 08:00 - 10:30: Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences The chapter discusses the scale of neurons in the human brain as being extraordinarily vast, even when compared to something as large as the Amazon Rainforest. It uses the analogy of trees and leaves in the rainforest to emphasize the immense number of neurons in the brain, pointing out that there are around 100 trillion neural connections or synapses in the human brain. This illustration is likely used to underscore the complexity and capacity of the brain, possibly in the context of how childhood experiences can impact neurological development.
• 13:00 - 18:00: The Power of Forgiveness The chapter titled "The Power of Forgiveness" begins with a focus on the incredible processing power of the human brain. It highlights the fact that every second, our brains perform over 50,000 trillion operations, which is a testament to their phenomenal abilities. This is contrasted with the capabilities of the world's most advanced supercomputers, which, although used for complex tasks such as weather prediction, operate at a fraction of a percentage of the human brain's capacity. The chapter sets the stage for understanding human potential and the intricacies of psychological and emotional processes such as forgiveness.
• 18:00 - 23:00: Embracing Pain for Healing The chapter titled 'Embracing Pain for Healing' reflects on the incredible capacities of the human brain, emphasizing its almost infinite potential for storing and retrieving information. This intrinsic capability underlines the importance of collaboration, where bringing multiple brains together can lead to extraordinary achievements. The idea is to harness this potential, even through challenging or painful experiences, as a pathway to innovation and healing. By working together and embracing the discomfort that comes with growth, humans can truly realize the brilliance of their collective intellect.
• 23:00 - 31:00: Letting Go for Freedom This chapter discusses the concept of letting go for freedom, using the International Space Station as a metaphor for complexity in our lives. It highlights how depression, described as 'anger turned inwards,' affects everyone at some point, suggesting that understanding and addressing these emotions is a pathway to mental freedom.
• 31:00 - 38:00: Helping Others to Help Yourself The chapter explores the concept of depression, emphasizing that it primarily occurs in the brain involving complex neural connections. The focus is on explaining the intricate interactions between nerves, highlighting the synaptic space where these communications happen. The narrative aims to provide a deeper understanding of depression's neurological basis as a foundation for discussing ways to extend help and support to those affected.
• 38:00 - 48:00: Sharing and Confessing for Healing This chapter titled 'Sharing and Confessing for Healing' begins with a discussion about neurological processes, specifically the synapse, which is the space between nerve cells where chemicals are released to initiate a new nerve impulse. The chemical interaction within the synapse is a focal point for many pharmaceutical companies, which hypothesize that by maintaining increased levels of these chemicals within the synapse, it can lead to improved feelings or mood as part of a therapeutic approach. However, this remains a theory and is not confirmed fact.
• 48:00 - 50:00: Conclusion and Message of Hope The chapter titled 'Conclusion and Message of Hope' discusses the theoretical basis upon which antidepressant drugs, like Prozac, have been developed. The author draws a parallel between the practice of spring cleaning in the UK and the concept of 'brain spring cleaning,' suggesting that just as one cleans their house thoroughly in the spring, one can also apply similar 'cleaning' practices to maintain mental health and manage depression. The discussion ends with an optimistic message about taking proactive steps to improve mental well-being.

How to Alleviate Stress & Depression | Dr Chidi Ngwaba Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Good evening again and it's good to be back. Um, we have been looking at some of these colors, some of these diseases. We've looked at diabetes, obesity, we've looked at cancer, autoimmune disease, we've looked at heart disease and hypertension. Today, something that all of us will be touched with at some point in our lives, and that is depression and stress. And I would like to say rest in peace stress
• 00:30 - 01:00 and depression. I think most of us would like that, right? Rest in peace. Now if you explore the known universe, the known universe, you will not come across anything as complicated as the human brain. There is nothing you will ever see. There is nothing we've ever discovered that is as complicated as the human brain. The human brain has over a
• 01:00 - 01:30 hundred billion nerve cells. A hundred billion nerve cells. And each one of those nerve cells has at least a thousand connections. At least a thousand connections. So in total in your brain or in our brains we have about a 100red trillion connections going on. Now I don't know if any of us can even imagine a number that big. I
• 01:30 - 02:00 can't. But think about it this way. Um in the Amazon rainforest, by the way, the Amazon rainforest is about 15 times the size of France. The Amazon rainforest. If you think about that land full of trees, think of every tree in the Amazon rainforest. Think of every leaf on every tree in the Amazon rainforest and you still will not come anywhere near the number of 100 trillion. Our brains are
• 02:00 - 02:30 phenomenal. I don't know if you'll believe this, but every second, every second, our brains do over 50,000 trillion operations. Every second, you're just sitting here watching. That's what your brains are doing. You know, we have these things in the world called supercomputers. They are able to predict the weather. They're the biggest computers in the world, the most powerful computers. It doesn't even come to 0.01% 0.1% of the capacity of our
• 02:30 - 03:00 brains. In fact, recently I was listening to somebody who's an expert on this saying that our brains have infinite capacity. How we retrieve the information is different, but it has an infinite capacity. We cannot really imagine how brilliant it is. And when everything works, it goes very well. When we cooperate, we put our brains together, we can do fabulous things like build the
• 03:00 - 03:30 International Space Station, still probably the most complicated thing we've built so far on Earth. But sometimes the brain doesn't work so well. And this is when we talk about depression. And depression, I would suggest, touches all of us at some time. touches all of us at some time. I like this definition. Depression is anger turned inwards and anger is depression
• 03:30 - 04:00 turned outwards. Let's look a little bit closer at depression. The depression obviously takes place in the brain. It doesn't happen in the muscles. Doesn't happen anywhere else. It happens in the brain. I I spoke about those hundred trillion connections. Well, this is what they look like close up. This is one nerve coming up to another nerve. And that space in between is called a
• 04:00 - 04:30 sinapse. And that sinapse is where a chemical is released from the end of one nerve into that sinapse space, travels. It goes to the other side and generates another impulse. And by the way, this is the area where many pharmaceutical companies want to interfere. So they believe that if they can keep that space with all those chemicals, keep lot of that chemical in that space then we can feel better. It's a theory. It's not a
• 04:30 - 05:00 fact but it's a theory upon which these sorts of drugs like Prozac have been invented. Now in Britain we call we do something called spring cleaning with the house. I don't know if you do that here in in Kenya. springtime comes, you do a thorough clean of the house. Well, I like to say, well, there are certain things you can do for your brain in terms of a spring cleaning for your brain. Um, depression mind keeping I
• 05:00 - 05:30 call it. So, here's a few physical things you can do to help your brain get along. The more water you drink, the healthier your brain will be. You know, your brain is roughly 80% water, okay? So, it needs lots of water. the good old leafy greens come in. I can guarantee everywhere we go, greens is always going to be good for you. You can challenge me on that. No problem. Just being but smiling, doing things, exercising, all of these things are good
• 05:30 - 06:00 for the brain. Now, I don't know if you know about bananas. Bananas have a high level of an amino acid called tryptophan. Tryptophan is the precursor to things like dopamine and serotonin. So bananas should be able to help with our mood. And you know when you look at monkeys, they all look happy, don't they? So obviously it works. Case proved. Fantastic. But look, we know that depression is not about eating
• 06:00 - 06:30 bananas. You know, depression comes from an emotional root. So let's try and look at some of the causes. You know, we say that some of the triggers for depression are what we call the four Ds. Uh debt, divorce, disease, and death. These can trigger us into depression. These are some of the most serious periods of our lives. So, it's not surprising, but they may trigger
• 06:30 - 07:00 depression, but they're not the root cause because people go through depression and disease, and not everybody gets depressed. So, what is it? what's going on? Well, before I move on from that, what we should say is if you have one of these issues in life and if you know that that can trigger into depression, one of the things that you should do is quickly get some practical help. You know, most of these problems,
• 07:00 - 07:30 they they're like mushrooms. They grow in the dark. If you don't express them, if you don't share them, if you don't get help from them, they just get worse and that's what leads to depression. Somebody yesterday was talking about how men tend to keep things in. And you may not be surprised that men have four times the rate of suicide as women. We don't share. We keep it to ourselves. It gets worse. Now, if you don't deal with it, you you get onto a place which I call
• 07:30 - 08:00 the downward spiral of selfthought. The downward spiral of self-thought. Depression is a lot about us thinking about ourselves. My pain, my past, my future, it's about me. And if you get onto that spiral, it's very, very difficult to get off of it. But why do some people get depression and others don't? Is it in fact genetic? There are
• 08:00 - 08:30 many people and many scientists who will tell you that there's possibly a genetic component to depression. Now all I would ask you to do if anybody tells you that is where is the gene for depression? Does it exist? Have we seen it yet? We have not found it. There's no gene for depression. But there are some things we do know that can lead us or predict that we may get depressed. And here's what we see. adverse childhood experiences.
• 08:30 - 09:00 Adverse childhood experiences. They call them ACEs. And there's been a lot of research over the years that says if as a child you've been exposed to a lot of these experiences, adverse child experiences, you have a higher risk of being depressed and stressed. Have a look at this. um this experiment they showed that 17,000 people and they said that if you had three or more of these adverse childhood
• 09:00 - 09:30 experiences, look what happens to your disease. Your risk of lung disease goes up by 400%. How can that be? If you've had adverse childhood experience, why would your why would lung disease go so high? Well, many people if you are brought up like that, you get stressed. How do people relieve stress? Take up smoking. You're more likely to take up smoking. You're more likely to have lung disease.
• 09:30 - 10:00 How about that? 500% increased risk of depression. Over a thousand in terms of suicide, over a thousand in terms of obesity. Now, why am I telling you all of this? I'm telling you this because sometimes we look at people in their lives. They may be addicted. They may be overweight. They may be in problems. And we we tend to judge them. But we don't know their background. We don't know what they've been through. If we had been through all that they had
• 10:00 - 10:30 been through, we'd probably be a lot worse. So this is telling us that the background to any kind of disease or addiction, we need to take a step back. Don't judge and try and think about well I wonder why this person got into this place but the truth is the way we are brought up as children affects the way we are today. This wonderful poem if children live with criticism they learn to condemn. If they live with hostility they learn to fight. If children live
• 10:30 - 11:00 with ridicule they learn to be shy. If they live with shame they learn to feel guilty. And of course the reverse is true. If they are raised with love and appreciation and confidence, all of those things become true also. Now, let me take you back a few years. This is a time when I used to take some nice pictures of myself. This is me with my mother. Um, now it's a long time ago. The reason
• 11:00 - 11:30 why it's black and white is not because it's so old. It's just that my dad used black and white film. That's all. Now I spent a lot of my time living apart from my parents and you know this is when they came to visit me and there was one episode where some of the people who were looking after me were a little bit cruel. Let me let me say that a little bit cruel and it did affect me a little bit. And later in life I told my parents I
• 11:30 - 12:00 said well look this is what happened to me. The very first thing my mother said to me was, "You're going to have to forgive that woman. You're going to have to forgive that woman." I was a young man. I didn't even know what that meant. How do you forgive? I didn't know. But that was the very first thing. When I became a teenager, I went back to visit this same woman cuz I just wanted to confront her and have it all out. But the moment I saw this woman, whatever stress or
• 12:00 - 12:30 tension I had in my body just just disappeared. Now, the reason why it disappeared was because when I looked at her, she had lost all of her fingers. She had lost pretty much all of her toes through severe arthritis. So, whatever anger I had inside of me disappeared and it turned to pity. I'm very grateful for that encounter because it allowed me to let go of the
• 12:30 - 13:00 bitterness and get on with my life. If I had not had that encounter, maybe to this day I'd still be bitter. And who knows what that would have done to my life. So when we're when we're trying to figure out how do we heal from some of these past traumas or adverse experiences, you know, even though they may predict the increased risk of disease, these childhood experiences, it doesn't have to be us. It doesn't have
• 13:00 - 13:30 to be us because one of the root causes to get rid of that problem is forgiveness. I must say when I'm helping people to reverse disease, doesn't matter what the disease may be, at the heart of it, once you've talked about the diet, once you've talked about the exercise, once you've talked about everything else, at the heart of it, you we are going to have to learn to let go. We're going to have to learn to forgive. If you want to
• 13:30 - 14:00 get rid of stress, anxiety, depression, at some point you're going to have to learn how to forgive the person who's hurt us. In fact, if you can't forgive, very difficult to be totally healthy. Doesn't matter what you do with your life because look, disease is really disease. Your body is not at ease. Okay? It is you're you're in a state of what we call disequilibrium. you you can't be at
• 14:00 - 14:30 rest. So your body's always fighting and that is a increased risk of disease. Now I'm going to do something unconventional for a doctor. Okay? I'm not here to prescribe you anti-depressants. Okay? I'm going to give you something else. And uh it may seem unconventional, but these things work. Trust me, cuz I want to give you some help on how you can let go. May I do that? May I do that? Okay. Thank you. So, one of the first things I'm going to ask you to do
• 14:30 - 15:00 is to learn to embrace pain. That's right. Learn to embrace pain. Anybody want to embrace pain right now? No. No. None of us do. So, why is this doctor telling us to embrace pain? Well, I'm what I'm really telling you is to embrace a little pain so that you can overcome and avoid a lot of pain. What
• 15:00 - 15:30 am I talking about? Let me give you an example. Um, when I used to work in the emergency department in London, this was in the days where people had to wait a long time to see a doctor overnight. I remember one night, maybe about 2:00 in the morning, there was this gentleman sitting there waiting to be seen. So I picked out his card. I called him. He was about 6'8, full of tattoos all over his
• 15:30 - 16:00 body. Big, big guy. And I said, "So what can I do for you, sir?" He said to me, "Doctor, I have a splinter in my finger. I wonder if you can get rid of it for me. I said, "Yes, of course I can. I'm going to take you next door. I'm going to anise the ties your finger and then I'll take it out for you." He said, "Doctor, what do you mean anise the ties my finger?" "Well, it just means I have to inject your finger with anesthetic so
• 16:00 - 16:30 that it doesn't hurt, then I can take it out." He said, "Um, I don't like needles." He's covered in tattoos. I didn't argue with him. I told you he's he's much bigger than me. I said, "Well, look, the only thing I can do is to anise the ties it first, otherwise I can't help you." He said, "Uh, no thanks. I'm going home." He went home 3:00 in the morning. Went home. 2
• 16:30 - 17:00 days later, this gentleman came back. Now, I knew he was coming back into the department because he screamed the place down. big guy screaming the place down because his finger now had exploded almost the size of his hand. You see, because he didn't allow me to take out the splinter when it was a little bit painful, it's gotten worse. We couldn't even deal with it in the department. He had to go to theater. He had to spend a lot of time in hospital,
• 17:00 - 17:30 antibiotics, all sorts of things. because he avoided a little bit of pain, he had more pain. And what I'm saying is for most of us, we're doing exactly the same thing. We have a problem. I don't want to deal with it. I don't want to go there. Maybe it's a spousal problem. I don't want to have any I don't want to talk about it. Just keep it in. But the problem doesn't go away. It just gets worse until
• 17:30 - 18:00 eventually one day you're about to go out somebody steps on go out somewhere. Somebody steps on your toe and you explode. You're not exploding because they stepped on your toe. You're exploding because you haven't dealt with what's inside. We have to embrace a little bit of pain so that we can prevent ourselves from going through a lot of pain. The next thing I told you this is unconventional but it works. The next
• 18:00 - 18:30 thing is we need to walk forwards and not backwards. Let me explain again. Many of us are going through life looking backwards. In fact, I wonder if anybody can answer this. Has anybody ever in the wild captured a chimpanzee? Anyone? No. Okay. Well, there are many ways to
• 18:30 - 19:00 do it, but there's one way that really exemplifies what I'm talking about now. I saw how they how they did it. What they did, they got a box, a big box, and they filled this box with all the things that chimpanzees like to eat, nuts and bananas and all sorts of things. They sealed the box. They then made a little hole in the side of the box, just big enough so that the monkey
• 19:00 - 19:30 can get his hand in. And then they just waited. The chim the chimpanzeee came along, put his hand in the box, made a fist because he's now got that banana in his hand and now he can't get his hand out of the box. He's trapped. It never occurs to the chimpanzee to let go of the banana and be free. Even when I've seen this, even when the
• 19:30 - 20:00 person's coming with the net, the chimpanzeee may be screaming, but he's not letting go of the banana. This is the problem with us. We go through life looking backwards. I can't let go of the pain someone caused me. I can't let go. And because I can't let go, I am trapped. The enemy has me trapped. The only way
• 20:00 - 20:30 we can be free is to learn to let go. Let go. Yes, it was traumatic. Yes, it may have been their fault, but for my own safety, for my own sanity, for my own peace, I'm going to have to learn to let go. Then I can walk forwards through life rather than backwards. If you walk backwards through life, you cannot see the blessings that are in front of you until they just pass you by. Learn to
• 20:30 - 21:00 let go. These are the root causes of some of our stress and anxiety in life. Sometimes you might think, well, what am I actually stressed about? Do an inventory of your mind. Do an inventory of all the people that have hurt you. You may realize that you're still holding on to that old nut or that old banana back there. Learn to let go. Okay? Let the seed lead. I I'll give you
• 21:00 - 21:30 another example. I I was a doctor in the countryside in England, and there was one man who would come in every Thursday morning and say, "Doctor, I'm depressed." No matter what question I asked him, he would just say, "Doctor, I'm depressed." And then one day I asked him, "Could you just explain how it feels to be you?" I don't know. Have you ever heard of this game, Snakes and Ladders? Snakes and Ladders. Yes. So,
• 21:30 - 22:00 you know, snakes and ladders is when you go along and if you reach a ladder, you go up the ladder. If you reach a snake, you go down the snake. when he said, "Doctor, if I would, if my life was a board game, it wouldn't be snakes and ladders. It would be snakes and snakes." And just like you, I started laughing. So this man who's depressed in front of me, I'm the doctor. And I started laughing. And you know, when
• 22:00 - 22:30 you're not supposed to laugh, you laugh even more. So I I just couldn't control myself. I was laughing all the time. And I was looking at him as I was wiping the tears from my eyes and he was just there looking at me. So it made me laugh even more. After five minutes or so, I composed myself and I started to say to him, "Look, I'm sorry about that. I know it's serious." And he stopped me. He said, "Doctor, don't bother to apologize. This is the first time that I've been of use to anybody. Just making
• 22:30 - 23:00 you laugh. just making you laugh. In other words, he feels something positive inside of him because he's done something positive for somebody else. Remember I was talking about this spiral of self-thought. One of the ways to come out of this spiral of self-thought is to do something for somebody else. It could be something small. You might think it's insignificant, but just by doing it, it
• 23:00 - 23:30 takes your mind off of yourself. You can then be free of thinking about yourself and a lot of this anxiety and depression goes away. It's one of the most powerful tools to relieve ourselves from depression. In fact, there are two quick ways to relieve yourself from depression. One is to do something for somebody else and the other one is to go out and get some exercise. So, let the seed lead. Plant that seed. All of us are saying, you know, I'm waiting for my I'm waiting for
• 23:30 - 24:00 my my my ship to come in. Well, if your ship's coming, you got to send some ships out. You know, the the Bible says God can't be mocked. Whatever a man sws, so shall he reap. What are you seeking to reap in life? Peace, happiness, joy. Well, in order to reap it, you have to sew it. Very good. Okay. What about this one? Share your faults. And this comes
• 24:00 - 24:30 from the Bible that in James 5:16 which says confess your faults or your sins one to another that you may be healed. Interesting. It doesn't say confess so that you may be forgiven. I don't need to confess to anybody to be forgiven. Okay. But if I want to be healed, I need to talk to somebody. I need to open up to somebody. I need to
• 24:30 - 25:00 be accountable to somebody. So, what this tells me is that we, and I know this is the thing, especially us as men, need to find that space where we can feel free to open up and confess about whatever addiction I may have. You know, one of the best ways to get rid of alcoholism is Alcoholics Anonymous. Yeah. What you do is you stand up around the table and you say, "Yes, my name's Dr. Chitty and I'm an alcoholic." Just
• 25:00 - 25:30 that, by the way, I'm not an alcoholic, but just just sharing that with somebody starts the process of healing. It is still the best method of getting rid of alcoholism in our lives, sharing our thoughts. But it also means for those of us who are in communities, homes, families, churches, businesses, it means that the environment that we're in needs to be conducive to people sharing their thoughts. If we are in environments
• 25:30 - 26:00 where there's lots of condemnation and judgment, very few people are going to be able to share their thought, their faults. So it's up to us whether we're leaders in the home, in the community, in business. We have to make that environment conducive to people being able to say, you know what, I made a mistake. You know, when we were doctors, we we had this meeting called morbidity and mortality. Meaning, look, I may have
• 26:00 - 26:30 made a mistake that may even have cost somebody their life, but we're able to talk about it freely without judgment. And that helps us not make the same problem or mistake again. It is better when we can share because everything gets better when we do it together. I'm going to end on this because um when people ask me about health, I often say to them, look um our
• 26:30 - 27:00 health is dependent on how we look. Okay. I don't mean how we appear, what suit we're wearing or dress we're wearing, but how we actually look. So what what I mean is if you're going to look back, look back with forgiveness. Don't look back in anger. Don't look back in bitterness. Look back
• 27:00 - 27:30 with forgiveness. Look forward with hope. We always have hope. No matter where you think you are or how how dark the situation may be, we have hope. You know, I'm I'm grateful that I believe in a God who gives me hope. We our pastor Dia told us about hope. It is fundamental to who we are. Also remember, look down with compassion. All that means is that there's somebody
• 27:30 - 28:00 around you who needs your help in in whatever way. It may be financial. It may be just a an a a an arm around the shoulder. It may be just some words of encouragement. But somebody around you needs compassion. And eventually and finally, continue to look up with gratitude. Wherever we are, God is blessing us and will continue to bless us. Amen. [Applause]