Neil Dudley: The Cowboy Perspective, well, it might be hard to define, but I guarantee if you think about it, you’ve got one in mind. Whether you’re building a legacy, an empire, or a fan base, I bet when your friends look at you, they see some cowboy in your face. Y’all come along, let’s talk about this or that. Maybe when we’re done, you’ll go away with another perspective to put under your hat.
Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Let’s see, who’d I copy last time – I think last time I copied Dax Shepard. So, I won’t do that again. I almost did. But I just want to say thanks for coming to the Cowboy Perspective, listening. I’m really excited about the episode we’re putting out this time around. I’m talking to my number one hero, my number one cowboy mentor, my dad. Mom’s with us. We explore the idea, or I say the idea, it’s really my dad’s theory, Mom and Dad’s theory of a cup of love and what that means in our lives. I really can’t wait for you to hear what they say and what we talk about, what we think about. I just believe it’s going to provide you some value, something to think about for a little bit. And there’s no reason for me to keep rambling; let’s get to it. And here’s my dad, Harry Dudley, my mom, Rhonda Dudley, and the cup of love theory.
Yeah. Alright, Dad, here we go. Let’s do this thing again. We’re going to tell everybody about your cup of love theory. I guess we’ll do what we always do – just start talking and let the conversation go where it goes, let God lead us a little bit and put it down here for the Cowboy Perspective. And I’m starting what I’m calling Cowboy Mentors. I guess you probably qualify as my number one cowboy mentor. So, this will be a cool episode to start that with, I think. And we won’t be talking a whole lot about cowboying, maybe not necessarily, we might get off into that a little bit just as we go, but this theory means a lot to me and our family and you, I know it does. So maybe give us a quick explanation of what it is, and then we might go deeper along the way into why you even started thinking about it, some of the health issues, some other experiences along the way that got you, I guess, formulating the theory.
Harry Dudley: Okay. The cup of love theory is something that basically just came to my mind after some health issues, but the cup of love theory as I remember in the Bible, when it’s referred to as a cup running over and that it was just going to last for your life and also into eternity. And so, I use the theory basically of a cup based on that idea. The cup of love theory is simply that – it’s a theory that I kind of developed to explain because I’m a visual person. If I can see it, I can understand it better. And so, the day that we talked about this, I had a couple of cups that I used to explain that one cup was going to be indicative of the unconditional love that I have for you and for Brian because you’re my children. And then there’s also a second cup that’s unconditional love, and that is something that we drink out of constantly in our relationship. And therefore, it is a cup that we want to address and talk about this morning. If you want to get deeper into it, we’ll kind of follow whatever trail you want to on that.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, we’ll certainly get deeper, but that’s a quick visual or insight into where we’re going to dive a little deeper as we go. Maybe the next thing let’s talk about or tell the audience about a little bit is some of your experience with health issues and your age at that time, and just what part of your life you were living through to get your brain, or maybe even to the place in life spiritually, with health, mentally, emotionally, all these different things to where this picture started becoming more clear. To me, this story is something you’ve always known, but you didn’t know exactly or necessarily how to convey it, or you’ve always felt that maybe but didn’t know exactly what it was. So, painting that picture a little bit, just tell us how the health and just the part of your life you were in when you kind of started saying, I want to make sure my family understands this concept and how I feel about it.
Harry Dudley: Okay. That’s a good starting point because I really didn’t understand what I was talking about when maybe I mentioned love on any subject. I might tell Rhonda I love you. And my parents, I’m not sure I use that word very often; I’m sure it was seldom that I used that word with them. But it was a word I sort of kind of understood, but it really came to life in me once I had some health issues, I had some heart arrhythmia problems, had a couple of ablations. And from one of those ablations, I’m not sure, the doctors aren’t particularly sure, but from that, I had a little secondary issue that began to hit me emotionally. I’d never had emotional problems or at least not anxiety type or depressive type emotions until after I’d had these heart ablations. And for whatever reasons, it began to hit me. And from that position, I ended up going to see a doctor and told him this is an unusual feeling I’m having. I don’t understand it; something’s wrong with me. I’m afraid something’s wrong with me. And so, the doctor had me go and do some tests and see a counselor, actually a psychiatrist. And so, they sent me to have an MRI.
Neil Dudley: What did you think about that when they said, well, you need to go see a shrink?
Harry Dudley: I had the same stigma that a lot of people did. I thought, uh oh, I don’t like this. I wish I didn’t have to go see this psychiatrist. And so, I was nervous about it. But once I met him – actually, it was a lady – a very nice lady, handled the situation well, explained to me that this could be a health problem that we needed to get some tests on. She asked me a lot of questions, and from those questions, she realized that I hadn’t had a horrible childhood, that my life had been good, that I had good parents. There really wasn’t any reason for me to be experiencing this, and this was happening to me when I was 49 years. And so that didn’t add up for her either. So, she said, let’s go get an MRI done and see if there’s- just make sure there’s not anything physical going on. And from that MRI, they found a brain aneurysm, and the brain aneurysm was basically right behind my eyes, and it split and went into both sides, both lobes of the brain. And my neurosurgeon said this is something that’s very serious. And I said, “Well, is it something I need to do surgery on?” And he said, “Well, yes, you probably need to do surgery, but there are a lot of possibilities for that to go bad, and you need to go home and think about this.” And so, from that point on, Rhonda and I talked about it. And I said, this is serious, this is real serious. And the surgery is, if everything goes exactly right, and really, God really takes care of me in this, I’ll come off the table and be okay. But the neurosurgeon told me, he said there are four or five things here that can happen, and about four of them are bad. There’s only one good one.
Neil Dudley: 20% chance of good.
Harry Dudley: Yeah. And even that percentage had some issues with it. So anyway, I did go home. He said, “I’m not going to do it. And we’re definitely not going to decide to do it right now.” And I think one of Rhonda’s questions to him was, “Well, what if this aneurysm ruptures and how quick do we have to have something done?” And he said, “Well, if it does, you’ve got about an hour to get to me.” And of course, we live 2.5, 3 hours away from Dallas. So, it gave us a pretty good, gave us a huge scare. And to me, I did a little research, and it says it’s actually a ticking bomb and you don’t know when it might happen. But if it does, a lot of times, that’s it, the curtain falls. So, with all that in mind, I took the doctor’s advice, went home, did a lot of soul searching, got into my prayer heavier than normal, because I knew this, there wasn’t anything I could control here. This was going to be on God and whether he wanted me to continue to be a part of this world, or if he had other plans for me, I needed to get in better touch with him. And so, I did. I would go as a rancher, went to the pasture, and spent a lot of times just praying and talking to him about what do I do?
Neil Dudley: Did you ever ask that question why me?
Harry Dudley: Not really. I just don’t believe I did. I just thought, well, this is-
Neil Dudley: -Just this is the way that the story’s playing out.
Harry Dudley: This is my journey I guess you’d say.
Neil Dudley: I guess I’ve never asked that question, never even thought it before. But you’ve never struck me one time ever in that mindset. I never felt like you were like, why me? Why is this sorry, no fun thing happening to me? To me, that was a great example. That might be one of those cowboy mentor things that you gave me, even unintentionally, nobody knew it was happening. You don’t spend a lot of time saying why me? You spend most of the time saying, okay, now, what am I going to do now? How do I get closer to God? How do I get closer to my family? How do I show them how I feel about them? I think that’s great. I’m not sure. I feel real lucky I got that example in life of really both parents that don’t spend much time whining about why me? It’s more about this is where we’re at, how do we improve it? How do we move to another level? How do we get better? So, it just occurs to me while we’re talking. Thank you.
Harry Dudley: I’d say that was passed on to me by my parents. A lot of this attitude and our approach to life I think does come from the people that are parents or the people that we put all of our respect into. My dad didn’t complain about stuff. He just took what was there and worked with it.
Neil Dudley: When you come through that Depression, like I always get a little nervous about the idea that I don’t have that to fall back on, not that it would necessarily have been a great time to live through, but it set a bit of strength into people, I think, about getting through those times when it was really, really tough.
Harry Dudley: Yeah, that generation has been called the greatest generation. And I will give them that badge as well, because they’ve impressed me. Of course, my parents certainly impressed me, but other people of that generation impressed me when they’re just, hey, this is what we got, this is what we are going to deal with it, it’s going to be hard, but we’re going to take the bull by the horns and go with it. And so, that has been a big benefit in my life, and hopefully, I’m passing that on to you. And so anyway, the point that I think we’re going to try to get back to is that with that attitude, there’s a point where I got that, man, this could be it; this could be it. I’ve got to figure out what’s important to me. And I knew the ranch was important to me, my heritage and the legacy that I’ve received from my parents was definitely important to me. But the more, I did so much thinking that I realized the most important thing to me is telling my two sons and my wife how much they mean to me. Man, when I got through sorting all the fog out of this and cleared it up, that was what I had to do. That was the thing I wanted done before I went to that surgical table and had the surgery that it was either going to hopefully repair the aneurysm and give me more years or take my life away.
Neil Dudley: Or even leave you incapacitated or blind, or who knows the million of outcomes that might’ve came. So maybe I’ll just thank the good Lord right now. You got the good percentage in that scenario, and it makes me even empathize with people that have been there and didn’t get to come out with that great of a result from a brain surgery or any kind of surgery. Or even you think about some of our veterans that go to war and come back and got blown up or something, now they’re missing limbs or just mental problems. I wish people would just get over the whole stigma of mental illness, whatever it is, it’s just like cancer or any other thing – something you got to be willing to address, deal with. I wish all the other humans would quit laying some stigma on it. I’m not sure how it got there.
Harry Dudley: Well, I can’t say for sure either, but I can tell you this, personally, I look at it entirely different now. Somebody, if I find someone is struggling with anxiety, depression, man, I want to reach out to him. I want to tell him, hey, I’ve been there, I know what you’re dealing with, this can get better, don’t give up, that type deal. And so, when we start to think about how fragile life is, how simple life can be, the reality of life, which is our relationship with our family and with the other people we come across and meet in life. Those are the things that really trump, overly important compared to the things that we place value on. It’s just not really that way until you realize that new car, that new pickup-
Neil Dudley: It’s crazy and sad that you have to go through almost a near-death experience to kind of get that clarified or cleared up. I think I battle with that personally, just being in a business and keeping up with the Joneses, all those things that are ridiculous. And I know they’re ridiculous, but I still deal with it. I think everybody still deals with it.
Harry Dudley: Well, the world won’t let you get away from it.
Neil Dudley: Anybody- I think you probably deal with a little bit, and you’ve got a lot of maturity that I’m still a long ways away from. So, it’s kind of like, it’s just a human condition, and we have to kind of address and deal with. A couple of things I wanted to hit on as we go along, you’ve gone now into the pasture and figured out how you want to tell this is the thing that’s important to me, the family, and I want them to know how I feel. Tell us a little bit about being in the church pew by your parents and some of that part of the story where that picture started coming a little clearer, like this unconditional love thing and how Jesus plays a role in that, too.
Harry Dudley: Well, all of these thoughts and memories began to just kind of come to me and be part of my thought process. And I remember as a young guy, I’ll say 6, 7, 8 years old, anyway, at an age where I would be standing in the pew rather than standing on the floor, and I would be standing between mom and dad at church, and I remember it clearly in my mind, and just as that young child thinking, oh, I love these two people so much that if anything ever happened to them, I want to be wherever they are. If they die and leave- Of course, at that age, you have no understanding about it. All I knew is I didn’t want to ever be separated from them. Separation was my biggest fear. I just, no matter what happened to them, I didn’t want to be separated from them. And so, in that understanding I realized there’s something there that I hadn’t thought about enough. And that to me, brought me back to the Bible and the unconditional love that is talked about – it is called agape in the Bible. And I thought, that’s my perfect example of that. That was what I realized was unconditional love. And then rock along, move on down the calendar another 20 years or so, and Rhonda and I get married and then we have you, and I realized, gee man, I don’t understand this feeling. This is crazy. Of course, you were our first. And it was a lot of things I didn’t understand, what was going to happen now, this is really going to be different now. And so, I realized then, I said, there’s something different about this and that’s got to be that unconditional. Well, three years pass and then Brian comes along. Mom has had to have C-sections. And I remember my mother and I were standing in the hall outside the surgical room when they brought Brian out and brought him by me and Mom. And the nurse said, “I’m headed up to the nursery, and here, y’all want to look at him?” And I did, and man, it just, and it was just like, wow, this is an emotion that I can’t- it’s just not something that I have. And so, she took Brian and went on up the nursery, and I turned to my mom, and I said, “Mom, just seeing that baby,” I said, “I had no idea what he would look like. I mean, I laid my eyes on him and all of a sudden, I feel something I don’t understand.” And she just kind of looked at me and said, “Well, now you know what I feel.” And I said, “Oh my goodness.” I walked out of that hospital saying this is something different. This is special.
Neil Dudley: It’s really a blessing to get that. I never knew it, got to see it until I had some kids. We didn’t have that exact conversation, but we talk now. I completely understand. You can’t understand how your parents feel until you’ve had your kid, and then it clears up a lot of things that we might’ve went through over the years that I may not understand in your position or things like that. It just was like, bam, oh, now I get it, all these things. It’s unfortunate we can’t somehow feed that to the brain of a 10-year-old, 13-year-old, 16-year-old kid. But that’s the reality. There’s probably a plan in that as well. Alright, so we’ve got this far down the road. We haven’t delved really too much into conditional and unconditional. So, let’s paint that picture of the two glasses, red Kool-Aid, that part of the story and what that means and how those cups work.
Harry Dudley: Okay. When, I guess you’d say as the fog began to clear, when I was doing all of this reflection that the neurosurgeon had told me I needed to go home and do and thank goodness he did tell me to go home and do it. As the fog cleared, I realized there’s two different kinds of love here with my, especially with my children and the way I felt with my mom and dad. And it kind of began to give me an incentive to explain, how am I going to explain this to them? And I thought, okay, I’ve got to separate it, and I want to do it visually. So, I’ll take two cups, and I’ll fill one cup completely full, and just for visual clarification, I’m going to fill it with red Kool-Aid because it’s the blood, the blood connection that I had with my parents, the blood connection that I have with you and Brian, that this was going to be that unconditional love in that cup. And that cup was going to exemplify the fact that there would never be lower, you can never take anything out of that cup. It’s kind of like the Psalmist David said about his cup runneth over. This cup is going to run over. It’s never going to get below full, and it’s going to stay full and running over for my life and then probably into eternity. So, I think my mom and dad had that cup for me. I know I had it for them. I have it for you and Brian, and I believe y’all have it for me and mom. I mean, this goes for both parents. But the other cup was going to be the conditional cup. And then I could show you and Brian that this is the cup that we drink from every day. When you want to do something and I say, no, you’re going to take something out of that cup because you don’t like my answer. And then when you and Brian going do something that I don’t like, I’m going to take something out of that cup because I don’t like what you’re doing. But we have to continue to put stuff back in there. I might take something out of that cup because I don’t like what you did, but I’m going to put it back in there because I love you. I’m going to pour my part back in there.
Neil Dudley: Or we might just completely redeem ourselves and do something you did like without you telling us, just pure out of the blue – oh my gosh, they learned something. There’s a million ways to take the cup down and up that’s unconditional.
Harry Dudley: Well, one good way you would often fill that cup, just come up and look at me and give me a hug or something. All of a sudden that cup starts filling up. There’s, like you say, a million ways to refill that cup. Those are the two ideas that I really felt important to get across to you is that there’s a separation between this unconditional and the conditional. The conditional is we’re going to live with that every day, but I wanted y’all to know that this unconditional love, no matter what, it’s there. And don’t worry about it because if you’re a young kid, you’re thinking all I’ve got is this conditional. And if I make him mad enough, he’s going to quit loving me. And I used to think that about my parents. Man, I made them mad, they’re mad at me. They don’t love me anymore. Matter of fact, I was going to run away from home when I was a kid. I took off into the pasture, just mad, going to run away. Well, I realized what a foolish, naive little kid I really was. I wasn’t going to leave because I loved them too much to leave them.
Neil Dudley: That’s right. It’s a big bluff. It’s all it is.
Rhonda Dudley: To get what you want.
Neil Dudley: Well, there you go. She finally spoke up. Everybody welcome Mom to the podcast. She’s been listening. She’s a big, huge part of my life. And I talk about cowboys a lot, but there’s a cowgirl that’s had a lot of effect on me too, right there. So, I’m glad she spoke up a little bit. I think one time I was running away from the house because Mom was going to make me practice piano lessons. I went and packed a little bag. I think I can even picture this little denim bag I packed. I think I put something like a pair of socks and an apple in it. I was gone for good, that’s all I was going to need. Anyways, I got about, I don’t know, halfway through the pasture. Mom stepped on the back porch or might’ve been Dad, I don’t know. Mom might’ve said, “Hey Harry, Neil’s running away.” You stepped out there and hollered, “Get back in here.” And I think I turned straight back around and came back.
Harry Dudley: Wasn’t a lot of thought and planning in that.
Neil Dudley: Running away is a big bluff every time. Although, I’m experiencing it with my kids. They get really upset, feel cheated, feel you don’t love me, you’re not treating me fairly. It’s not rare to see one of them storm out the door and walk 10 steps from the door and look back like I’m leaving. I’m like, see you later.
Rhonda Dudley: We’ve all done that.
Neil Dudley: But as a parent, it hurts that they’re feeling that emotion, that sadness. So, it all kind of comes back around. I would wish they weren’t going through it, but I don’t know, there’s no perfect parent out there. So, I’m certainly messing up day in and day out in a million different ways. But that unconditional love cup is a great security blanket that I truly believe in, that blood relationship gives us that gift from God of unconditional love that he has for us as well. I don’t know, I think it’s going to be fun and interesting to hear what the rest of the world thinks of a lot of this, because I’m not sure everybody can see that unconditional love. They didn’t get the same blessed life that we happened to have where we can sit here today and say, okay, yeah, I believe that, I’ve lived it, I feel it. I still would argue everybody has it, whether they can see it, feel it, or understand it.
Harry Dudley: Yeah, I wouldn’t question anybody’s feelings about this. As I mentioned, this is just a theory, and it’s something people can take and use, or they can reject it. And that’s quite alright with me. This is just something, an experience that I had. I think God took me down this journey for a reason. I think he brought me off that surgical table for another reason, maybe to tell this story again a few times and let them know that God’s part of your life. I think there’s no reason for me to believe that I’m not here without God using me in some way.
Neil Dudley: I mean, it might be, if you’re listening and you don’t know what we’re talking about when it comes to God and Jesus, put a little time and research in that and seeing what role it might play in your life, because I’m not going to tell you, you have to or any other thing, but I know in my own heart and in my life and my experience, God’s been there. I can go delving off into adrenal tumors and all that stuff, but we’re really talking about the cup of love theory today.
Harry Dudley: Well, the unconditional part of it, which in the Bible, it talks about the unconditional, even before I got to this point, trying to explain it before my surgery, I would read about unconditional love and hear about it in a Sunday school class or sermon at church, and I just thought I don’t understand that. My dad, I remember a lot of things in spiritual life are you just don’t understand them. And he had trouble saying you’re born again. He said, “You can’t be born again.” He said, “I understand what you’re trying to say,” but he was from the ranching background, and he was a man who had the ideas that it he’s got to understand it. Well, he struggled to understand how that could be that you’re born again as a Christian. And so, I had trouble understanding how could somebody have unconditional love for you because I’m probably going to, I know I make God mad daily. And so, if I got to sit and worry about whether he is okay with me today or is he mad at me today, I haven’t got a chance. My deal’s over. So, this unconditional, it is essential to my spiritual life and it’s essential to my human life with my children and then back with my parents. That unconditional part, as I say, that’s enough. But it ain’t enough without it.
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Okay, so in the conditional cup a little bit, that starts playing a really intricate role in marriage and maybe even sibling relationships in your mind and in your theory. Let’s talk a little bit about that. You choose a mate for life, you get married, why isn’t there a magic unconditional love cup that appears there?
Harry Dudley: Well, again, this is again just my feeling about it. And since I had this feeling about it, I needed to talk to Rhonda about it. And we both kind of threw our opinions into it, and for some reason, we both agreed that as a couple, we love each other. We’ve been married for 42 years. There’s no question we love each other, but we cannot get the full commitment that we have for children and believe that that same cup, the unconditional love, is there between us. Now I know this could make a lot of people say, nah, then I’m done with it. Well, okay, that’s alright. But I’m telling you, between Rhonda and I, we love each other, and we’ve come through a lot of stuff. We’ve lived off of that unconditional cup, but what we knew and have just made it our pledge, so to speak, is we’re not going to let this unconditional love cup run dry. We’re going to keep pouring something back in there; one way or another, we’re going to find ways to keep something in that cup.
Neil Dudley: Which spurred you to pay attention to each other. To spend in the worst of times a little bit of thought about am I dealing with that conditional cup of love with the people I care about? Because it can get to zero. It can get so low and stay there. It may have even gotten to zero in y’all’s lives at a time, but you just were able to get a drop back in before it stayed dry so long that you ended up divorcing or just having that kind of experience where you lost sight of the cup.
Harry Dudley: Well, I think the important part is it’s a commitment, and we grew up, she did and I did, grew up with ideas that when you commit to something, you commit to it. Now I’m not saying there’s no way we would’ve ever had a divorce. I don’t know. All I know is we have had enough challenges in our life that we’ve had to overcome, but we’ve still managed to keep something in that cup. And she could have said I’ve had enough of you and that cup dried up. I couldn’t keep that cup full myself. I might pour all the water I can in there, but if she doesn’t want to hold that cup, she can walk away. Same thing with me, I get mad enough and I say I don’t care, go throw that cup against the wall, I don’t want it anymore. We can do that with any relationship – this is my opinion again – we can do that with any relationship with anybody except our children. Our children, we’ve got that unconditional cup and we might take that relationship and throw it against the wall and break it. But we’re not getting rid of that unconditional one. It’s there.
Neil Dudley: You can pretend it’s not, but it’s always there. It’ll always be there, as a part of this theory, which I believe in a whole lot. So, we talked a little bit about divorce, that conditional cup, the attention you need to pay to it in all relationships. What about siblings?
Harry Dudley: Siblings – I have three brothers, and again, we grew up in a family, a good family that we weren’t perfect – there aren’t any perfects, but we had a good family. I had a good mother and father, and as brothers we got along pretty well, except we were just like any other siblings. We could have our fights and disagreements and arguments.
Neil Dudley: Well, you have different personalities. That’s like life and humanity. We all have such diverse viewpoints, I mean, personalities. You can say a thing that means something to you and your different personality brother, sister, whatever, just hears it completely different. It affects them completely different. And that starts to be a huge rub if you don’t spend a little time forgiving, forgetting, allowing for some grace, realizing they’ve had to give that to you too. So real quick, I want to circle back before we forget and get too far away from the divorce part. For not having lived through it or anything, I think part of the theory that’s really important that I hope people that have lived through it, that may have struggled through it, probably most likely certainly did, give yourself some time to think about the truth that might be your parents had that unconditional couple love for you, even though they couldn’t keep it together and ended up divorcing and that tore you apart. It was tearing them apart the same way. And that unconditional cup of love was always there.
Harry Dudley: Well, that’s an important part of this theory, I guess, is that young kids, and I don’t know that maybe you can get into adulthood and not understand it either, but when you’re young and your parents are not getting along and that conditional cup ends up going dry or getting broken and a divorce occurs, children really struggle with that because they have this unconditional, although they don’t have it separated in their mind at this point, they’ve got the unconditional love for that mother and for that father. And so, when the mother and father split, they don’t understand how could that be? How can they split and go away?
Neil Dudley: Don’t they love each other the same way I love them?
Harry Dudley: Yeah, and the first thing they think is it must be me, I guess it’s me. I’m the problem. And then that’s the saddest part of it, as they start thinking, well I’m the problem, I must be the problem. And they’re not. They’re really the glue that holds them. It’s just that they don’t as parents understand, especially if it’s a horrible divorce and they don’t have any kind of- they start fighting over kids. Well, when they’re fighting over kids, those kids are convinced for sure then that they’re the problem. And that’s just really sad. I mean, it’s sad to me.
Neil Dudley: It’s sad on every front cause I would venture to say the adults and the parents that are going through the divorce, they’re as torn up as they can be too. The whole thing is just really tough, sad. Nobody’s to blame, nobody’s you know, the only thing that this conversation I hope does for somebody, one body, or even just us, even my daughters someday listening to it, is just somehow do everything you can to slow down a little bit and realize you’ve got the unconditional cup with your parents and your kids. And you’ve got the conditional cup that you bothered building and starting out. There’s a lot there you don’t want to just throw away.
Harry Dudley: Well, then there’s something that I’ve thought about it. If parents could understand this theory, right or wrong, whether it’s true or not, at least kind of get the concept that we’re talking about today, that if a husband and a wife just cannot live together anymore, just the relationship is totally broken, and you have children in that relationship, then understand that unconditional love between that wife and those children, that she loves them as much as I love them. Rhonda loves y’all as much as I love you. But if Rhonda and I couldn’t stay married, I wouldn’t want to destroy that. Because I love you too much to destroy that. So, I wouldn’t want to, as mad as I might be at Rhonda, I wouldn’t want to destroy that because I know how essential that is. And so, then that would make it easier to at least have a conciliatory type separation and not trying to put the kids in the middle of it.
Neil Dudley: Well, it’s so dynamic, so hard to know if you’re not in it, but I think it’s a solid thought process to consider.
Harry Dudley: I haven’t been there, so-
Neil Dudley: Back to the siblings now, you had three brothers and y’all got along kind of sort of, and certainly had different personalities. What about, they share blood with you in a way, what’s the cup of love that is set up for siblings in your mind?
Harry Dudley: In my mind, it’s not the same. It’s on a scale, I don’t know how to explain it other than there’s a scale, and there’s a line on that scale where above it is the unconditional love that parents and children enjoy, God given in my opinion, because of the unconditional love God gives us. I think you go above that line, that’s about all that gets up there. Now you can come below that line, and it might not be far below it, but it’s going to be below it, where siblings love each other and where parents love grandchildren. And I mean, this is a really fine line we’re talking about.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. I mean, it’s okay to me for it to be a really fine line. It tries to illustrate in my mind a little bit what God’s love is. There’s certain things that only a couple of ways you can really experience it on the earth. And that’s with a parent and a child kind of affection and love, and just this thing you can’t take away. I mean, my kids could just mess up, I don’t even know, just picture it, whatever the worst mess up you could possibly think of, and I wouldn’t, there’s no way you can make me stop loving them. You see it in parents all the time, enabling addiction, all these things, because you don’t know how to deal with the love you have for them. You just want to fix it all. And it makes it really tough. I think that was interesting to think about grandkids and I haven’t been there. I don’t have grandkids. You kind of have to talk about that one all on your own, because like I said, I didn’t know what having kids would be like until I had it. And now you’ve been there, you’ve got grandkids, and you can speak to it a little bit or a lot more than I can.
Harry Dudley: Well, grandkids, and Rhonda can chime in on this, we love the granddaughters and there’s no question and they’re on my mind very often. But if I have to sit down and I have to really tell you that there’s a line there that they don’t quite cross over into, then I have to be honest about it and say, they just don’t do it. It just doesn’t happen. And that’s not to say that it’s not right up against that line. I mean, maybe it’s bumping it, maybe it’s right there at that line. But I think God wanted that to be such a unique, rare that it didn’t get confused with everything else. That it was so special and so rare, and the only way we were going to be as people on earth able to understand the spiritual love that we read about in the Bible and with God, this unconditional love that David was talking about with God when he said my cup overflows, the only way we’re going to be able to understand that is to have this rare, special, hard to understand relationship that we have between parents and children. Outside of that, I can’t get it in my head.
Neil Dudley: Well, I enjoy thinking about it. It gives me things to think about in my life and how I live with my wife and my kids, and really people I interact with on a daily basis. How am I going to consider our relationship? I have a tendency to say I love you a lot. And Stacy’s even challenged me on that a time or two, like man, you just say it all the time, does it start losing some of its value? What do you think about that?
Harry Dudley: Well, I agree to the point that we use it for like I love that steak dinner. I loved that movie. I love whatever. And I use that word, and I use it cavalier, I guess you would say, but then when I really want to talk about something, how important and unique this word is, then you have to really define it more clearly. So, the idea is difficult to understand unless you can get your mind- It is kind of like looking in a 3D picture, until that picture comes clear, you think none of this makes a lick of sense. It doesn’t look like that. So, it has to clear for you. And the fact that God’s allowed it to clear for me is a blessing. And I believe a blessing for me and hopefully for my family.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, well, I can say it is for me, and just the simple regard that it makes me think about things. I hope if you’re listening, and you have issue with any of this, just think about it, like the idea that any of this kind of deep thought stuff is just going to be like a snap like oh yeah, that’s just perfect, I get it a hundred percent, all that makes great sense. I mean, you spent years putting this together in your mind and living through some crazy stuff. I’ve had a lot of years having it displayed and told to me, so that’s to my advantage and helped me develop my agreeance on what it means and how it can be used in my life. So, I challenge anybody that is listening to don’t just take it immediately and say, oh yeah, Harry’s a genius, he knows everything about everything, he must be right next to God. I don’t know that that’s true. I think it’s think about, give it a second to like could that be true? Could that be real? Can I spend a little time asking myself if I don’t believe that why? Could I believe it? Take a minute and just let some of that, those thoughts play out in your head.
Rhonda Dudley: Can I say something?
Neil Dudley: No.
Rhonda Dudley: I was sitting here, thinking about as parents, we need to teach our kids also to love themselves. If they can’t love themselves, they can’t love other people.
Neil Dudley: Well, how do you do that? I agree with that a hundred percent and I worry a lot of times I’m not doing that. Do you have- I think you taught me, but so what was the trick to that?
Rhonda Dudley: I think example.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, example. I think that’s right. Y’all showed me a great example of two adult humans that loved each other and treated each other with respect and fairness. I got to see it in my grandparents. I’ve had just that lucky life where I got a lot of good examples in that regard. So, I agree. I think Stacy and I work hard. I do say to my girls a lot believe in yourself. You’re awesome. Self-confidence is the most important thing. Be confident, you’re going to deal with mean people in life. You got to be proud of who you are. I think I can say that to them till I’m blue in the face and it’s not doing any good.
Rhonda Dudley: They will remember.
Neil Dudley: That’s right. At the right times, they probably will fill, be able to grab that little string of hope they remember from me, maybe, that’s what I hope anyway.
Harry Dudley: There are several examples and I could bring up a dozen of them. And I have realized that the people who were usually mad and who just seemed to always have a chip on their shoulder about something. I started to try to figure out why having that kind of attitude. And I realized that even if they were mad at me, it wasn’t something I’d done. They’re just upset. They don’t forgive their self. And if a person can’t love their self and forgive their self, we all make mistakes. We all do things that we wish we hadn’t done or spoke words we wish we hadn’t spoken. We’ve got to be able to forgive and overlook that in our own life, or we sure can’t hand it to anybody else. If we don’t have that ability to forgive and love ourself, then we’ll never learn to forgive and love others. And that’s, you got to have that.
Neil Dudley: And you just go out there in the world today, listen to the people that are out, self-help, preaching the self-help, or even sermons and that kind of thing, you’ll find a lot of them saying you can’t do a thing in life until you get yourself right and you’re happy with who you are, you’re willing to accept your flaws. Somebody, one guy, I think his name’s Bradley – I’m listening to too many podcasts and reading so many books these days because I’m just loving it – anyways, he said a thing like in his mind, we all have a superpower, and you just need to kind of be okay with it. Nobody has every superpower. And when you get okay with that, hey, I’m not perfect, I’ve hurt people, people have hurt me. Let’s forgive them, thank them for forgiving you, forgive yourself, there’s a lot of happiness to be found. And what I think I know about you and mom is in your heart of hearts, you just really would love everybody to have some happiness in life. Don’t live in this unhappy thing. I mean, it could just be gone in an instant, and what have you really accomplished with all that unhappiness? It’s easy to say. It’s a lot harder probably to actually do when you find yourself in depression, dealing with the mental things, abuse, all these things that happen to people that I fortunately didn’t have to live through. So, I hope that’s valuable to somebody. Okay, I tell this story occasionally. We were at the feed store, we’re talking about bereavement pay or something, how are we going to deal with compensating employees when they have a death in the family, a parent or a spouse? I can remember this really vividly. I said, well, we got to give them a lot of time if their spouse dies and compensate them well. And mom and Vickie were in there, and Vickie is Stacy’s mom, so they know us pretty intimately. And they both gave me a kind of a sideways look and said, “Oh, you don’t know what you’re talking about. When a parent dies, that’s when the people need the time and the opportunity to work through that.” Tell me what you think and how that, a death of a parent or something might play into your theory.
Harry Dudley: Well, and I didn’t understand it when it happened to me. My dad died in 1998 and my mom in 2002. I started having my health issues in 2003. And my depression came along in like late 2003 and 2004. In time to reflect back on it, I realized, hey, there was that connection, that unconditional love between me and my mom and dad. And now my mom and dad are gone. They died. And that probably took more out of me than I recognized, and that could have had some influence and contributed in some way to my depression, that I had lost the two people who I had unconditional love for as my parents were no longer in my life. They had gone on to heaven I believe. And so, that was a pretty good shock. I just didn’t, I never gave it the value that I think it should have had. And I’m not saying that that’s what took me there, but it certainly was probably a part of it. I feel like it probably had something to do with it.
Neil Dudley: I think a lot of stuff happens to us in life that maybe more so men try to say, ah, no big deal, whatever, it’s not affecting me. I mean, I’ve been there, and I’m so ignorant, it is, and I still don’t know it. It’s very possible that losing them, that connection, I think could have affected your health. I mean, it’s just like you said, you would go and sit at the grave site and talk to them and that would provide you something. I mean, there’s such a connection there. You just can’t deny it. I mean, you can deny it, but I don’t know that it’s worth even trying. It’d be really nice to just say, okay, I’m going to go ahead and let that be possible.
Harry Dudley: Well, I think about that, and I think about the parents who lose a child before they pass and how just horrendously, devastating that must be.
Neil Dudley: Well, yeah, you are probably living the rest of your life with a missing part. I would hope that there’s a way to get almost back to- maybe there’s a certain happiness quotient, let’s say. You could have a happiness quotient of some level. Now you’ve had kids and now one’s passed away. I think that quotient now can never get as high as it was at that one time.
Harry Dudley: You can’t get back there now. You just do the best. I mean, I know people who have lost children, and until I kind of put this theory together, I didn’t understand the value of the grief and the devastation; I mean, I knew it had to be devastating, but I think now I can kind of portion what that is. And your example’s good, that part where you were, you’re not going to get back to that anymore. And I going to get back to that level again.
Neil Dudley: You got to forgive yourself for that, forgive life for that. I mean, there’s a lot, a lot, a lot of great mountains to climb and things to get through and work through, and it takes years. I mean, you spent – how many years would you say you were kind of in this turmoil of health problems and depression, knee surgeries? You spent a pretty decent little time there.
Harry Dudley: Yeah. I’m going to say my biggest storm period lasted from probably 2003 to around 2008 or 2009. So yeah, 5 or 6 years it was pretty stormy.
Neil Dudley: And you start out thinking, oh, I got to make it five or six years, that’s a huge thing. It’s you have to bite it off a day or a minute or an hour at a time.
Harry Dudley: I’ll tell you right now, you bite off a minute at a time. When you’re in the storm, when you’re really in the storm, it’s a minute at a time.
Neil Dudley: Now you took care of five years of minutes. And now what would you say, how do you feel about things today?
Harry Dudley: I feel like life is really good for me right now. I’m enjoying life a lot. And I think even when I was in that storm, and I was reading books, I did more reading than I’d ever done. I’d read about people who came through storms because I wanted to see how’d they get through it and who’ve met challenges that were just unbelievable challenges. And in nearly every case, the idea was if you’re going to climb Mount Everest, it’s going to be a step at a time. If you’re going to go and walk a thousand miles, it’s going to be a step at a time. Just get ready. This is going to be a minute at a time. And then maybe after while, it’d be an hour at the time. And then maybe after a while, it’d be a day at a time. And like, I finally got there to where, hey, the storm’s passed.
Neil Dudley: Well, that was fun. I enjoyed talking with you. I love you. It’s a good experience for me every time to explore a little bit of deeper thinking. You get into life, running a business, running kids here, there, yonder, taking the wife on a date, all those things, and you get so tired. I think it’s very valuable to spend a little bit of time alone thinking for a minute or two about Harry’s cup of love theory and what pieces of that do I want to believe? What pieces do I take issue with? Take what you can and use it the best you can and discard it all if you don’t- I mean, it works really good for me and I’m glad to have it. And I know many people you’ve shared this with over the years, it provided value to them. So, I wanted to get you on the podcast. We’ll put it out on the airwaves, and let God do his work with it.
Well, I hope some of that hits home for you. Put it in your pocket, carry it around with you a little bit, think about it. Let the cup of love theory be something for you or nothing for you. All in all, I enjoyed the conversation. It’s a blessing to me. My parents are a blessing to me. Everybody in my family, my wife, my daughters, my in-laws, they’re blessings to me. I love the experience of this world and this life I get to have with them. And my savior Jesus Christ is something I want to share with everybody. So, I hope you enjoyed this. I always say ride in the truck or mope around the pasture. Well, this time, let’s just say sitting in the rocking chair. And we’ll see you next time – we don’t ever see you next time. We always talk to you next time. I got to quit saying see you. Thanks for listening.
The Cowboy Perspective is produced by Neil Dudley and Straight Up Podcasts. Graphics are done by Root and Roam Creative Studio. And the music is by Byron Hill Music.