I Feel Useless.....
What To Do When You Can't Do Anything [0:00:00]
Hey, guys.
I wanted to share with you some photos from my most recent trip to Ukraine this last summer.
I was over there for about six weeks with my family.
Many of you guys know since 2001, I’ve been over there like ten times.
I’m married to a Ukrainian.
My son was born in Ukraine.
I lived over there for a year and a half running a nonprofit.
And if we’re not going to Ukraine one year, we are bringing Ukraine to us.
My wife’s family, which is her sister and her sons and we’ve babushka over.
I mean, it’s just we are really close with the family over there.
In fact, there’s probably twenty families that we stay in touch with all the time.
And, this picture right here, I really want to zero in on.
As you can see, I’m having a great time with my girls in what’s known as Lviv Chocolate
Café.
And it’s really popular chain around there.
They have really great hot chocolate and just desserts and meals.
And I love taking my kids there.
So, you can imagine my surprise a few days ago when I see this video of a missile hitting
the building in which I have enjoyed so many great dates with my wife and my daughters
that is a mere few blocks from where my family, my wife grew up, and where I lived for a year
and a half.
Now, you can’t see this, but right here on the down part of the picture, there’s
a Novus, there’s this Pesto Café, there’s a great little hidden coffee shop right there
at the base of this building.
And to know that this building is possibly going to get demolished, luckily, nobody was
killed in this missile strike, but this is one of many thing -- and you guys know a lot
of these is going on in Ukraine right now.
Now, gents, for weeks, we’ve been telling her family get out of Ukraine, I want to buy
you guys tickets, please just come visit us for awhile, who knows what’s going to happen.
But, you know, they want to stay in there, they’ve got homes.
They got lives going on there.
No one expected this to happen.
And it is just so frustrating when I’m sitting here comfortable in Wisconsin.
I’ve got a house that has electricity that’s heated.
We’ve got plenty of food.
Let’s just say I am prepared for many situations.
But, it’s so frustrating when people that you love, people you care about, people you
just you spend time with that you stand -- I’ve known for twenty plus years are all of a sudden
put in a situation in which there’s very little I can do to help them.
Now, in today’s video, gents, I don’t have bulletproof tips and tricks that have
worked.
I’m just simply going to share what we’re doing as a family to actually, you know, maintain
a little bit of sanity during this frustrating time that we just, yeah, we need to feel like
we’re doing something, even if it’s incredibly small.
And if you’ve got something to add because I know many of you guys have gone through
some tough situations.
We got a global audience here, I would love to hear from you down in the comments what
you would suggest people do when they feel useless, when they feel like they’ve got
to do something and they’re just simply powerless to do really what they feel as much.
So, the first thing we’re doing and we didn’t even realize this was important that we were
doing this is we are educating people on the Ukrainian situations.
So many people out there they don’t know the difference between Ukraine, Russia, you
know, Belorussia, what is this thing?
So, every time we have a conversation, we’re trying to set the stage and give people a
bit of background information on what caused this conflict, why this is happening, who
the players are, and what the situation is.
This is something that I just take for granted because I’ve studied history because we’ve
been going to the countries because I’m married to, you know, Ukrainian.
Because this has been some conversation for years, but most people don’t have that background.
I realized most Americans don’t even care about this.
For them, it’s just another conflict in another land.
Now, Europeans, it’s a lot closer and you can see them having protest.
But, so many friends reached out – so, one of you guys have actually emailed me, sent
messages asking, “Antonio, I know your family is Ukrainian, is there anything I can do?
I hope they’re doing well.
“ We realized, hey, this is opening up the chance
for us to explain what is going on here, why it matters, and the details that go there.
So, all of a sudden, we found ourselves in this position of being educator.
It is a bit exhausting having that same conversation again and again.
That being said, I view it as necessary for someone to understand and really be able to
understand why this matters in context of the world and in context of democracy and
basically of people being able to choose their own destination, their own direction for their
country.
Now, dovetailing off that last point, everyone that’s reached out to us has asked, “Hey,
how can I help?
Where can I contribute?
What can I do to help the people in Ukraine?”
Well, right now it’s pretty fluid.
There are existing organizations like the Ukrainian Red Cross, there’s a few other
ones that I’ve seen passed around on Facebook.
I have to admit I have not done my due diligence here, so I’m not going to directly recommend
anything yet.
That being said, I am looking actually possibly to do a fundraiser.
I think of actually building out some unique Ukrainian challenge coins and charging a set
amount for them and then all money all proceeds I’d be really transparent.
That’s what I want to make sure.
The thing is if you’re going to donate, you wanted to be transparent.
You want to make sure a hundred percent of the money that you give goes to Ukrainians.
And talking to all of my friends and family over there, they’re talking about, you know,
you’ve got just a huge migration.
I mean, it’s a country of 40 million people.
And you’ve got them moving across the country the size of Texas and they’re all heading
towards one side.
[0:05:03] Many people want to stay in Ukraine, so they’re
over and they’re going to be refugees over in Lviv, but they’ve lost all their clothes.
They’ve left everything, you know, back in Kyiv.
You got other people there fleeing into Poland, going – and by the way, just love, you know,
all these countries that are just opening up their borders, no questions asked.
I talked to my, you know, one of my guys, Yuri, and he’s like, yeah, they got trains
that aren’t charging people, you know, welcoming the Ukrainians with no papers, which is like
unheard of for Ukrainians.
It is, you know, I think that what we’re seeing here is just so much goodwill.
Now, I will be following up with other videos.
If you guys want to reach out to me, maybe you got an organization that you know that
is worthy, you know, just you know that a hundred percent of what you donate goes to
them.
Now, what if you can’t donate money?
Well, there are still tons of thing that you can do.
I got friends right now today that are in Chicago protesting and basically, making their
voices heard.
I’ve got other people that, you know, they’re writing their congressmen, they’re writing
their senators.
Here in the United States, there’s I think about 6.4 billion that’s about to go in
front of congress.
The President already put this forth in which half of that is going to go to humanitarian
aid, the other half are going to be, you know, basically military aid for Ukraine so that
they better defend themselves.
And you write, you know, write these people and say, “Hey, I support this, I want you
to approve this.”
You may only be one voice, but, you know, that’s still that they know that somebody
out there wants to make this happen.
The next thing I’m doing to try to keep my wife from breaking down too many times
a day is I’m just listening to her.
Texting her multiple times a day, I’m calling her multiple times a day.
The other day, we had a planned play that her and my son will going to go to.
I made sure that she had time for that.
It did get her mind off the situation for a few hours being out there with our oldest
son.
He’s 17, he’s big into performances and plays, which I really do like the fact that
he’s gotten into musicales because he was a tough level athlete, but it’s cool to
see him have this other side.
Point being is I’m finding ways to distract her.
I’m trying to cook more meals.
I’m taking care of dishes.
I’ve asked our kids to step up and, hey, you know, your mom needs your help at this
point.
Usually, my wife does a lot of things.
But this is something I’m just asking everyone to contribute, so that we can, you know, it
just feels, you know, we all have pressure on us and it feels good to be able to maybe
take a little bit of pressure just off of, you know, off of, you know, their mom.
And speaking of pressure, I’m going to admit that I’ve had a lot on me lately and I haven’t
been doing as good of a job of going to the gym.
I am trying to get out for walks.
I’ll be going in, you know, going for a workout this afternoon.
It is something that I’m trying to eat a bit cleaner, getting plenty of rest.
I have a lot of my friends, very close friends that have just been calling me.
I’ve been talking with them.
Even though we can’t – we can’t resolve anything, having these conversations when
you’re going through situations like this, I think that being able to lay it out there
and just all, you know, commiserate together, at least it feels like you’re spreading
out the burden a bit.
And, you know, I feel bad that my friends are feeling bad about this.
This isn’t like I do this very often.
It’s been really nice to see so many friends just reach out and want to talk about this.
And, yeah, I feel like sometimes I’m consoling them because, you know, many of them have
been out to Ukraine.
I’ve actually brought out a number of my friend visited us to spend time.
They’ve been to these apartments, they know – I mean, that Novus that I talked about
earlier that was hit – right next to it was hit by a missile, my good buddy, Ryan
Masters, that’s where he almost ate every single meal when I brought him out to Ukraine
a few years ago.
They thought he was crazy there.
He’s going back for the whole chicken, couple of salads, and I mean, because he had to get
his protein.
Point being is, you know, when you’ve got people to talk with and, you know, staying
active and trying to maintain a regular routine.
I still am working on my company, we’re still going there.
That being said, if you haven’t been over to our websites on social media, you’re
going to see, you know, we are going to be very clear on who we’re supporting and what
we’re about, you know, but, that’s it, guys.
You know, again, if you’ve got something to add, I would love to hear from you down
in the comments below.
I know many of you guys have been through some tough situations and, you know, always
appreciate your good advice.
Now, normally, gents, at this point, I would tell you to go watch another video, but this
is going to be a little bit different.
I will let you know tomorrow morning, same time same place, I got a really special video
coming up.
Again, I’m dedicating this one to Ukraine and I’m going to be talking about leadership
in action.
If you haven’t watched the Ukrainian president, right now, we are getting a masterclass on
how to lead a country during war time.
And if you haven’t checked out the guy, Zelensky, amazing story and I’m just more
impressed in the last week with his actions.
And, yeah, the more you learn about the guy the more you realize, wow, this is an unexpected
leader.
But, in my opinion and all the Ukrainians I’ve spoken with he’s doing things right,
they are very proud of him, and it’s a really cool story which I will be getting into more
tomorrow.
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