We recently had the chance to connect with Ender Bowen and have shared our conversation below.
Good morning Ender, we’re so happy to have you here with us and we’d love to explore your story and how you think about life and legacy and so much more. So let’s start with a question we often ask: What do you think others are secretly struggling with—but never say?
This is something that’s very important to me. My whole platform – everything I do – revolves around this idea of Compassion. I always say it’s impossible to have absolutely nothing in common with another human being. This is because while the specifics might be different, we’re each trying to survive; we’re each struggling with something (or many things); and we’re each trying to do the best we can, or do what we think is right. Those things don’t all look the same on the surface, but the whole idea of Compassion is to do the work to get beneath that surface.
I think today, everyone is struggling to make sense of the world we’re currently living in.
From a broader context, powerful forces are purposefully confusing us to either gain, hold onto, or expand their powers. Those forces are constantly playing at our emotions, taking advantage of our confirmation biases, turning us against each other and doing terrible damage to our mental health. We don’t always know what the right thing is, or which end is up. We’re confused about who we can trust. We lose sleep over what tomorrow is going to bring. We don’t know if the world is going to be here tomorrow. We don’t know what that means for our kids, or further generations. The “right thing” tends to become very confusing.
And all of this, by the way, doesn’t even take into account all the additional things that we have to deal with. This bill; that fee; girl scout signups; athletic equipment for the kids; spammers and phishers; someone lost a tooth; my car needs an oil change; which streaming platform is this show on again…?
It’s a lot. Everyone and everything is trying to hassle you and take something from you. You’re lucky if you even get to keep a piece of yourself.
And we’re all afraid to talk about it. We’re afraid if someone knew our inner thought processes we’d be demonized by the ones we love or the ones we look up to. We’re afraid if we talk about that school fee or that oil change or that electric bill we’ll be seen as concerning ourselves with things too trivial to be of any real import and “how dare we”?
The thing is, all of our struggles are different. Yours may be easy for me. Mine might be a cakewalk for you. We all come from different places, with different experiences and different traumas that we have to overcome. (What a fascinating story that makes each of us!!!) And if we aren’t there for each other, at the very least to non-judgmentally sit shoulder to shoulder and hold each others’ hands without saying a word… we’re going to struggle SO MUCH MORE.
We need to drop judgements, just be there, and really listen to each other. Be Compassionately curious. Love each other like God Loves us. Delight in what makes us different, or weird, and find Joy in the mysteries of why one person’s struggle is another person’s vacation. There’s beauty to be had here. We just need to refocus on what’s important.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Ender Bowen. I’m a Nashville rock/pop artist, author, podcaster, husband, father, professional goofball, and an Aspiring Compassionist.
My mantras are “Be honest with yourself, be truthful with others, give people the opportunity to surprise you,” and “it’s impossible to have absolutely nothing in common with another human being.”
My mission is to ultimately create a more Compassionate world that frees us from the confirmation biases that allow people to have power over and control us. I want people to see each other for the complex, fascinating individuals they are – not labels, not tribes, not enemies, but real people with real struggles.
Much of my foundation is based upon my faith and my spiritual journey, which rests upon the idea that we must love our neighbors as ourselves. Pretty much everything I do is built upon that idea. I express these concepts through music, my various podcasts, articles, books and platforms (including God Jots, Kind of You, The Joy Commission and others).
At the end of the day it’s about acknowledging that in so many ways we’re not so different, and that we want a lot of the same things. It’s about doing the work to know and love each other, and in so doing truly understand what it means to “compromise” – to want for that other person as much as you want for yourself. That’s how I envision a better world for everyone.
Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
I woke up on the morning of September 11, 2001 to a phone call from my mother. I was a senior in college and had been sleeping in because I didn’t have classes until well after 10AM. She told me to turn on the TV. What I saw fundamentally changed me.
Before 9/11, I believed peace was easy and people just needed to be reasonable and work things out. As if hate, war and division were just these silly misunderstandings (“Hey dude you stepped on my toe! It’s WAR!”) All we’d have to do is say “hey, mate, can we talk about this a sec?” But when I saw the towers collapse and eventually viewed the videos of planes crashing into buildings I realized that, at the very least, the world is a lot more complicated than that. Talking is nice, saying you want world peace is great, but I suppose as a wannabe rock star that wanted to change the world, this was the first big smack in the face that I took. One person can’t do all that. And no matter how reasonable you are, you can’t reason with unreasonable people.
To be clear, it wasn’t that I suddenly felt it was impossible. I think perhaps that’s when, at least from my view of the world at large, I lost my innocence.
In the years since, though I was already curious about God, I explored that side of me further. I started to build a relationship with Him, and through it, I came to understand the true nature of Compassion. And what “peace” and “Love” really mean. Yes, there will always be unreasonable people. And no, you may never truly have peace with them. But that doesn’t mean you can’t Love them. And, in particular, it doesn’t mean you can’t KNOW them – know WHY they make these decisions that seem to forego any sense of reason. We all get where we are because of something – because of MANY things. A lot of that is out of our control. A lot of it isn’t. What makes us who we are? What causes us to make the decisions we make? Why do we come to the conclusions we do?
I don’t know as there’s such a thing, truly, as “world peace”, insofar as the idealized thing we have always imagined it to be. But I do think there’s such a thing as compromise. No, I don’t mean compromising your ideals or compromising yourself or your beliefs. To me, compromise means, “come to promise”. And to really mean it, to really get there, you need to truly know that other person. Know them to the point that you Love them. Love them to the point that you want for them as badly as you want for yourself, even when it seems those wants are counter to your own. THAT is how you come to the table wanting to do the best deal for all involved. It’s not just about “what can I get out of this” anymore – it’s about “what can I give you”?
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
When I first moved to Nashville in 2006 I thought I was “God’s gift to music”. Like I was going to be some big rock star or something. Up to this point I’d done three albums and an EP on my own, between 2001 and 2005. So I had a track record. Within a few months of being in Nashville I’d signed an independent recording contract, which really only served to convince me that I was right – I was a rock star in the making. But before the ink had even dried on my contract, it was like the label forgot all about me. We didn’t record anything, and I basically just sat on the shelf doing nothing. The complete opposite of what I expected. After roughly two years in this weird sort of music purgatory, I asked for my release, and got it. It didn’t feel good. I didn’t really know what I was going to do. I felt like I really wasn’t that big of a deal – like almost the opposite of what I had believed up to that point. I basically felt worthless. To top it off, I had also signed away the publishing rights to my best music, so now if I wanted to record these songs I’d have to pay royalties (some of which would trickle to me anyway… but it was paperwork I wasn’t happy about). And of course if I wanted to sync the music with anything, like one of my own videos, I’d have to get permission. It all just really served to kill any dream I had of doing music at all. So while I DID challenge myself to say “hey, you made great songs before, if you’re as worthy as you thought you were you can make some more,” I didn’t pour everything in it like I had previously. I DID do a new album but it was done in pieces, and it was a lot darker, a lot less sure of itself. (That was 2014’s Middle Aegis). But most of the time during this period was spent in film and television, where I dabbled in just about everything from pre- and post-production, writing, crew work, acting… it was nuts.
In 2014 my daughter was born here in Nashville. And I remember seeing the birth certificate with “Nashville” on it and thinking… I came here for a reason. I’m still here. I have unfinished work to do. So that’s when I decided to start work on a new album (which became 2021’s “The Art of Tactful Procrastination” – some of the best work I’ve ever done). During that time, the label to which I’d signed my work over had folded, so I was very lucky in that my publishing rights reverted back to me. Through those years, probably because I’d been knocked down and humbled pretty hard (something I’ve never really gotten over but I’m still grateful for because Lord knows I needed it) I came to a clearer realization of what I was put here to do, and what my talents were supposed to be used for. Not pointless “rock stardom”, fame and celebrity, but something more humbling, honest and powerful. And that’s what I’m working every day to accomplish.
Alright, so if you are open to it, let’s explore some philosophical questions that touch on your values and worldview. What do you believe is true but cannot prove?
Oh boy… I’m going to get it from all sides on this one. Here goes…
I believe that God is real and absolutely exists.
The reason I believe this is not just because I have personally experienced Him (a much longer story I suppose), but because of the concept of “Good”.
We all, as human beings, inherently seem to have a basic sense of what’s “Good”. Like how we should treat people, how to conduct yourself, don’t steal, don’t murder etc. Some might refer to those as “morals”.
But where does that come from? It’s not a concept that exists in the Universe itself. Like, say, a universally understood law of Gravity (something observable and consistent time and time again – something that binds the very fabric of the universe). It’s not something that exists in nature – after all, animals murder and kill all the time. And we could say, “well… we’re civilized” but what law of the universe suggests that something “civilized” should behave a certain way?
If it’s not a law or a rule of nature as expressed above, then it can only be one of two things:
1. Made up by humans
2. Made up by something MORE than human (or outside of human influence)
If it’s something made up by humans, then it can be redefined at any time to mean whatever we want (like “moving goalposts”). It’s subjective. Even if you argue that “well morals and good and how to behave etc were taught to me by my mother and her mother before her and so on…” well… fine. But that still started somewhere. Ultimately, if it’s a concept created by humans based on essentially nothing (ie: WHY, really, is it good to treat others well?) than it’s so abstract as to be likened to a preference… like which tiles go best on the bathroom floor. If THAT is the case, then it’s absolutely absurd to be upset when someone does something you don’t like or that you think is wrong.
And we can’t really “measure” how good we are if we are also the thing defining what it means. C.S. Lewis says it better: “Unless the measuring rod is independent of the things measured, we can do no measuring.”
On the other hand, if it’s a concept created by something that’s more than human, or exists outside of human influence, then “Good” – even though we often miss the mark – is truly a measuring stick we can aspire to. Deep down, I think we all know what “Good” is, without ever having been told. Some people ignore it. Some people are trained (either through their own experiences or trauma) to avoid it. But almost every one of us knows when we’re doing something bad. It’s that voice in our head that says “no… probably shouldn’t do that”.
What purpose would there be for such a concept? I truly believe that’s inherent in the notion of how we’re supposed to treat each other – with Love and Compassion. And that’s how I make the leap from saying it’s just some “force” our “outside influence” to saying there’s an actual intelligence out there that insists on this idea of “Good” for a REASON. Much like all the laws of the universe exist for a purposeful reason. It’s not chaos or random or pointless. It’s intentional.
Which all sounds nice but I can’t prove it! 🙂
Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. What light inside you have you been dimming?
There was another question I could have answered which was, “What false labels are you still carrying?” And I think, for me, that question (or the answer to it) would go along well with this one. The light inside me that I’ve been dimming is very much because of the false label that I still carry around.
And that label is “I’m not good enough”.
I don’t know where it comes from or why it’s there but this is apparently the filter through which I see and experience everything. It’s not particularly unique – I think we all deal with this particular false label in varying degrees of potency. For me, it has at times been very painful, demoralizing and immobilizing. Other times it’s not so strong. But it’s something I’m constantly working through and struggling with. I think I’m handling it better as I go through life. Certainly acknowledging it in the first place has been illuminating.
But that false label has kept me from really shining that light. What is that light? I think it’s who I am and what I’m trying to do. And it’s about the confidence I have in knowing I can do it. I don’t always have that confidence. I have to constantly challenge myself to have it. And in doing so I’m trying to show others how to challenge themselves to have it too – to make the most of their lives. Or, in a different way, to make good on their purpose and potential.
I haven’t given up on mine and I feel as though I’m chipping away at what holds me back one little bit at a time. At the end of the day what I’m doing is about serving – my family, my community, the Lord.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://enderbowen.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/ender.bowen
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/enderbowen
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/enderbowen
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/enderbowen
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/enderbowen
- Other: Ender Bowen Store: https://enderbowenstore.com
Amazon Author Central: https://author.enderbowen.com
