E029 How To Live a Long Life.

Passionately Wrong Podcast Episode E029

Longevity

Key takeaway: Randy and James explore a wide range of factors that go into making up a long life, including how to live a good life. While traditional things like diet and exercise play a role, what seems even more important are finding meaning, fostering relationships, and being flexible enough to deal with the unexpected.

Topics covered in this video: 

• The stunning improvement in lifespan in the last 150 years
• Living long (quantity) vs. living content & fulfilled (quality)
• Women live longer than men, chances of living alone for years
• Importance of relationships
• Our grandparents never exercised and paid no attention to their diet
• What will distinguish the quality of the last 20% of your life?
• What gives your life meaning and purpose? What will endure?
• How do we respond when the unexpected happens (and it will)?
• Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so

Transcript

James: 0:00

I don't think most philosophies conclude that external factors are the things that really make a difference in the long run. Whether you're wealthy or poor, you're gonna end up just as dead, in a number of years. the impact that you had on people around you though is something that might last long after you're gone. Greetings, friends. I'm James.

Randy: 0:21

And I'm Randy. You're listening to The Passionately Wrong podcast where we challenge your assumptions, offer some different perspectives, and hopefully help you make better decisions.

James: 0:32

Hello everybody and welcome to today's show. This is James Beller Show and Randy Circles in the Passionately Wrong podcast. Today we wanted to talk to you about longevity. What is a long life? Should you want a long life? And what are the pros and cons of, living longer? Lifespan has extended radically in the last 120 years. It used to be for most of humanity, we had a lifespan of under 40 years. The average lifespan was just 37 years, up through about, 18 50, 18 80, and then over the course of the 20th century, we expand. Human's lifespan on average by almost three times. It's up to about 70 years, and in developed countries, it's up into the eighties for some countries. So there's two things to, think about from that perspective. One, we already are living quite a bit longer than most people lived on average throughout most of humanity. And we seem to be extending humanity's lifespan, by pretty significant amounts. If you look at the, expected longevity at birth today of. 70 to 80 across a number of countries. People do still live as much as 50% longer than that. I think the longest lived person was a woman in France. She's still the record holder. Randy, living almost 120 years.

Randy: 2:00

I think so you have, I think in my notes here, I have 118.

James: 2:04

Okay. So anyway, that's amazing, right? the number of centenarians people who live to a hundred has been growing quite a lot. That's probably the demographic I've been reading about most because it is an interesting phenomenon. We didn't used to have so many of them. They were extremely rare. And now in countries like, Japan and Switzerland, even the US there are millions of people who have lived to the age of a hundred and alright, Let me start with a simple question. How do you feel about it, Randy? Would you like to live to be a certain age? Do you have a number in mind or are you focused on different things when it comes to this question of longevity?

Randy: 2:43

I really believe that I am a Highlander and I just haven't been awoken yet, so I don't plan on dying.

James: 2:52

So does that mean I have to stab you a few times to establish

Randy: 2:54

no. Don't lose your head. Don't lose your head. That part I recall So I don't have a problem living a long time. obviously I want to be able to, have a purpose and I think we're gonna talk about that later. I know my grandmother, my, my dad's mother, she lived to be 90. But she was not happy for probably the last eight years at least. I remember going to her 90th birthday, and she seemed. Happy then. But soon after that she lost the ability to read, cuz of her cataracts. And she couldn't see and she refused to listen to, like books on tape. She didn't see that as the same experience. And she was a librarian. so she loved to read and she read so many books in her life and she gave so many good recommendations for me when I was growing up, when I was young. And so that was a big problem for her to enjoy. Since she loved to read so much. and yeah, I know she wasn't very happy in the last years of her life, the last probably five years especially. and the last couple times I saw her, she could, she rarely she did, barely talked and she seemed happy to see me. But that's pretty much as far as it went. So I guess I don't think that, Very fun. And, I would try to avoid that if possible, whether that's, I think we're gonna talk about, living with health and living, living with some kind of minimal financial freedom where you're not just stuck in your house eating ramen until you die, but I do plan on living, so I did see An article about the, they have Centurion races, so the fastest centurion is this Chinese woman and. She won the a hundred meter centurion dash in two minutes or something. And, and I'm, so my goal is to beat her, to beat this little five foot tall Chinese 100 year old woman and become the fastest centurion. I don't know, maybe I'll die after that, but as long as I can become the first, the fastest centurion, that's my goal right now.

James: 5:05

So I also had some long lived relatives, and it's interesting watching. I had a grandmother on my mom's side who lived to just about 98, and her sister lived to be 96, I wanna say something like that, and an aunt on my father's side who lived to be 96. by the way, women have a lifespan that is on average, seven, 8% longer than men, which doesn't sound like much, but it adds up to five or six years on average. And so it is not exclusively, but it's often women that you see living, an extended period after their partner dies if they're in a relationship. or in general. women, often live longer. it's a separate topic, but, for the women listening to us, the chances that you will live a long life and live part of your life alone are much higher than those of men. something to take into account or to think about at least when you are. Looking ahead to what sort of life you think you're gonna have and what sort of life you think you want to have. And that also ties to what the researchers believe. One of the factors contributing to, not just longevity, but a successful life or a happy life, will come back to what that means, and that is relationships, relationships. With people who care for you and that you like to spend time with, is one of the factors that seems to contribute to people wanting to live longer and so therefore living longer. I think some people die because they just give up and they're no longer, they feel like they've done what they wanna do and they don't wanna do it anymore. And so perhaps the reason people live longer when they have a rich network of relationships is that they enjoy spending time with people and talking with people. My grandmother coming back to that for a moment, and her sister could not have been more different. They lived completely different lives. They lived across the street from one another for almost their entire lives, but were bitter enemies. the one was, Thin an aesthetic, an aesthetic. She didn't eat hardly anything at all. And I used to think it was the restricted calorie diet that contributed to her longevity. But then if you look at her sister, she ate cake for breakfast. She was big, fat lady. hardly ever did anything. And she lived almost as long. So I don't know. But also in terms of their attitude towards life, which is what I'd like to maybe focus for a minute on, they also differed greatly. The one, who lived to be 98 ha. Her husband was killed in World War ii and she was bitter about that. And she remained single and bitter her entire lifelong. And she referred to being bitter and angry. At different points. we would go to her birthday every five years. she lived in Germany and we were far away, so we would visit her, periodically and usually for one of those five year birthdays. And they were always circuses, stressful. And she was grouchy. And I was like, my God, what is the point of, How can you go through 80 years of your life being, angry and bitter like that because of something that happened? it was tragic. Yes, she was left as a single mom with one kid and pregnant with the other when her husband was killed. And, what do you do with your life? is a separate question. You've got setbacks. The other was happy, right? She found pleasure in little things, like a piece of cake for breakfast in the morning. she used to spend hours just sitting in her windowsill, looking out at what was going on in the neighborhood, just watching people walk by, watching people get gas at the gas station. And I, it, to me, as a kid, it was immensely boring, just sitting around doing nothing talk and looking out the window. But she enjoyed that and that was made her life fulfilling. And so what I'll end with and then turn it back over to you to get your thoughts is. the stoics also focused on the quality of your life, not the length of your life. Were you satisfied, happy, fulfilled? Could you say you were living a good life, in which case, Seneca, for example, said better? single day. A single day lived in, in, in happiness and satisfaction than a hundred years living like my grandmother, unhappy and miserable about the way that fate had dealt with her. Any thought?

Randy: 9:05

Yeah, so my, the, my two grandmothers from my mom and dad's side were very different as well. So it's really interesting to see what helps people live longer, and doesn't seem like happiness is a requirement. my, mom's mom was, not very educat. She, spent, my parents were gracious enough to let her live with them for the last 20 years of her life. Just about, both of my grandmothers outlived my grandfathers by a lot, by sometimes thir 35 years or something like that. And they never, thought about dating any or anything like that. and when they, I think they, my grandparents, my, both my grandfathers died in their, I wanna say their fifties, maybe si early sixties. And from cancer, both of'em a different kind of cancer. so my mom's mom lived with them and she seemed very happy. she was a card shark. she was like, Crazy good at cards like you think. It was all luck, but it's impossible to have been all luck as much as she won she wasn't much of a reader. She watched television and she, loved to be with her grandkids and everything like that. And my other grandmother was independently wealthy after her husband died. And, Ended up when she couldn't live on her, when she decided it was difficult to live on her own. She moved into a retirement home and lived by herself in the apartment in a retired home where she, that's when she ended up passing. And, she got visits from her children and grandchildren occasionally, but not regularly like that. I wouldn't even say, I think. Dad went every week, but everyone else would visit once a month. Maybe I visited once a year when I was in the country. yeah, I don't, I don't know. I couldn't, I couldn't, tell you, what the salute, what the answer is to longevity. I do think, I don't wanna live, I don't wanna be a grump. I am gonna focus on not being a grmp when I get that old

James: 11:09

I suspect you will have some. Ideas, some theories about what it is that contributes to your own chances of living a long life, whether it's articulated something you've ever said out loud or written down. Do you have some ideas? If I were to say, Randy, what are the top five factors or some of the factors that you think are gonna contribute to you living a long life? you tell me what yours are and I'll tell you what mine are.

Randy: 11:34

it's funny. before we started talking, I would've said you. Diet, exercise. But my, neither of my grandmothers exercised a day of their life. my, my dad's mom, she did take up walking like a mile every morning for a while, while until she moved into the retirement home. But my mom's mom didn't, I don't think, besides living, The hard life of the, forties, fifties, sixties, besides doing that and raising four kids, other than that, which is probably pretty difficult, especially when she was, when their, her kids were growing up. the, I, they didn't ever go to a gym they didn't have any exercise equipment in their house. And like I go to the gym every day, I try to walk four, three or 30 or 40 minutes a day outside, or row or something like that. And I, because I've been, it's, has been hammered into me that I need to exercise and. I do recognize that if I get, if I don't do something for a couple weeks, like after I retired, I was like, I'm retired finally. And I got a little lazy, but I recognize that I feel better when I exercise. I feel like I've accomplished something and I also feel like if I don't, then I'll eventually waste away. Like I can still do the same physical standards. Know, I'm six years outta the army now, almost five years, and I could still do the same physical standards I did when I got outta the Army. And when I got outta the army, I would, I could still do the same physical standards. I did five, maybe not 10 years bef previously, but at least five years previously. I could still like, I could still max the PTT test, the physical fitness test, the military physical fitness test for my age group when I got outta the military. And I can do that right now. I don't know. I think, diet and in, in my mind still maybe I've been brainwashed diet, some kind of, weight lifting is what I've been, my research says just to, you know, maintain your bones is what I've read. stretching seems to be really important. And so I don't do that as much as I should, but I hire someone to force me to stretch at my gym. so that, cuz I know I, that's my weakest, one of my weakest of those three. and, I also think that I've read so much about the social aspect of it, right? Of maintaining a core friend group and families and stuff like that. And I haven't had much of that in my. To tell you the truth. I feel like I have that with my partner now with my wife. we've been together almost five years now and I think this is the best relationship I've ever had in my life. but but I don't have a lot of other close friends. Until three years ago, you weren't my close friend, but I, you're getting closer. You're getting into my top 10 group just because of all the time we spend together and what we know about each other, which is weird because I've known people in the military for 20 years and I just don't consider him my close friend. I don't know anything about him. I don't know anything about their personal life. We served in combat, we worked together, and then we went our own ways. And I try to reach out to those guys, but they got their own lives and their own things that they're doing, and they don't seem as interested as me as I do in keeping touch. So we don't, and so I haven't found that right person to spend a lot of time with. So there you go. That's my 5 cents for.

James: 15:03

All right. That's a good list. Thanks, Randy, and I appreciate that. And also for people listening, it's probably clear that you and I don't have a formula that we can say, do this, don't do this. And that's not what we're suggesting. What we're suggesting is that it's useful to think about this topic and to maybe explore some of your more or less articulated assumptions. I think what you described in terms of things like exercise and diet, weightlifting, stretching, Come back to, in a way, what the stoics would tell us is to focus on not just the quantity of life, but also the quality of life. Sure, you might extend your life by, doing some of those things, but what you're probably doing more than anything else is enhancing your chances of having the. Sunset years, if I can call it that, the period in which you're of an advanced age be of a higher quality by virtue of having taken those steps. And I remember, Talking to, some Swiss doctors at one time for a management meeting. We held about, how to manage a busy, career and also your health. And they said, look, me, medical science is at the point where we can keep people alive and, whether they've paid attention to things like their health and their diet or not, we can keep you alive for a pretty good period of time. That's not what distinguishes the last 10 or 15 years of your life. It is actually whether you are able to take care of yourself, whether you can live independently, whether you're mobile, whether you can walk around, for example. Those are the kinds of things that make a big difference in the quality of life between people who've been paying attention to the factors that you discussed a moment ago. So whether you eaten, whether you're active, my, grandparents and of their generation, even my parents, to a certain extent that this idea of exercise and diet the way we do it totally different, right? Totally different. but I would say when you don't look at it in terms of exercise, but rather active lifestyle. Yeah, for sure. They had a much more active lifestyle in terms of what they had to do, working on farms, just a very different lifestyle. So I consider our grandparents to have been active, even if they didn't do fitness in the way that we do. I also think that when you look at diet, not in the sense of we're crazy about the composition of what we're eating, this much carbohydrates, this much protein, and say it's a question of were you overweight or not? Our grandparents' generation was much less likely to be overweight than our generation. So those things at first seem like inconsistencies, but when you dig in a little bit, I say a actually they were doing healthy things by staying active and by not getting fat. Weightlifting, stretching. Okay. Maybe less

Randy: 17:40

my, and they're, just going off on one little tangent, it seems like our grandparents were just tough. they had a tough life, and they could, they would, they'd suck it up before they'd complain. My, depression

James: 17:53

era and war era, people who had to live through really tough times. I agree. They had, toughness that, you don't see often.

Randy: 17:59

my, my mom's grandmother, she died at 94, I think, so she was still traveling on airplanes. She went to visit one of her, my, my mom's brother, and she stayed there for a week. I guess she had. A stroke, but no one knew it. She recovered from it and she walked downstairs with her luggage to get on the plane. This the day she was leaving and she was quiet, but she didn't seem to be disabled at all. And they put her on a plane. She got on a plane, she flew home. my uncle called my mom and was like, she's kind of quiet. So they my parents picked her up. She still. Couldn't talk and so she didn't say anything. They're like, Hey, how's everything? Which is weird. So they thought something was going on. It was weird. But she didn't write anything. She didn't say anything. They get went home. I think she just accepted that this was gonna happen sometime, and it happened and she didn't want to. Go to the hospital probably. up until the time she had a stroke, she was fine. She talked, she chatted, she gossiped, she played cards. She went home. She beat my parents at Canasta, like two or three hands at Canasta. She went to sleep. And the next day she was still acting weird and they said, let's go to the hospital. So they brought her to the hospital and the doctor's like, she, she had a stroke. And my parents were like, what? And it was just like, she never really recovered from that stroke. And she died a couple weeks later, but just, she had a stroke. She got on an airplane. she would, two capes of canasta. She didn't complain. Really at all. And she went to sleep and she woke up for the two weeks and no, and it was amazing. and I don't, I just don't, I've seen, a lot of stuff in combat and everything, but that, to me, that's, that, that whole story is just freaking amazing. Shows how tough they were back then.

James: 19:52

that mental toughness is something that comes through surviving and getting through adversity. I am continually impressed at. Two seemingly inconsistent ideas. One is how easy it is for the body's equilibrium to be disrupted. You get a little injury, what seems like a little injury somewhere, and then all of a sudden you can't do all sorts of stuff. you have a little surgery and you've got a torn muscle somewhere, and all of a sudden you can't do a whole bunch of things. And so the fragility of the human body, on the one hand seems really stark. And then the same time people have, the human body has an indomitable urge to survive and people can survive terrible trauma. You probably know this much better than I do, but just in terms of people's ability to, on the one hand, be disrupted by little things, but also to survive very serious things. so what that means in terms of longevity is. Yeah, not necessarily suffering a stroke and then getting on an airplane and flying home, but you probably are harder than you might think. Sometimes you can survive a lot, and chances are good, you are gonna live a decent amount of time. spending time at any age thinking about what is. Purpose that's driving you. What are some of the things that you care deeply about? What's motivating you? What kind of life do you wanna live? That's what I like about philosophy and about stoic philosophy, because it tackles head on the question of what does it mean to live a good life? Should you help yourself? Should you help others? Should you try to make a mark on the world? Is it. Enough if you're sitting in a cave and reach enlightenment and you never interact with another soul, and the answers, there are no one answer. I think there's a lot of different answers and. They will only make sense if you arrive at them yourself. So it's a personal journey, but I think it's worthwhile spending time thinking about that question. It's easy to get distracted along the way and to focus on superficial things like how much money are you making, how many followers do you have on some social media platform? What title do you have? what are your living circumstances like? Are you physically attractive and what I would call external factors. I don't think most philosophies conclude that external factors are the things that really make a difference in the long run. Whether you're wealthy or poor, you're gonna end up just as dead, in a number of years. the impact that you had on people around you though is something that might last long after you're gone. If you create something, a book, a piece of music, that might last a long time after you're gone, but not everybody cares about creating a mark on the world or leaving a legacy. but the basic point I would add, want to add at this juncture is it's worthwhile thinking about what it means to you individually to live a good life and to take steps now, not later when you're gonna retire or if you're earlier in your career, but right now to think about what does it mean to live a good life? Have you thought about it, Randy? And do you think you are a already living a good life? Or what steps do you plan to take to continue making sure that you're leading a good life? We've talked about a few of those factors. And besides the fitness and the health, you mentioned already relationships and your current happy relationship with your spouse, which is nice to hear friendships. what else falls in there with you? Do you have any concern about leaving a legacy or impacting others?

Randy: 23:18

I don't really have a concern about that. it'd be, I, it'd be nice to be remembered, but if nothing else for my, my sons, my sons don't know much about my military life. I have, my sons pretty late in my life, so I, most of my, by the time they were old enough to understand the war on terror, I was not a part of it anymore. I think the last time I went to Afghanistan was 2000. Seven. So I'd already, by 2007, my kids were, my oldest was like seven and my youngest was three. So they, I didn't, I wasn't doing anything there. And I don't know if I did a whole lot worth mentioning in the war anyway, but, I, I think having something so as far as longevity and. What I would like to do, I would like to, wake up every morning and have a goal. And right now because of my, what I do, which is write and edit, that those are things I could probably live the rest of my life doing. Waking up and say, now I'm gonna, I'm gonna create something. I'm gonna create a story that I'll entertain people, or I'm going to make someone else's story better. That's, that, that's something I think I could go with. and then, At some point I'll, my kids will actually listen to what I have to say to'em. maybe it won't happen till they're in third year or something, but maybe I can give them my, my, actually it's funny because some of

James: 24:43

both of them are something, Mark Twain supposedly wrote, which was, the older I get, the more I'm amazed at how smart my dad has become in the meantime. when I was 18, I think my dad was an idiot, but then as 10 years later, I came back and I'm amazed at how smart he's become. I think that's what it was. So yeah, that's a hope to have.

Randy: 25:00

Yeah. yeah. So my kids actually are coming around right now in their mid twenties and saying, Hey, I got a question. It's I answered that freaking 10 years ago. I'm not gonna answer it again.

James: 25:13

So this morning I, read an article in the newspaper. I still read the Wall Street Journal, and that is not a paper with a representative, readership. I know they were talking about people who, Every now and then they have a human interest story. And this one was about people who had retired on less than a million dollars, which for the Wall Street Journal readers is, you know, terrible circumstance. How could you have failed so miserably, because they've previously done articles on what's it like to retire for with one to 10 million or whatever. So this one was about, uh, people who had retired on between savings of 200,000 and 800,000, which

Randy: 25:51

is still It's 5% top 10%.

James: 25:53

It's a ton of, The average 401K balance in the US is actually four when people retire. So in their mid to late sixties is 400 and something thousand.

Randy: 26:02

But how, what's the av? How many people actually have a 401k?

James: 26:06

yeah, fair enough. no. So this is no question. Already in the US you're talking about the top 5%. Then, people with several hundred thousand dollars also unusual. My point though, about this and my takeaway from the story, The amount of money that people had saved, it was that almost all of them said, we had an idea of how our life was gonna go, and then something happened and usually multiple somethings and that intervened. Oftentimes it's a health issue. A person gets cancer or they have a cognitive decline, or there's an accident. Quite a few people. Have a theory and then the theory gets completely disrupted. I'm gonna spend the summers here and the winters here, or I'm gonna, go out on my boat and sail. And they're unable to pursue their plans as they envisaged. And I think people respond differently to that. For some, it is a major upset and they don't ever get back on track. And for others, oh, I'm not gonna do what I thought I was gonna do. Now I'm gonna do this. And they find a way to pivot and to still. Have a meaningful and enjoyable life, and I think having a planned and maybe backup plan and plan A, B, and C, one of them referred to and now we're on point B pace. Yeah, exactly. That seems to be a useful attitude to take towards how your life might go, because you know what? If there's anything we can say, events are unpredictable, things will happen that you probably could not have anticipated, and that's okay. Some of them will be serendipitous good events, not just. Bad luck and if you're openness is the same advice I would give to people thinking about their careers. Be open to opportunity. I guess it's the same advice now that I would say I'll try to take as well myself. Yeah. Stuff's gonna happen that you didn't anticipate and how does the saying go? Roll with the punches. You need to a little bit be prepared for that eventuality such that it doesn't set you off on a,

Randy: 28:02

a bad. I can see that, I can see being prepared for those. My, my parents are probably, probably a good example. My dad had a pretty, pretty good job at the end of his career. I think I imagine it was over six figures, 35 years with the same company. And, and pro he had a bunch of, investments. And he looked at his, he looked at it, he's talked to a financial manager. He is like, yeah, you should be fine. And then 2008 kicked around Uhhuh and also, the health insurance went way up, especially for, for, as a retiree since he wasn't getting covered by his company anymore. so he had to, he, from working, as. high ranking manager in a IT company, computer company. he's now, he's front desk at a hotel to make ends, not, not to make ends meet. He's making enough money to live, but it wasn't what the way he wanted to live. So he wanted to make a little bit more money. It wasn't, he wasn't doing a full-time at a hotel. He was working part-time, but, and like night shifts and stuff, but it wasn't his. And, eventually he found something even better where he could, have a little bit more freedom, which was, mystery shopping. And that worked out really good for him for about 20 some years.

James: 29:20

So I can't tell you how many Uber drivers I've met who are people post-retirement who. I had a change in circumstance and things didn't go as planned. And yeah, I can divide'em up in two large categories. The ones who are grouchy about having to be now doing something different than they anticipated to make ends meet, and the ones who embrace it and found something really cool about their profession, the ones who are chatty and interested in people and talking about their life and saying how cool it is that they get to meet so many interesting people, and it's wow. Such a different attitude is what seems to make the difference to this person in the same situation. One of'em happy, the other one is resentful. I'll just add two more things and then I think from my perspective would be, oh, happy to, okay. Wrapping up today's session. And they would be. The Greeks had the idea that you couldn't take the measure of a person's life until they had lived it. And it was more than just you, your own experiences that contributed to what made up for a good life. So Solan, I think it was who said, you count no man lucky until he's dead. You really don't know what life you will have led until it's. And Aristotle went even further and said, it's not just your own life, but that of the people around you that you need to take into account. Let's say you've got kids and one of them becomes a mass murderer. And so how does that impact your influence on the world? Or, one of them is, has drug problems and or ties early, so you really can't say what it is your life is gonna amount to until you've lived it out and you know what's happened both to you and to the people that are close to you. I don't know if that's a depressing thought or should be an uplifting thought. it cut.

Randy: 31:07

I think that's, I think that's accurate. I just heard a, like a Chinese proverb story the other day. On, like on some social media. Maybe stop me if you've heard it. So this guy's, this guy has a farm and his horse runs away and, have you heard this? And, his, neighbors are like, oh man, that's really bad luck. you lost your horse. And he's like, well, I don't know. Bad good. I don't know if it's bad luck or good luck yet. and the next day the horse comes back and brings two more horses. So he is got three horses. He's like, wow, that's such great luck. Your horse came back and now you got three horses. Like, eh, I don't know if that's good or bad yet. And then the his son is like breaking the horse, one of the new horses. And the next day he gets bucked off and he breaks his back and they're like, oh man, that's terrible. And your son broke his back. He's like, eh, I don't know if that's good or bad. And then the next day, the AR Chinese army recruiters come in and they're looking for all able-bodied. People between these ages and his son can't go cuz he broke his back and he, and they're like, oh, you're so lucky. He's like, eh, it's like on and on and on, right? So the fact that you can't tell if your life is, your complete life, if it was, with purpose or not, or worth it or not, until you've lived your life and moved on, it sounds kinda accurate. You can't, you don't know what's good or bad luck. You don't know. my grandfather, my mom's father, Was, of age to go to World War ii and he was in basic training and there was a circus performer there who was on the pull-up bars doing, Cirque du sole weird stuff. And my grandfather's like, I could do that And the next thing you know, he broke his neck and didn't go to work and everybody in his platoon was killed. so that was bad luck. But wa it wasn't bad luck for me. it wasn't bad luck for him. It wasn't bad luck for our family. just, once again, you can't, you can never tell, you can't, count anyone out till the end,

James: 33:00

Right. So for me, I'll summarize that with, a statement from philosophy that goes back even further 5,000 years now. And that is nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so, so your life is happening now. Think about it in the right way. And no matter what happens, perhaps, the positive messages, there's a way to make it, work to your advantage.

Randy: 33:22

and I think what you said before is, looking at, looking now, cuz basically a lot of the things we talked about to make your life more happy, comfortable. worth living in a way, are, your health oriented? Can you walk, can you talk? Can you, are you gonna be on, in a hospital with a bunch of tubes in your arms for 10 years because you have diabetes? Type eight by like in, that'll come out in three years. so if you can take care of yourself so that you can be mobile and enjoy your time with your family and friends. Then that's gonna make it that much more pleasant for your later latter years.

James: 34:04

All right. That's a nice way to end today. Thanks everybody for listening. Thanks Randy. And we'll talk to you soon.

Randy: 34:11

Bye everybody. We'd love to hear what you think, so please comment on the show with your thoughts. We read all of your comments.

James: 34:17

Thanks for joining us, and thanks for subscribing. See you next time.