Ron and Becky Fox, join us to recount their love story which began with a lighthearted wager and evolved into a profound partnership.
The Foxes guide us through understanding how to clear mental clutter and foster resilience within ourselves, reshaping our perceptions of life's hurdles.
We also discuss the concept of 'Aging to Saging' and the rich potential it holds for personal growth. Our chat wraps up with the importance of community and how adapting to life's changes is crucial for finding purpose at any age.
See links below for all things related to Ron and Becky.
Experiencing the Beacon Within: A Guide to Lead You Back to Your Authentic Self https://a.co/d/5Cbd7Jn
Words of Wisdom: Spiritual Stories to Inspire https://a.co/d/2yMbugm
Ron’s YouTube channel is Rev Dr Ron Fox
The Conscious Aging class and interested persons can contact Ron at 321 474 2030 or revronfox@gmail.com
**The information provided on this podcast does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content and materials available on this site are for general informational purposes only. Information on this podcast may not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information. This podcast contains links to other third party websites. Such links are only for the convenience of the reader, user or browser.
Ron and Becky Fox, join us to recount their love story which began with a lighthearted wager and evolved into a profound partnership.
The Foxes guide us through understanding how to clear mental clutter and foster resilience within ourselves, reshaping our perceptions of life's hurdles.
We also discuss the concept of 'Aging to Saging' and the rich potential it holds for personal growth. Our chat wraps up with the importance of community and how adapting to life's changes is crucial for finding purpose at any age.
See links below for all things related to Ron and Becky.
Experiencing the Beacon Within: A Guide to Lead You Back to Your Authentic Self https://a.co/d/5Cbd7Jn
Words of Wisdom: Spiritual Stories to Inspire https://a.co/d/2yMbugm
Ron’s YouTube channel is Rev Dr Ron Fox
The Conscious Aging class and interested persons can contact Ron at 321 474 2030 or revronfox@gmail.com
**The information provided on this podcast does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content and materials available on this site are for general informational purposes only. Information on this podcast may not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information. This podcast contains links to other third party websites. Such links are only for the convenience of the reader, user or browser.
So are you looking for more inspiration and possibility in midlife and beyond? Join me, leslie Maloney, proud wife, mom, author, teacher and podcast host, as I talk with people finding meaning in Moxie in their life after 50. Interviews that will energize you and give you some ideas to implement in your own life. I so appreciate you being here. Now let's get started. Hi everybody, my guests this week are Ron and Becky Fox. Ron is an ordained minister with the Center for Spiritual Living. He is a gifted speaker and published author and his inspirational style, coupled with a very keen sense of humor, make him an audience favorite. Becky, his wife, is an artist, graphics, digital arts designer, facilitator, teacher and spiritual coach. She empowers others to lead a fulfilling life through workshops and her personal sessions. We cover a lot of rich ground in our conversation. Hope you enjoy it. Welcome, becky and Ron. So glad you could be here with us today.
Speaker 2:We are glad too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so to get this party going, to get this conversation going, tell us about how you met.
Speaker 3:We don't have enough time for that.
Speaker 2:No, we met. So I was a director of human resources for a division of Mattel Toys and Becky's best friend worked a couple of offices away from me and we don't remember how we got started in this, but every Friday afternoon I would go in and we would talk about our weekends. Mine were really dull. I was divorced and I had custody of two of my three kids, so I wasn't doing much. She was dating an actor who at the time was really famous, and I would go in and try to convince her to get him to get me a date with his ex-wife. His ex-wife's name was Meredith Baxter Bernie. You've probably heard of her, oh sure.
Speaker 1:She was on family ties, wasn't she, your mom, on family ties. Oh, yeah, sure oh gosh.
Speaker 2:So one Friday when I went in, she said to me her name was Janice. Janice said to me how am I supposed to ask my boyfriend to get you a date with his ex-wife? And I said right off the top of my head well, tell him I'm already in love with her because she's so gorgeous. What if she falls back in love with me? Bye-bye, alamone. And Janice said right, ron, right.
Speaker 2:The next week, when I went in, she told me just sit down and shut up. And I said oh my God, are you angry at me? She started to laugh and she said I'm not angry, but I am so sick and tired of hearing Meredith Baxter. Bernie, I got a deal for you. And I said what's the deal? She said you go three weeks without mentioning that name to me and I will get you a date with my best friend, becky. Three Fridays later I went in and said I did it and she said all right, you'll have her phone number Monday. And that's how we met. And coming up about three weeks, our first date was February 10, 1990. So, coming up, we're going to be knowing each other 34 years. Wow, and we were just married. Our anniversary is in December. We were just married 33.
Speaker 1:Oh, congratulations, thank you, what a great story. So you had a matchmaker, yeah, Can I just tell you.
Speaker 2:So we moved around and we lost contact with Janice Two years ago I'm still Facebook friends with her. I put on Facebook that Becky and I were going to Manhattan on vacation. Janice lives in California still. That's where we met. She gets back to me and said Ron, I'm going to be in Manhattan the same time you guys are. And we had lunch the three of us for the first time in 30 years. Oh, gee, yeah.
Speaker 3:That was really a special time. Yeah, it's like no time, oh that.
Speaker 2:It's like no time at last.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, she's the one that made it all happen. And, of course, spirit, right Spirit was working that magic as well. You mentioned that you all have moved around quite a bit, so you met and you hit it off. And how much longer did you spend in Southern California?
Speaker 2:A few years, three or four, five years and then by that time I was a minister and so we moved to I guess it's really mid-California, to Auburn, california, and we were there for almost four years and then we moved to Arizona and then here, and we've been here 13.
Speaker 1:So you're a minister for the Center for. Spiritual Living.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And those are all over the country I know. And so that was what was leading you all. And, becky, I know that you work very closely too with facilitating and teaching and coaching those. So your moving sort of was because of the different congregations and leading you around around the country. That way, becky, were you involved with Center for Spiritual Living before you met Ron?
Speaker 3:No, no, we both. After we met, we both were talking about spirituality and how that was the one thing that was missing from both of our lives. And so Ron was actually the one to mention Center for Spiritual Living through a friend of his, and that's how we got to be introduced to it. And then we eventually took some practitioner classes and he decided to go on to ministerial school and I really didn't have that calling. I'd love being a practitioner and I just felt that that was my calling.
Speaker 1:Can you tell the listeners a little bit about Centers for Spiritual Living? Just kind of a broad brush as far as somebody who might gravitate to it and what they, what it offers.
Speaker 2:Sure, it's what is known as a new thought philosophy, and basically we teach that it's done unto you, as you believe. So our beliefs create the events and circumstances of our life. That's like a two sentence explanation I used to tell people. Ernest Holmes is the founder for the Centers for Spiritual Living, and in one of his books he starts it out and he says there's a power for good in the universe that's available to everyone. You can use it.
Speaker 1:Your journey progressed with that. What have you learned? I mean, that's ministering to people all walks of life and all different circumstances of their life at different times. I'm sure that you've seen it all and been a part of doing that work. You really have a front seat to a lot of what's going on with people. What have you learned along the way in that work that you've both done?
Speaker 2:Go ahead, Beck, because you do a lot of counseling as a practitioner.
Speaker 3:You know, I have found that throughout the practice that we've gone through and using our philosophy and being there for people, there's no boundaries, there is no us and them. We teach about oneness and unity, and when you're sitting there with a person who is experiencing some kind of a crisis, you are there with them. You know, you are there, empathizing with them, being there in compassion with this person, and you're not there to judge them. You're not there to try to change them, but you're there to listen to them and to help them see where their belief systems and their mindset have been, you know, leading them or guiding them maybe in a direction that isn't helping them.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'll just give you a fun example of what we're talking about. So when Becky and I were in Arizona, we had a couple that one day they came up to me and they said what does the church need? What do you want? And I said what do you mean? And they said, oh well, every six or eight weeks or so we go gambling and we always win because we know we're going to win. What do you want? So I said, well, a new microwave. They said, okay, next week she comes back and hands me money to get a new microwave. And they did this a couple of times and they never, ever lost. They'd sometimes break even. And I asked them what is it that you do? And she said, ron, we just know that when we go there we're going to win.
Speaker 2:And as soon as she said that, I went home and I said to Becky my first wife and I used to go to places like the Bahamas and Aruba where they had gambling, and after we had dinner we would go back to our room and we'd figure out how much money we had for that the rest of the day and we would split it. And she liked to play different games than I did and we would say to one another okay, we'll meet back after we lose all the money, we'll get back together again. And it was, and we would always lose all the money, but it was like that couple and what we did really brought it home. It's kind of a silly example, but if you set the expectation that this is going to happen, it does. And we set the expectation we're going to lose every night and we lost every night.
Speaker 1:It's a great example I think that everybody can relate to. But we do it in so many different other places in our life and I know I've found over the years and this is how we met years ago through an exercise heart math is one way into that door, the heart math technique and it's really about feeling it right. You basically go in and feel in your heart space, the feeling part of your body, gratitude and appreciation and ease for what you have now, but also holding that space for what you want next and that's what you're describing there.
Speaker 2:Right, absolutely.
Speaker 3:It is, I don't think it's enough to. I mean, it's a beginning to think, a positive thought, but if you don't have that feeling, the emotions, the heart behind it, then it's harder for a person to, I think, manifest something into their life.
Speaker 2:And the way. What we tell people if you can't know the truth for yourself. That's what we're here for and that's what our counseling really consists of and our prayer work consists of is knowing the truth for somebody else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and for somebody who's new to this, I mean it's way beyond positive thinking. Clear out some of the clutter, right.
Speaker 1:In order to get to, I mean, and that's that takes some time, and then releasing some of those old tapes that we've been told and what we tell ourselves, and then it's, you know, holding it. I'll give you another simple example in my life and I was playing tennis yesterday in a match it was a very long, you know good match back and forth and back and forth. And sometimes for me, in those, you know, when I know matches very close like that, I'm kind of new to playing, playing competitively. So now this is a little bit different level. So I'm not necessarily holding that space, that mental toughness you might say to to finish the match out and maybe win it. Sometimes.
Speaker 1:The pressure sometimes gets to me, let's put it that way. But my partner has played tennis competitively years and years and years and years and years. So we ended up, we ended up prevailing, if you will, whatever that means. But it was really about her energy helping me stay in that space of of staying focused and not letting the pressure get me. Because she was so much more seasoned and she had that eye of the tiger. I was very aware that she was helping me stay in that space, and so it shows up in our life in a lot of different ways. It really does, and so I'm sure you all have seen that play out.
Speaker 2:One of the really wonderful ways that we see we have the introductory class if people want to take class is called a foundation class and it's 10 weeks long and at the the last week, everybody has a project that that they have to do and the idea of the project is something that they learned from the prior nine weeks and it can be anything, anything at all, and we have seen such amazing things that people do. We had one lady who earlier in her life played the piano and for some reason couldn't play anymore. She just it was stress or whatever. Her project at the end of 10 weeks was to have the class gather around the church piano and she played the piano for the first time in 25 years. We had somebody else who, who never painted, paint this gorgeous picture and just tons of things that people never thought they could do, but when they and maybe wanted to do.
Speaker 2:But when they clear out the thinking, like you said before, when you clear out, the way I would put it is what doesn't serve anymore and replace it with what does people? People find amazing what one of the guys I know. This was really embarrassing. He did a new thought. He did a new thought crossword puzzle, and we do crossword puzzles a lot. Neither one of us I had to tell him what's the key. I don't know the answers to this.
Speaker 3:Joe dispensa and Mary Morrissey both talked about, related it to being on a radio, trying to adjust the radio station and if you're out of frequency all you're going to get is just the static. But once you, you know you fine tune that energy, that frequency, you know you're right on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, another great example. Eric Butterworth was a was a unity minister and he uses the, the example of you know a lights, a dimmer light switch, that you decide how bright it is. And he said it's the same thing with God. God is always there. You decide how much you let in, a little bit or a lot. I always thought that was a wonderful example. The power is always there. What you let in is your decision.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that. I like that idea of turning it up or turning it.
Speaker 1:You know we don't want to turn it down, but, you know, turn it up, keep turning it up, and sometimes we need those more tangible examples to sort of translate that for us. But what you all are doing for, for the people that you work with, you're really, like you said, holding that space for them when because we all have those moments when we forget and so you're helping people remember that place and holding that space for them and validating and that's so important to do that for each other and in a community. And that's what it sounds like is happening when you describe those different people playing the piano and painting and so on.
Speaker 1:It's really about supporting each other and reminding and remembering. Let's talk about aging. I know that when we connected here, we were going back and forth and creating a new, new vision for what it means to age, and I think that's really why one of the reasons why I certainly have started this podcast because I want to challenge some of those ideas that are out there in society about age, challenge some of that stuff that we unconsciously may have and are still saying to ourselves about age. So what are your thoughts as you all move into your second act here? Third act, about aging in society?
Speaker 2:So, if it's okay, I'll go back and tell you how we got really interested in it. So the person who was my assistant minister at the time wanted to teach a class from a book called Saging and Saging right Saging to Saging, Aging to Saging, Aging to Saging and we got really interested. That's what really sparked it for us. In fact, one of the things that came out of it, Becky decided to stop dying her hair and just be like mine. So we've really gotten interested in it and done some work. I just want to throw one statistic at you. Okay, by the year 2030, there will be 72 million people in the United States 65 and older. That's 19% of the population, basically one out of every five people. And what a resource that is to the communities that we live in.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So, you know, one of the things is to look at it as a time when we can grow spiritually, emotionally. However, it's not rare anymore that people live to ripe old ages. You know, with medical science, we're living 2030 years longer.
Speaker 1:So I think we have to think about that in terms of gosh, you know, and if you're in your early 60s and you're going to live to be 100, you're a spring chick.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so changing that. Yeah, I've got 40 years, I might even have more than that, and so it really sort of starts to change that perspective quite a bit. Go ahead, keep going. You look like you had another thought there.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, I was just listening to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So this book, saging, aging to Saging, do you know who the author is? Offhand, I'm going to hold it up for everybody. Okay, aging to Saging, a revolutionary approach to growing older. And who's the author? I don't quite, I can't quite read it.
Speaker 2:Okay, it's Rabbi Zalman, shacter Shalomi and Ronald S Miller. That's what got us started in it. And then we actually decided we took a class from IONS IONS, the Institute of Noetic Science, which was founded by the astronaut James Mitchell and so we took a class from them on conscious aging and I don't remember how long the class was, but it was and then we had a past test, and so now we're able to teach a class on conscious aging, which we're about to do in February, and the parts of the class I mean you hit on one of the things before is looking forward but also looking back and saying, okay, where was I, what was my life? And forgiving yourself, if you need to, for things left undone dreams, maybe that you didn't meet and then saying, okay, like you said, I'm a spring chicken.
Speaker 2:Now I've got all of this time left. What do I want to do with the rest of my life? What is life asking me to do now? To be very honest, I'm going through that right now Because, because of COVID, we wound up having to close our center, and so I'm saying to myself okay, so now I've been doing this for 25 years. What's my purpose now? What am I going to do now with the rest of my life? To be, to be of use to my community and to myself?
Speaker 1:Are you coming up with any answers yet, or what's that process look like for you in terms of trying to figure that out?
Speaker 2:Well, I read a lot on how to do it and we meditate together twice a day for 30 minutes, and so I haven't come up with a perfect answer yet. But I'm doing some things. I'm speaking at other centers, we're going to teach a classical. I don't think that I want to do a whole church again, kind of been there, done that. I had two opportunities recently and they just didn't get. Our intuition kept saying don't do this, don't do this.
Speaker 1:Which is so important to listen to, and that's an exercise in itself, right, listening to that intuition and trusting it, and that gets stronger with practice as well, once you start to really trust it. Becky, what about you? Are you experiencing a similar thing?
Speaker 3:Well, I know that after our center closed I went through a grieving process, you know, because I was so I mean, for the last however long Ron has been a minister, I was doing his research and so what happened was that I had the schedule every week of what I needed to do, and now that was gone I felt a little bit adrift, and I'm you know, I am a kind of person who likes structure and organization in my life, so I didn't have that anymore, but it did open up time for me to explore my art and to learn new applications. So Ron got me for Christmas Procreate and Affinity Design, and now what I'm doing is learning how to do design work, to do collections of surface pattern designs. So it's recreating, it's always reinventing, I think yourself, and to adapt to you know where you are at the time.
Speaker 1:I think that's so true and we're constantly doing that throughout our lives and certainly in our later years. We are it's going to continue and just accepting that that's going to continue and that's a healthy thing to be reevaluating. Is this what I want to do? Is this how I want to spend my time?
Speaker 2:But you know, one of the things that's out there is that when you get older you don't learn as much, and they've done all kinds of studies and that is not true. People at any age, if they set their mind to it, can learn, and in the studies they found, the only elders that couldn't learn were the ones that believed they couldn't learn.
Speaker 2:So I want to do so, when I knew we were going to do this. So we had a small center, okay it was. Was it huge? It's skewed to weight people over 50. And I said to Becky, when we're going to do this, I'm going to make a list, okay, of what some of our people were doing in their everyday lives, people that were retired. Well, first of all, the two of us.
Speaker 2:When COVID hit one day, I said to myself all right, I'm gonna be locked up in here and at the end of COVID if I don't do something productive, if I just sit on my rear end, I am gonna be so angry with myself. So I did something that people have been telling me, because I write a lot for our church magazine. They said you need to write a book and so in the last couple of years I've published two books. Oh, fantastic.
Speaker 2:And the lady sitting alongside me that's an artist. She did all the artwork and the covers for the books Beautiful, and Becky's done covers for three other books from somebody else we know, who is also in our center, and Rugg Free Books in the last couple. Well, she wrote two. When she's doing the third now, we had somebody else who's way up in his 70s and he plays softball. He mentors a high school kid, he volunteers at Promise. We have somebody else who facilitates a couple of book groups. People in our center travel all over the world and I was telling somebody else about what we were gonna be doing today and she said oh, I know somebody who's 79 years old who coaches a woman's volleyball team. And she reminded me that we knew one of her neighbors who's 80 something years old, who is building an airplane in his garage, that it's a one person airplane, that when he's done he intends to fly.
Speaker 1:Is that-. Oh, you gotta get those names to me. Those are the people I wanna talk to. I think they're beautiful examples for everybody. Like you can do this, people are doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and let them tell their stories, because they're just off kind of in their little world doing their thing and some of us look at that, go wow, that inspires me to do something else.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know it's interesting. I just read an article in I think it was the Washington Post that had a 93 year old man still doing rowing. He got interested in rowing through his son and he had just started exercising when he was only 70 years old.
Speaker 1:I mean, what an inspiration Absolutely have you all ever seen the movie I think it came out in the early 2000s called Second Hand Lions. It was a Disney movie and it's about these two brothers. That that's what reminded me. Just, they continue through their life to just be. You know, they just be doing their thing. They're into this, they're into that and they end up. They end up dying in their 90s flying a plane. They made this plane and they fly it into this barn. So that's how they crashed. But they have an expression in that movie dying with your boots on. And I love that and I use that quite frequently, quite frequently actually. You know he died with his boots on. She went with her boots on Doing the things that happened to be of interest at the time.
Speaker 2:You know it's interesting because I read a story a while back about somebody who had a physical issue I think it was with the person's heart and what he loved to do more than anything else was dive. And the doctors told him you can't do that anymore because it puts too much stress on your heart. And he ignored them and he died underwater and his wife said as sad as I am about losing him, he died happy because he died doing what he loved.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think we have to. That's another really good point, because a lot of people stop doing what they love to do because of, you know, maybe the doctor told them or and we're not saying, go out and be reckless here, but it's, you know, taking care of ourselves, because that's the other thing, taking care of our physical bodies so that we can do these other things as much as possible. But or just thinking they're too old, I can't, I can't, yeah, I'm older now, I can't partake in those kind of things, and just they sort of start to wither up. And so I, like you, when I hear somebody has passed away, skydiving or doing whatever, I think, wow, what a way to go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's the way to. That's the way to go. If you're you know, go out doing something you love. Tell us about your books, ron, that you wrote during this time.
Speaker 2:So I want to hold it up, so you both of them up so you could see the. This is just a cover work that Becky did and it's called experiencing the beacon within and what it is Lovely, lovely. It's, it's guides for daily living. They're just. Each one is on a separate page and the idea is to to read. To read one. I I advise people to read it in the morning and get some inspiration. And the second one. I love this artwork. I don't know if you can.
Speaker 1:Really I can read it in the morning.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you can read it in the morning, but I do, I do read it, and I don't know if you can read it in the morning, so I don't know if you can read it in the morning. Words of wisdom, oh that's. Yeah, it's Becky Beautiful and and it has more of those.
Speaker 1:It also has some blogs, I wrote and some poetry and all of it is Leans Spiritually. So, uh huh, can you open up? And the first book, can you open up to a page?
Speaker 2:and Sure, I want to. All right, I'll just start. It's titled do me a favor, find the one in here Wilbur. Okay, so Wayne Dyer some of you might know who he is wrote if you want peace for others, you will receive it. If you want others to receive love, you will. When you give away what's in your heart, you receive it back. Everyone we meet is holy when we recognize that we're blessed, because when we treat someone as divine, we receive the same treatment. We all want to live happy, peaceful lives. When we treat everyone with care and respect, we all have the opportunity to live our dreams. When we stop caring about one another, we may have the fate of Pastor Martin Neemoller, who describes when they came for the communists, I remain silent.
Speaker 2:I was not a communist. When they locked up the social Democrats, I remain silent. I was not a social Democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out. I was not a trade unionist. When they came for the Jews, I remain silent. I was in a Jew. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out. What a wonderful reminder that we all have a stake in each other's life and happiness. And then I have a quote at the end from a Buddhist nun named Pema Chadrin if we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including people that drive us crazy, can be our teachers.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, oh yeah, that is the truth.
Speaker 2:I have another one in there I expect to find. Well, I was reading that, but you can't. And everybody that gets this loves this story. It's titled Wilbur, and my daughter has a pet pig and he's a miserable animal. He, you know, he was this big, but he grew. He's huge, and literally the only person in the world that he likes and loves is my daughter. My daughter can do anything to him. If somebody else goes near him, he grunts and growls and if you have food, he'll come eat food, but if you don't, he'll. He'll nip, and so I wrote about that and you know how he's ugly and all of this. And yet my daughter sees beauty in him and my daughter treats him in a way that's kind and loving, and I mean she kisses him, he sleeps with her and Wilbur. Wilbur responds to the love and kindness and caring that my daughter gives him and the message was that's true for all of us. And he ended it by saying gee, maybe the next time I'll go and do the same to Wilbur. I tried, but he's still done.
Speaker 1:Like me, he's not having it right now, huh.
Speaker 2:No, no, it's a good time. Yeah, I was talking to my daughter the other day and he was there and she said hold it, I got. And she put some food. She said, yeah, I'm just feeding him. And I said now, if I tried to do that, she said he bites you and you don't want to get bitten by a pig.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's circle back to the class that you all are going to be teaching. So is this the first time that you're teaching this class on aging, or have you taught it before?
Speaker 2:No, it's going to be the first time.
Speaker 1:Okay, and how many weeks is it going to go? What are some of your other topics?
Speaker 2:It's eight weeks long, two hours a session, and it's really. We don't teach it, we facilitate it. There's a lot of discussion and some writing, and some of the topics are self-compassion, forgiveness. There's a life review, transformational practices, surrender, letting go and then creating a new vision of aging. So it's a really positive class where people get to see aging. You know one of the things that I read that instead of thinking about aging, thinking of it more as conscious elderhood.
Speaker 1:Right, right, really stepping into that role of being the elder and embracing it, because in so many other cultures it's revered to be an elder and somewhere along the line we've sort of lost that. Here in the United States A lot of media and things like that, the messaging on TV and movies and so on, and I think maybe that's changing a little bit, I hope.
Speaker 3:But, yeah, stepping into that elder role and not allowing ourselves to be pushed aside and challenging once again those ideas of ages on conscious and unconscious messages that we hear, yeah, I think also with different articles about the blue zones, with Dan Butener doing nutrition and the holistic kind of approach to aging, and how it all seems to have a common thread about community and how important the social community is. And I even find it here that since we've closed our centers, some people are saying you know, I really miss that, I really miss how. You know we were all together and you know, and I think that you know there are, there are, you know, seniors who miss that.
Speaker 2:You know we are isolated. In fact, we, we get together, our community, the last Saturday of every month. We get together at different restaurants and just just get together to be, to be with one another.
Speaker 2:There's a wonderful story about the blue zones, about a fellow who immigrated to the United States from Greece and he lived here and I don't remember how old he was, but the doctors told him he had a very severe heart condition and he only had a few months to live. So he decided if I'm on die, I'm going to go back to where I lived and be with my friends. So he went back and 25 years later he decided to go back to the US to show his doctors and when he went back there were three of them. They were all dead.
Speaker 2:And and and the thing about it was again, it was not just his diet, but it was the idea of community and how they socialize together, and every day they'd sit and have wine and chat. You know, it's really important.
Speaker 1:And it is, and that's one of the things. As you mentioned, the statistic when we first started about almost 20% of the country is that was. That was a US statistic, was right.
Speaker 1:And is is going to be, you know, coming of age, so to speak, and this idea of independent living but nursing homes, that whole thing that's been created here in this country, which I'm not sure some of it is healthy I think that's going to be reimagined. I was just reading an article the other day where a bunch of seniors got together, friends, and they kind of created their own little community. They built little tiny houses kind of thing for themselves, but they were all together and then they had like a little what we might call a clubhouse or a little community room and just reimagining how we're going to be in community with each other instead of isolating you. So so much, so much of that is going on where people feel isolated and and we're not supposed. You know, I don't think we're meant to be that way.
Speaker 2:We're animals, yeah you know, when COVID hit and I looked down at the membership list of our center, so many of the people were either widowers or widows or people that hadn't been married, and they were alone. So what we did besides this, we were doing the Sunday service on zoom. We would meet once a week on zoom, and it was like it was just to get together to speak about anything you want, and at one point the the attendance started to wane a little bit, and so one Tuesday I said Well, maybe we need to stop this, and one of the women said to me oh, please don't. This is the only contact I have with the outside world.
Speaker 2:Don't stop it and we kept it. We kept it going. But yeah, community is is so important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you? Are you go? Is this course going to be an ongoing? You're gonna, I know you're trying it out. Do you expect it to be something that you're going to run periodically throughout?
Speaker 3:the year.
Speaker 1:And it'll be on zoom.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So we we will definitely put that in the show notes. As far as what you know, the name of the course, and if you could just send me some of that information just so I can include that for people who might be interested, I think there will be people interested.
Speaker 3:I was also going to say the one thing that I I read about this class that is wonderful is that what they? They were actually the, the. I think the long term effect would be to bring a community together. You know, whoever took this class hopefully would keep in touch with people because it forms, it is so deep that it starts to form connections among the group. So that's what we're hoping.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not just within the small group, but even I mean these, these kind of communities can start to grow and then getting though all of them together in some kind of like retreat, conference sort of thing. I mean this disguise the limit, and I think that's an unten. There's not a lot of that going on. I don't want to, I don't want to say untapped, but there's certainly not as much of that going on as there could be with this, you know, with this age group, the age group that we're all in. So any other final thoughts go ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just going to say it's not. It's really important to do it because it's not just good for our mental and emotional health health but the economics of it. You know, we're going to live longer. I was just talking to a friend who said that she was so lucky when she retired because her company is cutting back on retirement benefits, so people that come after her are going to struggle, and that's there. I do have another statistic for you that I read, and that is that by 2030. 20% of the workforce will be people. Full time workforce will be people 75 years or older, because they're going to have to work.
Speaker 3:Well, I just, I just want to say it's wonderful that that you're doing this and I love the title of it, you know meaning, and moxie especially, you know, because I really feel that even you know, like people who are younger than myself, you know, starting in the you know, like 45 or 50 years old, they're going to start to really think about, oh, is this really where I want my life to be? And so it's just not for people who are, you know, like retired, but it's people who are, you know, mid, mid life.
Speaker 1:It is because you are setting the stage for that, and that's one of the things that happens when somebody I don't even like that word, retirement, but it's a context, right, I don't you, I suspect you all probably don't either but but preparing for what's my next, what do I, what do I want to create next, and laying that foundation. And I've seen people go from working and then they whatever that meant career, so on and then they just stop and they haven't developed their hobbies, they haven't developed other relationships and so on, and they're miserable in that next stage because they haven't transitioned. So so that's. The idea is to get people thinking about this and just starting to have a conversation about what aging really means and how to not just age and thrive, really thrive and not dread it. I hear, I hear people in their 40s and 30s even talking about how old they're getting, and I'm thinking to myself oh man you know, complaining about their aches and pains.
Speaker 1:and I'm just you know, be careful of your words.
Speaker 2:Yes, your words and what you're, yes, yeah, I mean the older years can be really great. Great years could be wonderful time. I mean, your kids are out of the house, maybe you don't have a full time job to go to and you can really do what you want to do. You know, if you wanted to paint, if you wanted to write, you can write. You can do anything really the skies don't live.
Speaker 1:It is, it is, and I know, for me personally, I mean I just feel like the, the, the, the wisdom that comes along with being on the earth, you know bunch of decades, and the piece that I found with age. I think and I hear a lot of people talking about that and I think that confidence and all you know, all of that, that just in the stuff that falls away, that wasn't really important and then not caring so much about what other people think, and that a lot of that falls away and starts to free you up in ways and free up your energy in ways that were are very surprising.
Speaker 2:And you can keep up with the Joneses anymore. And you can, you know, get up and ask yourself every day what am I here to do today?
Speaker 3:Mm, hmm, yes, yes, yes, time for spiritual growth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah. So. So, Becky people you're doing spiritual counseling as well, so we'll we'll put that in the show notes, as far as where people can find you, yes you all have a website, or maybe you guys, you all think about what you want to put out there. People are interested in contacting you email or whatever and we can.
Speaker 2:Okay, great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, put that forward. I really have enjoyed this conversation. I knew it was going to be. When you reached out to me, I was like, oh yeah, this and I feel like we just have you know it's the tip of the iceberg thing. Yes, and I really I look forward to hearing maybe we can check back in in six months or so I look forward to hearing about this class and and how, how, because I'm sure that that will you know, you'll learn, you'll learn things and you'll tweak things, and that that will just really become something that's very popular with people to take.
Speaker 2:It's a wonderful, wonderful class, wonderful way to really introduce people to elder hood.
Speaker 1:Yes, and your, your books and all that will get that up on the show notes as well. So far there on Amazon, yes, Okay, so we'll make sure that we'll point the direction to them as well. Thank you Once again. Thank you so much, really appreciate it, and it's very comforting to know that you all are in your corner of the world doing your, doing your work and helping to make the world a better place. Oh, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:All right everybody. Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk soon. Bye now.
Speaker 2:Bye.
Speaker 1:Bye. If this podcast was valuable to you, it would mean so much if you could take 30 seconds to do one or all of these three things Follow or subscribe to the podcast and, while they're leaving, review, and then maybe share this with a friend if you think they'd like it In a world full of lots of distractions. I so appreciate you taking the time to listen in. Until next time, be well and take care.