The Unexpected Freedom of Life After 50 | Liam Ball on Aging, Curiosity & Reinvention

What if the second half of life isn't about slowing down... but becoming more fully yourself?

In this episode of The Wisdom Trust, Loren Crawford sits down with Liam Ball, a Canadian expat living in Maui, photographer, curiosity junkie, and self-described loving-kindness pilgrim.

Liam shares his journey through career burnout, an unexpected relationship ending, turning 60, and the surprising freedoms that come with aging. Along the way, he explores what it means to let go of old identities, stay curious, build meaningful community, embrace sexuality, and keep reinventing yourself.

This isn't a conversation about decline.

It's a conversation about possibility.

For gay men over 50, questions about purpose, belonging, friendship, visibility, relationships, and aging often become more important than ever. Liam offers a refreshing perspective: maybe this stage of life is less about holding on and more about discovering new ways to live, create, connect, and grow.

If you've been feeling stuck, uncertain, or curious about what's next, this conversation may give you a broader perspective on what's possible.

In This Episode

00:40 Welcome to The Wisdom Trust
 02:40 Leaving a successful career at 31
 05:40 A life-changing relationship ending
 11:10 Freedom, identity, and living on your own terms
 16:50 Returning to your authentic self
 19:50 Partnership vs. independence after 50
 21:10 Sexuality, creativity, and staying playful
 25:40 Health, vitality, and conscious aging
 31:40 Why the world may be kinder than we think
 33:40 Curiosity as a path to purpose
 39:40 Is becoming "invisible" actually liberating?
 43:40 Self-awareness, friendship, and personal growth
 47:40 Creating peace from the inside out

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Wisdom Trust. I'm Lauren Crawford. This podcast is for gay men over 50 who sense there's more to this stage of life than we've been taught. More connection, meaning, honesty, and possibility. Each episode is a conversation with a thoughtful gay man who's navigating the deeper questions that often emerge in the second half of life. Aging, identity, purpose, belonging, reinvention, community, love, and living consciously. These are not conversations about decline, they are conversations about becoming. I'm glad you're here. And we're going to have a little bit of an orientation before we get started. This is just a reminder that the Wisdom Trust is a podcast for men, gay men over 50. And our thing here is about community, building community, uplifting men who may be needing a little oomph and sharing our stories and keeping it real. We are not celebrities, we're not pros who've got it all figured out. We're real humans having conversations and telling our stories. So Liam describes himself as a curiosity junkie, a questioner of everything, and a loving kindness pilgrim. Love that. So in your own words, let's move forward with a little bit of a discussion of who you are. So go ahead and share with us.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Hi, everyone, and hi Lauren. Thanks for having me on. So I am a Canadian expat now living in Hawaii. I had a pretty great life in Toronto, Canada. And I had what I call an early midlife crisis at age 31. I was I was sick of my career. I decided to sell everything and move to Hawaii, which turned out to be an incredible choice. But my family thought I was nuts. I had been a jingle singer and music producer for radio and television advertising. So I don't know if people are old enough to remember Hugga Mugga Max, Maxwell House, and the Bay. I don't, I don't even think the bay exists anymore. So I I wrote a bunch of those jingles. And then I was just, you know, burnt out at 31. And I moved to Maui. And here I am almost 30 years later. I just have my 60th birthday. And it's been a it's been a it's been a ride. It's been a good ride.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

I can't imagine how hard it would have been to be burnt out at 31. Can you even imagine that?

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Well, I I loved music, and then, but after being in that industry for about six or seven years, I started feeling like a whore. Like, you know, just well, you're always working for hire, you're always dealing with people with very different perspectives. I just remember being in a Tide commercial, and they're like, Can you put a ding on the white sock? The ding, like the white sock has to look cleaner than the dirty sock, you know, and and it was sort of surreal. It was one of those moments where I'm like, I can't believe they don't like the ding for the clean sock, you know. So we tried a different ding and like a sparklier ding, and and I was just like, okay. Yeah, I needed you had it away. Yeah, a mini, mini uh reshuffle. I I reshuffled my you know, I had I was making lots of money. It was it was a strange choice to do at 31 because I just kind of gave it up. I sold my house. I had a a great house in the in the damforth, the Greek town of Toronto. Wow, and and sold it. And I actually bought a Volkswagen van from Oh, how cliche. I know, so cliche from Oshawa Volkswagen. I remember driving out to Oshawa and and bought the van and I drove it. I went to the big carrot and got some organic, you know, food and stuck it in the fridge in my Volkswagen van and said a tearful goodbye to my mom and drove off to cross country to Seattle, where I put the the van on a boat and moved to Maui.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

There you go, beautiful. So let's speed ahead a little bit to this stage of life. So part of what we're talking about here in the Wisdom Trust is the pivot or a pivot, that fabulous moment that may have shifted things yet again in your 50s. So what might have that looked like?

SPEAKER_00 5:10

So my fabulous moment was a freight train. It was a freight train moment. I had what I thought was an amazing boyfriend. I sold my house in Maui and moved in with him. We had we got two dogs together. We met right at the beginning of COVID, so 20 early 2020. And then we had I thought was a great relationship. But here's the here's the the freight train moment. January 1st, 2023, so three years in, he just had a really long look on his face, and I asked him, Hey, is is everything okay? And he said, I don't want to, I don't think we should be boyfriends anymore. And boom, like out of the blue, we had we had no conflict in our relationship, we never fought. It was very surprising. But it was it was pretty intense to to have to need to find a place in a terrible rental market to have sold a house that I owned that was wonderful. So I I was kind of houseless and with two dogs. And so that was my freight train moment without getting too you know victim-y on it. It was it was hard, it was a hard year just because it was so it was so sudden and surprising, and he didn't want to discuss it. It was over just like that, January 1st.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

So that's intense. So what shifted within you? Like what were you going through when all that hit and then the fallout and the days, weeks, months afterward?

SPEAKER_00 7:20

I have had been practicing sort of Western Buddhism for a while. So I was very aware that you know one of my teacher's favorite sayings is anything can happen at any time. So I had some tools to deal with the the suddenness of it. I'm I'm not one to argue with reality, you know. Of course, when you get dumped, you you want the person back and you want to know why, and what did I do wrong, and you know, and you kind of make it about yourself, really. So I I did have tools to to get through it, but it turned into the year of 2023 just being a lot of unpleasant, unpleasant emotions, love anger, a lot of appreciation for the dogs, which became kind of like my teddy bears, you know, they were just really loyal critters. And luckily, I found a rental that well, the year the year of 2023 was all about the lesbians coming to my aid. I had three different lesbians that rescued my ass, essentially. I got offered a beautiful place to rent temporarily that allowed for the dogs. So I think like 11 days after my boyfriend told me we were done, I was moved out into uh my own place. I think I'm straight your question, Lauren, a little bit, but it sort of launched me into a very different world, and it also was a great opportunity to look at where was I complacent, what had I sacrificed to be in the relationship? Were there any red flags? Of course, there were, but maybe I had my head in the sand to a certain extent because life was good. It it appeared it appeared from my perspective to be good, and obviously from his it wasn't. And so off I went into the into the mean, scary world with no anymore. And single singleness, I I don't mind necessarily, but I I did enjoy the partnership. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

So just to take this, you know, a fabulous moment doesn't have to be, in my view, anyway, all like whoo, you know, it can actually be hard thing that that for forces us to kind of look at ourselves, which you were just beautifully describing, and your you know, your Buddhist teachings about awareness and light's gonna throw stuff at you. You know, that's just the reality, right? And you know, we we can get sucked into being a victim of all that, and sometimes we just need to be in that mode for a while. But I I love the way that you're describing the changes that were happening within you. So, what did that experience give you freedom from? So something brought you into that relationship, you felt like it was going well, clearly the other person didn't, and and then it ended. So, was is there a sense of something in you that you became free from in the in the outcome of the end of that relationship?

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Absolutely. I don't regret anything about being with him, but when you're with someone, you make compromises, which I fully expect to. And his world is very buttoned down. Uh, you know, like I couldn't have my kettle on the kitchen counter, I had to put it away every time, just goofy things like that. I feel I feel like I sacrificed how I like to live. And by the way, technically it was his his condo that that we were living in. So I I honor that it was his, we didn't own it together. And I had big ideas of building a house sort of out in the countryside in Maui, which never happened, but it's fine. You know, I I got into this rental, and so I I did taste this little bit of freedom of I know this sounds dumb, but I never made my bed. I just I didn't, you know, I didn't grow up making my bed. He always had to make the with with my boyfriend, like the the bed had to be made and the and all these stupid pillows propped up like HGTV, like where it's not even looking comfortable or whatever. I just love it. I'm like, I first of all I had to buy a mattress from Costco, and you know, I I bought some cute bedding from Target, and and I just didn't make my bed. And it it's not making your bed again. Yay, it seemed like a revolutionary act. And I actually do make my bed now because I like the order of it, but yeah, uh kind of like you know, when you move out, when you first move out of your house, you want to start smoking because you weren't allowed to for so long.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

So yeah, I was a non-bed maker my whole entire life, and you know, as a mostly single person for most of my life, it no one was gonna worry about that. But when I had company I knew was coming over or whatever, or you know, company coming over, I you know, I would think of the bed. And it was only in the last few years when I got deeper into coaching, and this example of not making your bed came up. And I felt like like, what kind of person can call themselves a professional when their bed's unmade? And I'm like, so ever since then I've been making my bed, it's kind of weird. This this the little things that shift us, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Yeah, yeah, and you can you can reframe that too. I mean, you might make the argument the bed is a nest and the nest needs to be not orderly, it needs to be scrunched in and comfy the way a dog, you know, the way a dog would think of a bed.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

So yeah, the other thing, you know, I think that we can take from from that, and it's maybe just a microcosm of that that thing is, you know, from an Ayurvedic perspective, one of the things, and it's not just Ayurveda, but that's something I'm familiar with, is when you look in someone's house, like how the house is looking, right? That's usually a good indication of what's going on with the amount of scatteredness in their head, right? So if they've got a lot of Nevada energy, things can look really scattered. So the house might be a little bit untidy or a little bit, you know, disorderly, that sort of thing. And so even an unmade bed may be some sort of representation of something that's unsettled, you know, within us.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Yeah, that could be. And I used to love arguing that messy people were more creative because they their priorities were like thinking about their next art project rather than fucking wiping the counter a hundredth of times in the kitchen, putting the kettle in the cupboard. And and most of my boyfriends have been like my first boyfriend who whom I love dearly is French Canadian, and we always used to like say, Oh, French Canadians are so clean and tidy. And he was, he was just immaculate, and I always seem to be attracted to these people where you know I'm sort of Aquarian, and I mean, look, I'm I'm renovating this house, you know, it's like kind of in the shambles right now, but it's going to be it's going to be orderly eventually. So as I get older, I do appreciate order, and and I feel it's more ad it's more adult-y to to maintain some kind of order.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

It's part of our evolution.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

I'm working, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Yeah, yeah. So was there any sort of that shift away and moving onward from that that relationship? Were you able to give yourself permission to do things differently? And if so, what?

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Yeah, I think certainly when I traveled, I so Maui is a very small community, which means you just don't get much action, shall I say? I mean, you could, but it's all it's all people you know, or it's tourists or something. So right after the the the break, I went to visit my mom in Florida. And I always have such fun time in Florida. I don't, you know, I had a little bit of sexual freedom. I had maybe a kind of like a psychic freedom to be more wacky. So I, you know, I'm like kind of a wacky person, and the boyfriend who terminated me or called me was just very orderly and very conventional and you know, kind of offended at some of my out thereness. So I I definitely felt it's kind of coming back. It felt like coming back to the real Liam. Rather than, but like I said, there's there's compromise. So we always want to meet, maybe mirror our partner's energy in a certain way to respect. You know, I I did respect my partner. I wanted to respect his conventionality. I also wanted respect back for my non-conventionality. There are definitely, despite the year being painful, there were some amazing uh freedom, freedom aspects. Yeah. They're kind of slow to discover, you know, and and actually they kind of point you back to how you how I was close closing in with the relationship. So there was kind of like, oh yeah, I I fully acknowledge that there are trade-offs to having a partner and there are trade-offs to being single, and there are amazing things about having a partner and amazing things about being sick single. So you just have to kind of be like, okay, oh, now I'm back to this, these amazing opportunities.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Yeah. Talk about those, you know, because I think a lot of us believe that being in a in a relationship's gonna solve a lot of our you fill it in, unsettledness, unhappiness, misery, blah, blah, blah. It's gonna somehow a relationship's gonna fix everything, right? And then so you had a relationship, you you don't have a relationship. What what are you free to be now? You said you're free to be Liam in a new way, or or but what else is going on there?

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Feel lucky that I don't always feel the need to have a a partner, that I amuse myself very easily, and I don't feel lonely. There's a sweet community of people here on Maui that have my back and I have their back. And really, this the dogs. I mean, I'm just sort of a dog dad that I I love doting on them.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

And well, I know when we talked a few days ago, you did have a little bit of of a salty kind of answer about where you're at at this stage in your life. And I thought maybe I would edge you in that direction. So, do you know what I'm talking about?

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Salt, oh, so being sort of being more sexually uh Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So, one of the I'll give you a fun story, which this is something I could not have done with being in a relationship, is I decided I want to learn how to crochet. You know, I'd always I'd been a knitter, but uh I'd never learned how to crochet. So I joined a gay crochet group on Facebook, and like it was it was just cool. It's all these gay guys from all over the world, you know, showing their projects and stuff. And then we started this chat because Facebook is very G-rated, and on the chat, it's like I just love how gay guys will just go there when it's not public-facing. I started wanting to make all these nasty garments like G strings, and then I was like modeling them and just like putting the raunchiest photos in the private chat. And like sure enough, other people would would you know start putting their kind of raunchy items and you know, modeling really see-through bathing suits where you nothing is left to the imagination. And I had so much fun, like I just thought trust gay guys to take, you know, like a grandmotherly type of craft. And honestly, it became very yeah, and then there was a Discord group where they would there would be naked gay, like people would just join in like once a week for naked knitting or naked crocheting, people would turn their camera. And literally it was it kind of wasn't sexual, but people would be knitting totally naked. And then I mean, I just thought the world is so cool. Yeah. And before the internet, you know, like how how would I find you know a naked knitter on Maui? I I don't there's probably I'm probably the only one. Yeah, well, you never know, but so back to back to where you're you're pointing me is I I what I love about what I call what I consider gay men and their creativity is that your sex your sexual enjoyment can can veer all over the place, consensually, but it can be it can be fantasy, you know, like I just I like to think how when you're younger it's all about sucking and fucking and kind of like this the stock, you know, porn progression of how sex works. And as you get older, you know, maybe your dick's not quite as hard as or reliably hard. So you say, like, oh, let's, you know, knit a disgusting thong, and you know, so I I feel like there's a whole world of engaging ways to involve your sexuality and your that are not conventional and that I certainly would not have been able to do that with my last party. One one last thing. Like, I've always wanted to go to Palm Springs at one of those to one of those really slutty hotels and just like have three days of debauchery. I mean, I just think it would be so fun. Anyway, I I don't know if it's gonna happen, but I do think it's cool. Right now. Well, old men are not I don't feel shoved to the side uh in my 60s. I feel like there's there's younger men. First of all, I don't need to be with younger men, I like older men, but I I don't feel like my possibilities are that diminished, quite frankly. Nice. I feel you know, there's like silver haired daddies in porn, and there's like 30-year-old guys that like the daddies, and then there's you know, honking bear daddies that want I mean, I just feel like, yeah, I I don't feel concerned that I'm less sexually valuable to myself or find out more about the wisdom trust at school school.com slash the dash wisdom dash trust slash about.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

Our webpage is thewisdomtrust.com on substack or the wisdom trust.substack.com. And if you're not watching this on YouTube, youtube.com slash at the wisdom trust five oh. Beautiful. And that's part of this next little bit about leveling. So, like how we you mentioned, you know, the Buddhism that you've immersed yourself in and this idea of being sort of sexually re-liberated at this stage in your life. Any more around this idea of how you stay energized and vital at this age?

SPEAKER_00 25:50

I think so. I've been again, it's almost like a hobby. It's fun to experiment with intermittent fasting and you know, ketogenic eating and cooking. And I used to be a very annoying vegetarian, you know, like I couldn't have I couldn't have broth. I couldn't have and I actually so we're very lucky on Maui that we have the local cattle. We have the Maui Cattle Company, those just I mean, these cows, you see them, they're on these beautiful hillsides eating grass. So we have great grass-fed beef that's locally sourced, it's not factory farmed. So I kind of jumped from vegetarianism into Maui burgers, essentially. But I think that's a really fascinating way to spend one's time is exploring ways to promote our our ongoing health. Um for me, it does, you know, I like to do non-pharmaceutical methods of of healing. I love using diet exploration to keep my weight, you know, I'm I'm definitely probably 10 pounds overweight, but I luckily managed to sort of maintain because it's hard for you know, food food is tricky because it it is one of the ongoing pleasures. And as you get older and maybe you're getting closer to retirement, food is like, oh well, let's eat something. I mean discipline is is really essential, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

And and often that word discipline is construed as a negative and punitive, but it's really about being good to yourself, right? Back when I was studying Ayurveda, again, that's come up twice. That's so weird, but I remember the instructor talking about how often we pay more attention to the gasoline type that we're putting into our car than the fuel we're putting into our body, you know, and eating can just become very habitual, you know, and then it's like I like this, I don't like that. And then we lose that whole creative element. I love cooking and I I cook really simply. I don't I don't follow ornate crazy recipes or anything. But for me, that that act of cooking is really an expression of creativity. But I agree, the diet, how we're fueling our bodies and recognizing that that does need to change as we age, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:34

It's it's not same old it's not static, no, because I don't keep the weight off as easily as I used to. And one also one great thing about cooking these days is YouTube is just incredible. I mean, talk about culinary rabbit holes. I mean, I've gone down the Koji rabbit hole and I've you know fermented my own koji. And we're just so lucky to live in this in this era of unlimited access to very bizarre information. So for for me as a curiosity junkie, that's I'm I'm just like in in heaven with all that.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Yeah. Obviously the pros and the cons, because we can also get sucked into the vortex of negativity. And again, this to me comes back to the this idea of choice, right? If we're choosing to get sucked into a reality that's incredibly negative, adversarial, my color is better than your color. And I'm talking about colors not just in the skin, but in a whole bunch of political parties, you know what I mean? Like all of that stuff, religions, yoga styles. Oh my god, you know, like it can be so, so divisive. And yet at the same time, you can go on to the internet and literally find everything. You know, like everything is there. And if you're if you take the time to build it into whatever, you could, but the reality is none of us have that much time. So that's where we want to find communities and guides and leaders and teachers and coaches that can sort of expedite the discoveries, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:17

Right. Fun little story when I was visiting my sister who lives in North Carolina. Now I go there for Christmas, and we do all these hikes and have a great time. And one of our topics of discussion was that a friend of mine had said, Oh, the world is so full of hate. And I'm like, I I don't see that the world is full of hate. So just for fun, everywhere we're everywhere we went in Charlotte, like we'd go to a brew pub, and you know, people would be playing checkers and you know, and music on. I'm like, wow, this everyone is so full of hate here. I mean, just look, you know, as a joke. And you know, go into a 7-Eleven and there's this, you know, a guy, chic with a turban behind the counter, and and you have a beautiful exchange with him buying your beer or whatever, and I'd say, like, wow, there's so much hate. I mean, it just it just isn't true. Yeah, like the story might tell us that the world is full of hate, but but the real experience of it, and it was kind of a powerful, fun trick.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

I would challenge people who are listening or and watching this to do that. Because the the idea that the world is a hateful and miserable place is a construct that's serving us in interests to divide us and keep us at odd and feeling powerless. So, what what better way to manipulate us than have us feel all disempowered? Because it's so scary out there. Shit happens. Yeah, there's there's crazy stuff that happens, but that's a fraction of of the amazing stuff that's happening every day.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Yeah. It was just fun, like it made us all laugh every time, you know, like, oh, a neighbor would come out and help you, you know, push your car or something like that. Wow, this this world is so full of just like that. I love it. I mean, it was it's absolutely good practice.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

Yeah. You've already talked about this and tapped into some of it, this idea about having fun at this stage in life. So shed some more. So you're you're you're knitting, crocheting G strings or jog straps, or however you're describing them. That would be fun to see, wink, wink, nod, nod. You know, you're you're doing physical things, you're hiking with your sister when you visit, you're traveling. What else? You're fantasizing about a debauchery, three days in Palm Springs. So what what else is is is on the fun side of you at this stage in your life?

SPEAKER_00 33:00

I so I've always had this sort of maybe it's like a primal male thing. Like I've always wanted to build a cabin or something. I've never built a cabin, but I bought this pretty much original condition 1932 house on Maui, and I'm learning, I'm fixing, I'm renovating it or restoring it. I want to restore it to how it might have looked. So that's almost 100 years old, 90 some odd years. And again, YouTube, I mean, I I redid all the hot and cold plumbing I installed, you know. So I'm learning everything from scratch. Wow. And YouTube has these incredible tutorials where it'll be 20 minutes long of how to plumb in a kitchen sink and you know, make sure you do you do this and make sure you don't, you know, don't do this. And it's it can be frustrating at times, but it's kind of like my new hobby. And I did my first tiling job, which was scary. I don't recommend it, but I did it, you know, I I did a pretty good job. So that's kind of my and the the house needs everything, like every every square inch, you know, needs needs some work. So it's gonna be a multi-year long process, but I like the idea of just um, you know, I paid a licensed electrician to put a new electrical box with the new breakers, but I've been running all the the new electric circuits for the kitchen and not recommended to do that, but you know, I I test it and everything, and so that that brings me a lot of joy and satisfaction, and actually save tapping into the curiosity and then and then figuring out, well, let's figure this out, right? Yeah, yeah. And then also as AI might potentially in robotics will eat all our jobs. I think learning how to make things is or just learning how to do physical things is going to be a good a good survival skill. I'm I'm I'm not really an Armageddonist, but uh, you know, it's cool to have some skills that you know, like wow, I I know how to do that now.

SPEAKER_01 35:34

Well, and the activity that's involved in the doing, right? So I think too at this stage in life, maybe not when you're in your 50s, it's one thing, but the body does start to change a lot. And I've been doing yoga for 30 years, so I know that well. I mean, you have to honor the stage of the body, but you also I think need to figure out what what practices should I be doing now. And if you're not in any of that stuff, just this what you're describing, like get active around house repairs and maybe things you have no clue how to do and figure it out, right? Like, because again, you're using the the mind in a creative way. When you finish a project, because I had property for years, I know when you finish a project, there's such a level of satisfaction, even if it's not perfect, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:20

You know, yeah, and there's a lot of body parts that you're using. Like I I got this under counter oven installed, and you're like literally crawling on the floor, getting up and going down, getting up down, like hundreds of times. And then I remember like the next day thinking, I feel so stiff, like I did a huge workout, and I just like what what happened? And then I realized, yeah, because when you're in in a project, you're focused on goddamn it, getting the wires hooked on, but you're you're doing a lot of uh physical movement that you're not even aware of.

SPEAKER_01 36:57

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

Feels wholesome, feels wholesome.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

Love that.

SPEAKER_00 37:04

I grew up with with such a white collar, like sissy. I mean, like, I didn't change tires, you know. I'm like I I went to a private school, I was like just just a terrible brat. So now I'm kind of like, okay. Butching it out. Time to get muddy and and build some shit, man. You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

My dad used to get so frustrated with me because I had no desire to learn anything about how to do anything with my car. I could change the oil, but you know, anything else, and like, hey, and he'd just be like, Well, you can join. And I'm like, no. Yeah, I didn't like that. So good. So tell us a little bit about, you know, you've you've got a lot going on. You seem to be a very inspired guy. We started this out talking about the end of a relationship, and here we're talking about all this amazing creativity and this wonderful energy that you've got. So, what kind of insight might you give to someone who's, you know, in this age group, over 50, and maybe they're they are feeling a little bit, you know, invisible? That's a word that came up a lot in some of the research calls that I was doing. And I was, it didn't surprise me, but it also surprised me the frequency that it came up, right? This this idea of being invisible or stuck or or feeling uncertain about what's you know what the next bit is gonna look like. What would you share in terms of your journey uh with anyone who might be in that little bit of a headspace?

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Well, I think invisibility is kind of cool. So here's hear me out here a little bit. So just yesterday, actually, I I was thinking about when I was younger, being gay was like so. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and it was a little bit scary. Like it wasn't so easy to come out. I didn't come out until I was 26. But being gay felt like a thing, like it was actually kind of cool. Like, oh, you're gay, it's sort of unusual. You go through the family drama or drama, as they say in Canada, of coming out. And it felt like, oh, I'm I'm you know, I'm a young gay man. I I have to go to like Church Street, Church in Wellesley in Toronto, and you know, go to the go to the Martinez, like, you know, and it felt like a like really sort of like a an identity, but almost like like a car, like, oh, I drive a Mercedes, like I'm I'm like a like a glitzy gay, like it it felt like a thing. Now, as I just had my 60th birthday, I remember seeing two older gay guys at a restaurant and thinking, wow, they they don't look gay, and I don't mean that as like you know, their gayness is being erased by society, it's just like, oh, there's two old guys having dinner. And I think there's something kind of sweet about dropping the thing that's being gay, because I'm like, what does it even mean to me to be gay anymore? All it really is is that I know what turns me on sexually and and it's men, I know where my heart goes romantically is with men, and that's kind of it. I don't feel like I need to wear certain clothes or go to certain events. There's kind of a liberation in in that invisibility, and then I also like like to I'm wearing my heated rivalry shirt. Yay! And I like to kind of be like, is that some straight guy wearing a gay shirt? You know, not that I'm trying to act straight or anything, but honestly, I don't even feel like I just feel like I'm I'm a human living a life, and it feels kind of liberating to not be, oh, I have to be a gay guy. Like, what does that mean? So I I would suggest to people that are feeling invisible is find something that that it inspires you and that you love to do. Don't choose something because you think like, oh, I'm an old gay, I need to love antiques. If you don't love antiques, don't love antiques, you know. Really like find, you know, and I know it's not easy for some people. I think is the is it ikigai is the the Japanese term for finding that thing that kind of like gets going. I might have the the word wrong, but yeah, and don't worry about visibility. It maybe if you need if you feel like you need to be seen, the part of you that needs to be seen should be examined.

SPEAKER_01 42:32

What's your favorite way of doing that kind of examination?

SPEAKER_00 42:36

I like friends that will bust me on my stuff. You know, they're all self-examined. And I have two friends that that definitely would would bust me on stuff.

SPEAKER_01 42:54

What does that conversation look like?

SPEAKER_00 42:58

It's usually lovingly, well, so my I have a a Venezuelan ex and then I have my Buddhist girlfriend, and she's she'll she will lovingly point things out to me, and my Venezuelan ex will not lovingly point things out to me, which is you know, very direct. And I appreciate you know both of those. But I think it ties into my curiosity too. If if I am repeating a pattern, which could be a thinking pattern, yeah, you know, because if I'm spinning in in a negative, negative thought, which does happen, you know, especially with being dumped, I've I've I can very easily go into like, why did you do that? You know, that was fraud. You you know, he defrauded my heart. There's all kinds of of loops. That I can go into and essentially uh the the key is uh a little self-reflection is like, is this does this feel good? I'll ask myself, like Liam, why why are you doing this? This doesn't feel good. So yeah, lifelong work. It's lifelong work.

SPEAKER_01 44:22

For me, I think uh a big part of it is cultivating stillness because when this thing is constantly going, you're just you're in that spiral. You're on that hamster wheel, and then you get into the negative vortex, it's just like, oh my gosh. So cultivating stillness, you know, doing some breath awareness, just getting into your body is so, so, so helpful. And people will say, like, I've tried that, but my mind won't get quiet. And it's like, you need to just give it some time and be okay with the mind being busy. Just watch it, watch your mind. That's all you have to do, is just watch it. And it'll get frustrated and it'll slow down. And that doesn't happen instantly, but it will. The other thing I think that's really helpful is journaling. Like if you're feeling a certain, certain way, start just writing. Just write, don't stop, don't edit, don't think, just write because what comes out needs to come out. It's like a purging that can happen. I encourage anyone that's listening that might be in a bit of a place, you know, those we've we've shared about three or four things here that that can be really, really helpful, right?

SPEAKER_00 45:29

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

And you can always knit a really raunchy thong to get your go go find some wack-a-doodle thing on YouTube or join a Facebook group and then get into the private chats and just see it's all about the private chats. You can open up, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Love it. So, any anything else you'd like to share before we sort of wrap up this this time together?

SPEAKER_00 46:02

I am yeah, I'm I'm really grateful that I have safety and good health and good friends and good food. I know a lot of people in the world don't have those things, but I think it's my responsibility to bring to allow that all the amazing things that I have been offered in this life to the energy that I that I broadcast. I think that's uh a way to help the world. I think our energy is, you know, war war is within. I should say peace, peace begins within. And so that's yeah, I mean, and I I I will, you know, I'm at war with myself a number of times during the day. So peacemaking is is it's it's hard work and we we owe it to ourselves to do our best.

SPEAKER_01 47:14

Yeah, I think in my experience, in my journey of living this life and continuing to unfold, I think it's a continual unfoldment until our very last breath is you know, doing taking the time to do that inner work is so vital because then as we shine more from the inside out, then that just ripples. And that can't be a bad thing, right? But if we're looking for all the external kind of stimuli to make us happy and content, that's fleeting. You know, it it it can't be ultimately fulfilling because your soul is inside, right? And we need more tapping in. Yeah. And I think this is the time of life to do that tapping in in a very focused way. And if you don't know how, stick around and we'll we'll we we'll continue in these podcasts and in the supporting commentaries, which I'll talk about in a minute, how to do some of that stuff. But I wanted to share this, your blog site. If people wanted to find out more about how you put yourself out there in the world, they could look into that. Any any shares on what you post there?

SPEAKER_00 48:21

So you won't find pictures of me modeling my my thong there. That's I'm an amateur photographer and an architecture lover. So I use that website to when I can, I photograph really cool houses here and post them there. It's it's kind of like a I don't know if you remember Dwell magazine when we had cool magazines. It's sort of like my online version of Dwell for Maui.

SPEAKER_01 48:50

Nice, nice, very good. So people can check that out. And if they want to, if you all want to plug into more commentary on these types of issues, my reflections on some of this stuff, other videos. We have a substack at the Wisdom Trust uh site there on the screen. And for those of you listening, this was also available on a YouTube channel. So we have our Wisdom Trust 5.0 YouTube channel where you can see the visuals of these recordings and also some other videos that I will upload from time to time. So using all of these and other social media sites and as we grow to create community, to create comments and engagement, and giving us, you know, different forums for you know connection, because connectivity is a really important thing. It's part of beating and defeating feeling isolated, feeling invisible, and feeling alone. And even if you're not feeling isolated, invisible, and alone, you showing up is is service. I personally believe this stage in life is there are huge rewards to serving, as you were saying, how you how you work with your energy to put it out there, how we sort of give back at those of us who are in positions to do so. It's very helpful, you know, on a whole bunch of levels energetically and just in terms of feeling good. So yeah, I want to thank you so much, Liam, for for being here and and sharing your journey and inspiring folks to knit and crochet and go find those sites for the modeling.

SPEAKER_00 50:38

Yeah, I want to thank you, Lauren, for uh for this project because I know it takes a lot of work and you're putting yourself out there with little expectation of of monetary return. And so I appreciate that. This is you know, it feels like you're you're you're very generous. It's very generous for you to be pull it putting this together. So thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 51:04

Yeah, and we'll see where it goes. My my view from this, from you know, a growth point of view, is to start to give other opportunities for engagement, right? And stick around. And I'll be launching the website today, actually. You'll be this won't be live for a while, but that's my project today. So a lot of a lot of things going on. So yeah, I look forward to it growing. And and for people like you showing up and especially in these early days, that to me is is such a gift. And it and it just shows me that the universe brings us together in ways that we can't fully understand. So thanks again, and we'll be talking soon, I'm sure. All right. Aloha, everyone. Find out more about the wisdom trust at school school.com slash the dash wisdom dash trust slash about. Our webpage is thewisdomtrust.com on Substack or the Wisdom Trust.substack.com. And if you're not watching this on YouTube, youtube.com slash at the wisdom trust 50.