2021-03-04_What_Will_They_Say_About_Your_Life_When_You_Die_
00:00:00.000 | The LA Kings holiday pack is back. The perfect gift for the hockey fan in your life. A three
00:00:04.800 | game pack starts at just $159 and includes a holiday blanket. Buy today and you'll receive
00:00:10.160 | an additional game for free. Don't miss out. Visit lakings.com/holiday today.
00:00:15.200 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:18.720 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now,
00:00:22.320 | while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua,
00:00:26.400 | and today we're going to focus on living a meaningful life. And we're going to do it
00:00:31.040 | in the context of speaking about death. Woke up early this morning and got the news that
00:00:36.640 | a friend of mine, someone I've known my entire life, passed away this morning, early this morning
00:00:41.280 | due to COVID. And kind of the normal complications from COVID, had been in the hospital for the last
00:00:47.040 | few weeks, been on a ventilator for a couple of weeks and things took a turn, you know,
00:00:50.320 | just steadily declining. And he passed away early this morning. Wasn't entirely unexpected
00:00:56.000 | for reasons that I'll elaborate on in just a moment. And so I've been thinking a lot about
00:00:59.680 | his death this morning. And it's something that is impactful for me personally, although probably not
00:01:07.840 | in the way that you would expect. And I'll share with you why his death is so impactful to me.
00:01:13.520 | And I'll share with you why in the context of talking about money and living a life well,
00:01:23.680 | the context of financial planning, because it's appropriate and it's part of even
00:01:29.360 | what his life means to me. And so I want to share this with you as a way of even just for me
00:01:36.560 | articulating some things that I have thought about for many years. My friend's death this
00:01:44.240 | morning is quite painful to me, but not in the ways that you might imagine. He was in his mid
00:01:50.240 | to late 60s, which is not particularly young, right? It wasn't such a tragic thing like when
00:01:57.120 | you go to the death of a 10 year old or something like that, go to a funeral. But I'll explain in
00:02:02.880 | just a moment why his death for me is very painful. And again, it's not why you might think.
00:02:08.800 | I don't generally mind going to funerals. I don't want to go to them, of course not,
00:02:15.760 | none of us do. But I don't usually mind going to funerals. I don't dread going to funerals.
00:02:20.560 | Generally, there's even times when I enjoy going to funerals. I find it very satisfying to go to
00:02:27.520 | funerals of old people. I like to go to old people funerals. I think it's very satisfying to go and
00:02:33.600 | to gather when somebody dies, to gather together with friends and family and relatives and hear
00:02:39.440 | about the meaning of that person's life. I like to listen to the stories of what Bob did for so
00:02:45.680 | and so or what so and so did for this person. I like to listen to those stories and think about
00:02:51.440 | how I can apply the lessons in my own life. I like to go to funerals because I think about my own
00:02:57.040 | death and I think about what my funeral is going to be like, and it helps me to keep clearly in
00:03:01.760 | mind the fact that the days are short and none of us knows when our last day is. I don't find
00:03:07.840 | funerals particularly discomforting because of my Christian worldview. I have a firm confidence that
00:03:15.040 | God is the one who ordained death. He's the one who is on both sides of death. He's the one who
00:03:21.280 | has conquered death at the cross and proved his power over death by raising Jesus Christ from the
00:03:29.200 | dead. So that brings me tremendous confidence that God is there. I have confidence in God's
00:03:34.640 | sovereignty over the world and that he controls all things. He knows the date of all of our death.
00:03:40.720 | And so for me, I don't have any fear over death, and I recognize that death is a universal
00:03:47.120 | experience, right? All of us will pass through death at some point. And so when I think about
00:03:54.240 | that, I don't find death particularly troubling. It is often tragic and difficult when we go to
00:04:00.080 | those deaths that are tragic. Usually young people or people who died in a particularly tragic way
00:04:05.760 | where we feel the pain of death much more intensely. Those are hard. Those are harder.
00:04:10.960 | But even in those times, my Christian faith gives me the comfort to know that whether or not I
00:04:17.360 | understand God is in control and in the fullness of time, all things will be revealed. And since
00:04:22.960 | he's a good God and I can trust him, then I don't need to worry about the temporary, the pain,
00:04:29.280 | the things that seem tragic. And I've done enough philosophical homework that I'm not bothered by
00:04:34.880 | intellectually, I'm not bothered by the difficulty of evil, etc. Those intellectual questions are
00:04:40.720 | fully resolved in my mind. Doesn't mean that there's not pain associated, of course, but
00:04:44.560 | the intellectual questions, the philosophical questions are clearly and fully resolved.
00:04:49.360 | And so I don't mind going to funerals. In fact, again, when they're old people funerals
00:04:53.600 | or mature people's funerals, I generally like to go to them because I like to go and remember my
00:04:59.920 | friends or my family members. I like to hear the stories and I like to reflect on the meaning of
00:05:04.480 | life. I like to reflect on what life meant, what this person's life meant. And at a funeral, you
00:05:10.960 | get to see in a very clear way what this person's life meant as people gather together to celebrate
00:05:16.560 | their life. And so I don't find usually a deep level of pain when somebody dies the way that
00:05:26.000 | other things are. Now, it's harder, of course, when someone's close to you. I'm not saying that
00:05:30.080 | I don't experience the emotions that we all do, just saying that I'm not particularly bothered by
00:05:35.360 | thinking about death or funerals. And so when my friend passed away, it didn't give me pain
00:05:41.520 | over the fact that he had died. What gave me pain was the fact that I feel like he almost never
00:05:51.040 | really lived. And that's a harsh and difficult thing to say about somebody that you've known
00:05:57.520 | literally your entire life. And somebody who died in their mid-late 60s, 67, 68 years old,
00:06:06.960 | something like that. It's a hard and harsh thing to say, and yet it is a true thing.
00:06:11.520 | It sounds extraordinarily uncharitable to say something so harsh about a friend,
00:06:19.520 | someone that you care about. And yet it is true. I feel like my friend wasted his life.
00:06:25.600 | And so as I've been reflecting this morning, I've been considering why do I think that,
00:06:30.080 | and is it true? First of all, is it true or am I just being uncharitable? But is it true? And
00:06:35.440 | if I think that, why? And what do I need to do to not waste my life? Because I don't want to arrive
00:06:41.040 | at the end of my days and have someone say, "Well, Joshua died," from whatever,
00:06:50.000 | and I feel like Joshua wasted his life. To me, that's utterly unacceptable. I don't want that.
00:06:57.040 | And I doubt you do either. And so it's important to reflect on the examples that we see around us
00:07:04.480 | and consider them. And usually I think it's very productive for us to consider the examples of
00:07:09.600 | people that have won, people that have been successful. We don't necessarily always go
00:07:13.600 | and study failures if we want to learn how to run a business. You go and find people who have
00:07:16.480 | been successful with business. Go and find people who have been successful as parents and study them
00:07:20.240 | and model their behavior. But I also feel like it is actually valuable to study failures. It is
00:07:26.560 | actually valuable to study a business that goes into bankruptcy and say, "Why did this end up
00:07:30.240 | there?" It is valuable, and I do it, to study a parent who winds up isolated from their children
00:07:36.800 | or with a bad relationship with their children and say, "How did it happen?" And I try to ask
00:07:41.360 | the questions, even when I can and when it's appropriate, "What did you do? What happened here?
00:07:45.360 | Do you have any understanding and insight?" And so when somebody arrives at the end of their life
00:07:51.520 | and someone who knows them well and who loves them much and who has known them their entire life
00:07:57.120 | thinks to themselves, "What a waste of a life." To me, that's an example worth studying. So I want
00:08:04.080 | to tell you about it even as I process it. I want to be quick to start with some of the things that
00:08:09.920 | I do appreciate about my friend. First, of course, he and I had a very long relationship. There are
00:08:16.240 | pictures of him shaking me on his knee when I was a baby. Shaking me on his knee, that didn't come
00:08:22.080 | out quite right. Bouncing me on his knee when I was a baby. And so I have known him literally my
00:08:27.600 | entire life. And we have always lived somewhat close to each other, even to the point where
00:08:34.240 | for a period of years I was his next door neighbor. I've always known him. I've always
00:08:38.480 | had a good relationship. He was in the church that I grew up in and I've had a relationship
00:08:42.960 | with him for many years. And so it wasn't something where I was far from him. I've never
00:08:49.120 | had any conflict with him personally. There's never been a point in time where we've had an
00:08:54.000 | argument or we've had a fight or anything like that. My friend was not particularly into conflict.
00:08:58.480 | He was more of a person who would turn from conflict and shut down rather than, he wasn't a
00:09:05.360 | fighter. He was somebody who would avoid conflict. My friend was always very nice. He was always
00:09:11.120 | kind. I've never heard him speak harshly to anybody. He was generally kind and he was sometimes
00:09:19.760 | helpful. He would do things from time to time to help. He was the kind of person where if you
00:09:23.840 | invited him over he would bring over something for dinner, etc. But he was always a loner. And
00:09:30.480 | I worked hard for years when he was my next door neighbor. I spent a lot of time with him
00:09:35.040 | trying to understand a little bit about his past. And we would spend a lot of time together. I'd
00:09:39.360 | probe him to try to understand about his past. I think there was some pain and some trauma
00:09:44.000 | from his childhood that was probably never resolved. He never shared with me all the
00:09:48.800 | details, but the signs were there indicating that there was some pain, some significant pain that
00:09:54.080 | he endured. He was in the military as a young man, got out of the military, and after the military
00:10:00.160 | just basically worked a series of jobs, a series of very simple jobs. He went from one thing to
00:10:06.160 | another. He wasn't a drifter. He was a loyal person. It wasn't somebody who would just be
00:10:10.080 | switching jobs every six months. He was generally competent enough at the things that he would do.
00:10:14.720 | He would develop the basic skills that he needed and he would be basically competent at what he
00:10:19.840 | was doing. But he never particularly had a lot of ambition. He never had a lot of drive. He wasn't
00:10:25.280 | a go-getter. And so he wasn't particularly driven to enhance himself, to grow. He was always quiet,
00:10:36.160 | reserved, was not the kind of person who would talk a lot. He wasn't the kind of person – and
00:10:41.280 | he wasn't weird about it. You know, if I had him over for dinner, I could get him talking.
00:10:45.120 | If we would spend time together, I could get him talking. But he wasn't someone who would
00:10:48.320 | stand up and, you know, take charge. He wasn't somebody who would ever take leadership. He would
00:10:52.960 | always kind of pull back and pull back and not press forward. With his career, which is important
00:11:02.000 | for what I have to say from a financial planning context, again, he never really developed a career.
00:11:07.360 | He worked a series of jobs at one point in time. I think it's one of his longer running jobs. He
00:11:11.920 | worked as a washing machine repair tech. There was a business that repaired appliances and he
00:11:16.640 | worked as a technician repairing appliances. He was good. He understood things. He had a good
00:11:20.960 | mechanical mind and he was able to do that. He was smart. He didn't have – I wouldn't say – I don't
00:11:27.280 | know his IQ, but he wasn't – he was the kind of person who was perfectly smart and perfectly
00:11:32.240 | normal. He wasn't slow or dim-witted in any way. He was smart. He was capable and he was capable.
00:11:40.480 | I don't know all the circumstances of his earlier life. At some point in time, he had – at one
00:11:46.000 | point in time, he had gotten a job working as an assistant for an accountant, did that for a number
00:11:50.480 | of years until the accountant moved and then he lost that job because the accountant moved.
00:11:55.360 | He got a job and then towards later in his life, when he was in his late 50s, he had gotten a job
00:12:02.240 | where he was working for a car dealership processing applications on – processing
00:12:10.000 | paperwork for the car dealership. And then he got into an interpersonal argument,
00:12:16.080 | tiff with the – his manager and he was fired from that job when he was about 60 years old.
00:12:22.480 | At that time, he didn't have much money and he was unemployed for quite a while,
00:12:28.240 | but he never developed the confidence and never had the go-gettiveness to go out and
00:12:32.800 | get another job. And this was one of the few times in my life where I strongly spoke to him and I
00:12:40.240 | tried to give him some counsel. And I became aware of the fact – financially, he would never – he
00:12:47.600 | didn't talk much about certain things. There was a point in his life where he had gone deeply into
00:12:53.200 | debt – he had – when he had had a stable income, he'd lived a modest lifestyle. He always rented a
00:12:59.360 | small room, he rented a small house, kept his expenses modest. There was a time in his life
00:13:03.920 | where he bought a bunch of cars and then he eventually realized the error of his ways and
00:13:08.000 | stopped buying all these cars. He had, I would say, certain kind of tendencies of fixation.
00:13:15.040 | I think – I personally think there's a very good chance he was somewhere on the autism spectrum
00:13:19.360 | where he would get fixated with certain things. And so, you know, he'd get fixated with audio
00:13:23.520 | equipment and buy a bunch of fancy audio equipment. And he went into credit card debt at one point in
00:13:28.080 | time with overspending, didn't work for a period of time, went into credit card debt. Then he had
00:13:32.560 | a bunch of medical debt and then later declared bankruptcy and cleared the credit card debt.
00:13:37.360 | And then after that he was living on a very small budget. He later went on and when he was 62,
00:13:44.080 | he applied for early social security, early retirement with social security.
00:13:48.160 | And I remember at the time I strongly, strongly – I don't – I have learned in life not to
00:13:55.520 | interfere in other people's affairs. I used to butt my nose into other people's business.
00:14:00.480 | These days I desperately try not to. Imperfectly, I would guess, right? When you really love someone
00:14:05.440 | and really care about them, sometimes it just feels like you have to go and speak and say what
00:14:10.240 | you think somebody needs to know or somebody needs to hear. And I don't think that's necessarily
00:14:14.640 | wrong. But in general I've just taught myself don't give my opinion unless it's asked for
00:14:20.160 | and don't give it generally unless it's paid for. Because free advice, people don't value it.
00:14:25.280 | And, you know, if they don't – if no one's asking you a question, they're not interested
00:14:29.120 | in an answer. But I remember very clearly that, again, we were close at the time. I had worked
00:14:33.840 | hard at building a relationship. I had spent a lot of time just trying to be a friend to him and
00:14:38.560 | trying to do things. And I became aware of the fact that he was going to apply for social security
00:14:45.680 | early retirement. And I begged him. I said, "Don't do it." I said, "Don't do it." I said,
00:14:50.480 | "There's nothing wrong with you. There's no reason in the world why you can't get another job."
00:14:56.240 | I said, "You desperately need to go and get a job because you need to be – have that structure to
00:15:01.840 | your life. You need work." And I said, "Financially, if you get social security early retirement,
00:15:10.240 | it's going to be a very small number. I don't know the exact number, but something on the order
00:15:14.000 | of less than – certainly less than $1,000 a month." I said, "You're going to be stuck and
00:15:18.560 | hamstrung for basically the rest of your life." I said, "Because you're going to have this tiny
00:15:24.160 | income that you've got to figure out how to survive on this tiny income, but you're not
00:15:29.120 | going to have any wiggle room. And so you're going to be trapped. You're not going to be able to have
00:15:32.960 | enough money to adjust, to grow, to change. You're going to be stuck. You're going to be trapped."
00:15:38.080 | And so I begged him not to do it. I begged him to get a job. But he didn't do it. He didn't go and
00:15:44.640 | get a job. Why is unknown. I think it was because he just didn't have the confidence to do it. He
00:15:51.040 | didn't have the personal confidence to go out and apply for a job. It's hard for people when they
00:15:57.280 | start to feel the age discrimination that people feel when they're starting to get in their 50s and
00:16:02.080 | their 60s. And it's especially hard for people – I mean, it's hard enough for people who are
00:16:05.920 | highly accomplished. But when someone is not highly accomplished, it's very difficult for them. And so
00:16:10.320 | he just never – he never kind of screwed up the courage to go out and do it. And so he got
00:16:14.960 | Social Security early retirement. And basically for – I would say that's about seven years ago now,
00:16:23.040 | maybe seven years, six to seven years – he's basically just sat. He has sat in his house and
00:16:30.800 | done nothing for six or seven years. And lo and behold, he is now dead.
00:16:37.680 | I am convinced that retirement kills so many people.
00:16:43.360 | I know that sounds brash and hyperbolic. I don't believe it is. I believe it's accurate.
00:16:50.960 | I am convinced that retirement kills people because they lose a sense of meaning, they lose
00:16:56.960 | a sense of contribution, they lose a sense of connectedness with the world. And it causes them
00:17:02.400 | – it's a downward spiral, it's a downward slide. Hear me clearly. I am not saying that you can't
00:17:09.520 | stop working for wages and do something else, right? There are certainly many people who
00:17:17.360 | reach a certain age, they turn 65 years old, or they turn 60 years old, or whatever,
00:17:23.120 | or 35 years old, who cares? Early retirement, doesn't matter. There are people who reach a
00:17:27.040 | certain point in time and they say, "I have accumulated enough money. I no longer want to do
00:17:31.360 | that for work, for money." But there has to be an answer of what they do want to do.
00:17:38.720 | I want to go and do this. Now, this can be anything that you want. It can be working for
00:17:45.040 | wages if you want, it can be starting a business, it can be a hobby. But it has to be something that
00:17:50.880 | you're going to do. There has to be something that you're retiring to, something that you're going to
00:17:56.880 | do that is calling to you so that you're going to be active and engaged. Now, I think that work is
00:18:05.360 | probably one of the best things for you to go and do. I don't think that we're designed for seven
00:18:10.960 | days a week of leisure. And I'll use my friend as an example. We're not designed for it. We're
00:18:16.960 | designed for work, for labor, for concentration, for contribution. And it's important to have rest.
00:18:24.240 | There's no problem with rest. There's no problem with leisure. There's no problem with relaxation.
00:18:29.680 | But we're not designed for a lifestyle of rest. We're not designed for a lifestyle of leisure,
00:18:34.720 | for relaxation. That kind of lifestyle of just doing nothing will kill you, as it killed my
00:18:41.440 | friend. When I was talking with my wife last night, knowing my friend was in the hospital,
00:18:47.280 | we were just trying to talk. I was like, "Can we pray for him?" And I didn't sense the faith to
00:18:52.800 | pray for him. Not that he would be healed, right? I just sensed no faith, no faith whatsoever to
00:18:57.360 | pray for him. And she didn't either. And her comment was, "You know, I kind of feel like he
00:19:04.880 | wanted to die. I kind of feel like this is what he wanted." And I would say, "That's true. I think
00:19:10.560 | it's what he wanted." My friend never would have gone and committed suicide like some people do,
00:19:14.960 | but he was just sitting and doing nothing. And for six years he sat and done basically nothing.
00:19:23.680 | I lived, again, I lived next door to him and I tried for years to engage with him. And I watched
00:19:29.760 | his life up front. Basically, he would sit, he would get up in the morning. He was a very
00:19:33.360 | structured guy. He would get up at a certain time, do his routine and whatnot. At the same,
00:19:38.400 | you know, cook his breakfast and kind of go through this very structured lifestyle that he
00:19:43.440 | would live. He would always go grocery shopping at 3.30 on Sunday afternoon. You know, regular
00:19:48.640 | clockwork. Look out the window, there he goes, go do his weekly grocery shopping, etc. So,
00:19:53.120 | very structured guy with regards to his personality. But he would just sit and watch TV,
00:19:57.600 | Netflix. He would watch Netflix and he would just do things. YouTube and Netflix,
00:20:03.200 | YouTube and Netflix, YouTube and Netflix. I guess I'm just sharing my frustration at
00:20:12.640 | having tried with whatever I could do to help someone and yet seeing how bound he was
00:20:19.120 | by those certain personality quirks. And what angers me,
00:20:24.160 | angers me so much is when you get to the end of someone's life and they die. And you sit back
00:20:33.600 | and as a friend, somebody who cares about them, your honest assessment is kind of a wasted life.
00:20:43.440 | That is a terrible feeling. That is a terrible feeling.
00:20:49.600 | To reflect on the death of somebody that you cared about, that you knew, that you were friends with,
00:21:01.200 | and get to the end and say that person wasted their life, that is a terrible testimony of a life.
00:21:09.440 | Now, you may think I'm too harsh. I hope I'm not harsh. I hope I have...I
00:21:12.560 | know that I'm saying something that's hard. And usually we don't say things that are hard. I
00:21:19.360 | wouldn't go to a public funeral where there were friends and relatives of this man and
00:21:23.680 | say anything about him. But you know what? I don't think there's going to be any kind of funeral.
00:21:30.640 | Why? Because he didn't impact anybody. He didn't touch anybody. He didn't connect with anybody.
00:21:36.400 | He didn't try. I'm not blaming him. None of us know the shoes, the path that another man has
00:21:44.800 | walked. If I were walking in his shoes, perhaps I would have lived exactly the same way. I don't
00:21:49.840 | know. I don't know what he had in his past. I don't know what he had in his present. I don't
00:21:54.560 | know the things that he wrestled with in his heart to overcome. I don't know. I did my best to engage
00:22:02.000 | with him and to be a friend to him and encourage him in everything that I saw, and I know so many
00:22:05.920 | others in my family and in the church and in the community that tried the same way and nothing ever
00:22:12.400 | seemed to be effective. What do you do except leave a man in God's hands, right? None of us
00:22:17.520 | are called on to give a final judgment about the meaning of another person's life.
00:22:22.640 | So, I just want to share with you some lessons that I have, some observations that I have from
00:22:27.360 | my friend's life and some lessons that I have taken to heart for me and consider them for
00:22:34.960 | yourself. Number one, I asked myself the question, "Why do I feel like my friend wasted his life?"
00:22:43.040 | Reason number one is that he was a loner. He was a loner. Now, let me expand upon that because
00:22:53.840 | I try to be thoughtful in what I say. We all have different personality types. I'm an introvert.
00:23:00.720 | I do well alone. I gain energy from being alone. I often find myself emotionally depleted when I'm
00:23:09.840 | with a lot of people, although I try to do it, but I like to be alone. So, I understand to some
00:23:15.680 | degree why people like to be alone, and I understand that there are some people who have
00:23:19.360 | that personality, that personality where they're happy with themselves and they're happy with
00:23:24.480 | being by themselves. But when you think about the end of someone's life, being a loner has
00:23:31.520 | consequences. My friend, for example, never married. I'd asked him about it at different
00:23:38.960 | times in his life. He didn't really ever open up all that much. I got the idea that he had
00:23:45.280 | experienced some heartbreak and some hurt early in his life, but he never really shared much about
00:23:50.320 | it and he just wasn't particularly interested in marriage. And I've known a number of men like this,
00:23:57.120 | right? They're just not particularly interested in marriage. And of course, it's not required
00:24:02.640 | that anybody marry. I think it's fine. You're not morally superior if you marry or morally superior
00:24:07.280 | if you don't. But by choosing to be alone, choosing to not invest into the work of being
00:24:18.000 | married with someone, choosing to not invest into having children, those things are difficult. They
00:24:26.320 | lead to a certain life down the road. There have been many times facing the many responsibilities
00:24:33.200 | that I face where I look at somebody who's unmarried and I think, "Man, how great it would
00:24:36.960 | be just to be free, footloose and fancy free, not have to care for all these people, not have to
00:24:41.200 | arrange all these details, just be able to come and go as I like." So, it's not like there's one
00:24:47.520 | perfect answer. But you look at the end of a man's life and that decision to not marry, to not have
00:24:54.400 | children, that decision brings with it a certain set of consequences. And what I have observed is
00:25:02.880 | that by being a loner, he never had the opportunity to build confidence, he never had the responsibility
00:25:11.360 | to care for others, and he could let himself off the hook at every stage along the path.
00:25:16.320 | There's something I've wrestled with for years in my own mind, trying to understand if there's a
00:25:21.360 | causal relationship or a correlation. The data indicates generally that married men make more
00:25:30.400 | money and have more wealth than unmarried men. Generally also, the data indicates that married
00:25:37.520 | men live longer than unmarried men and that they enjoy higher levels of health. Years ago, I read
00:25:44.240 | a book called Healthy at 100, and one of the points that that book made when talking about
00:25:48.560 | the factors that contribute to long-livedness is that a married smoker has a longer life expectancy
00:26:00.640 | than an unmarried non-smoker, statistically. And so, I've often wondered why, why? I've thought
00:26:06.960 | a lot about the wealth. Why is it, right? Is a married man sometimes wealthier because maybe he
00:26:14.160 | has a dual-income household and he has his wife's income and they have lower expenses? Or is it
00:26:23.120 | just an accident, right? I don't think that you need to be married to get wealthy. I would never
00:26:27.600 | tell someone, "Oh, you're broke. Go get married." No, like, silly. I know lots of single people
00:26:32.880 | out to have lots of money, right? So, it's not like there's just an automatic direct relationship.
00:26:36.800 | But I often have looked at my own life and I've thought about the things that I do,
00:26:42.080 | and I observe that in many things, I am motivated by my responsibilities, my obligations towards my
00:26:51.600 | family, but also my aspirations, my goals, the things that I want to provide for my family.
00:26:58.960 | But I observe more than that, right? It's not just a matter of, "Okay, I have certain obligations or
00:27:03.120 | certain aspirations." It goes deeper than that. I see it as even a confidence booster.
00:27:08.320 | I have watched carefully. I have been married now for 11 years. No, nine years. Nine years. I've
00:27:16.480 | been married for nine years. And as I observe my life and I watch the trajectory of friends of mine,
00:27:24.320 | even my own age, who have not married, I observe every year kind of a widening of the gap in terms
00:27:31.920 | of my own personal levels of responsibility, my personal levels of confidence, my personal levels
00:27:39.200 | of self-discipline, etc. And I probably don't even want to talk about all of those things publicly,
00:27:49.360 | but it just seems obvious to me that I have personally benefited by being charged with the
00:27:55.200 | responsibility to lead a wife and children. And that has changed me. It has transformed my
00:28:03.040 | character. Parents will often reflect on this, right, when you have a child. It can transform
00:28:10.560 | your character. You just don't have the choice any longer to lie in bed lazily when your little
00:28:18.640 | baby is calling out for you. You just do what you need to do. And there comes a cost with that,
00:28:24.560 | certainly, and it seems oftentimes like, "Oh, it'd just be so much easier," right? "It'd just be so
00:28:30.720 | much easier if we could just hang out and stay in bed all Saturday morning. It'd just be so much
00:28:34.800 | easier." But yet, these things transform us in a profound way. I'm convinced. So, I can't prove
00:28:43.920 | any of this. All I'm doing is reflecting on my experience. And I observe in my friend's experience,
00:28:49.680 | who never married and never had children, that he never was obligated to come out of himself.
00:28:58.480 | He always could let himself off the hook. He could always face a challenge and say, "Well,
00:29:06.800 | that's okay. I don't need to follow through." And there was nobody there expecting more of him.
00:29:12.240 | There wasn't a wife there believing in him. And so, he could just take the easy road,
00:29:17.680 | take the low-pain road. Being a loner, I don't see did any good for him. I would never,
00:29:25.680 | to be clear, I would never have encouraged him to marry badly.
00:29:29.120 | But when I've watched his life of having never married, it just seems profoundly sad.
00:29:40.160 | His name will die with him. His legacy ends with him. To me, that seems sad.
00:29:47.280 | Now, what else could he have done? Well, one of the other big observations that I have is that he
00:29:55.280 | never engaged proactively with others. So, to repeat, because it's important, while I believe
00:30:02.240 | that marriage and children can be a transformative influence in our lives, I don't believe that they
00:30:09.520 | are a vital experience. I believe that there are many single men and women who live very meaningful
00:30:16.400 | lives, who will leave a legacy whose names will not die with them. And I don't believe that they
00:30:21.840 | should just go get married because somehow that's the only thing you need to do to be complete in
00:30:25.920 | life. I don't believe that. But what my friend also did not… I just believe that there's a natural…
00:30:31.840 | there's kind of a natural normalcy to that pattern. That's the normal pattern that does
00:30:37.040 | certain things for us as humans. But if we don't have that pattern, what can we do? Well, we can
00:30:42.240 | proactively serve others. We can proactively engage with others. And this is what my friend never did.
00:30:48.880 | Now, was it a personality quirk? I don't know, but he lost because he didn't do it.
00:30:55.280 | Let me contrast his death with the death of another friend of mine about a month or so ago.
00:31:02.320 | My other friend was also a similar age, I guess. I think my other friend who died a month ago
00:31:09.120 | was a little younger. He was in his early 60s. My other friend did have a lot of children,
00:31:14.320 | but my other friend had also been very active in the local community. He had established
00:31:18.480 | basically a youth group in his home, and his children were involved, and they would invite
00:31:22.880 | all the children in the local community over, and they would do all kinds of things. He was always
00:31:28.240 | going out and working to help others. He was very proactive, kind of a very intense mission focus.
00:31:33.200 | And the feeling at the death of my friend who was proactive was very different than the death
00:31:44.080 | of my friend this morning. The death of my friend this morning feels tragic to me because it feels
00:31:50.320 | like a life wasted, whereas the death of my friend a month ago felt tragic because it was a life
00:31:57.440 | cut short, and you felt like this man had so much more to give. There was a massive difference in
00:32:03.200 | the number of people that their lives impacted. And when I reflect on my friend and the opportunities
00:32:08.080 | that he had, I think about how much he could have done if he had just simply tried, if he had just
00:32:15.760 | simply engaged with others, if he had sought out others and sought to help them. He never would do
00:32:23.040 | that. He would come over to your house if you invited him, and he would come, you know, he was
00:32:28.480 | happy to come over and eat. Wouldn't work much when you're there. If you asked him specifically
00:32:33.360 | for help, I would ask him for help on certain things. He would help sometimes, most of the time
00:32:37.120 | actually, he was fairly reliable, to help you move or something like that. But he wouldn't ever take
00:32:42.480 | that second step. He wouldn't ever initiate something, never invited you over to his house,
00:32:47.040 | never invited you to an event, never invited you to dinner, never said, "Hey," you know,
00:32:53.200 | to a young person, "Would you like to go fishing?" or "Maybe I can go and teach you a certain thing."
00:32:56.960 | Just stayed by himself. And so, what happened is, because he never engaged with others proactively,
00:33:02.160 | he never built that social community around himself. He never did the work to sew into
00:33:08.000 | other people's lives and to serve other people that would create the kind of rich, warm, social
00:33:13.280 | fabric that he could have enjoyed. So, he stayed the loner, always the loner. But not the happy
00:33:22.240 | loner, not the adventurous loner, just the loner, the loser loner by himself, watching Netflix,
00:33:30.960 | watching YouTube, waiting to die. What an awful thing to say.
00:33:36.000 | But it's true. And I personally believe in the value of the truth. I think you shouldn't tell
00:33:43.120 | lies even at someone's funeral. More lies are probably told than almost any other forum in the
00:33:48.800 | world. Don't be a loner. Now, let me expand on this loner theme for a moment. What you could see
00:34:00.240 | over the years was that the more detached he became from people, the less and less confident
00:34:07.520 | he became, and the more of a loner he wanted to be. The one thing that kept him attached to people
00:34:14.800 | and kept him connected was, used to be his work. Was his work. I guess I should say work and church.
00:34:25.360 | So, with his work, when he lost his last job, that cut that off. And then later he disengaged
00:34:33.680 | for a variety of reasons from church. And you could just see from an outside perspective that
00:34:39.520 | he was suffering. And no matter what you did to try to reach out to him, no matter how you
00:34:43.440 | tried to engage him, you'd just suffer more, suffer more, because he had no contact with people,
00:34:47.440 | had no accountability, had no friendships, had nothing. And so the confidence just fell and fell.
00:34:52.080 | And so, whereas at 62, before he took Social Security, he could still probably have gone out
00:34:56.480 | and gotten, he was, again, a smart guy, could have gotten any basic job. And yet at 64, he had
00:35:02.960 | been out of it so far, he couldn't even imagine the idea probably of going and applying for a job.
00:35:09.120 | "Oh, I'm just not interested in anything." He would hide it under all these things,
00:35:11.680 | but not interested in anything. And that lack of engagement,
00:35:15.920 | it killed him. Killed him. It was only a matter of time. He's already dead,
00:35:24.640 | right? Off by himself, doing nothing. It's just a matter of, okay, what's actually going to take
00:35:28.320 | out his life? In this case, COVID. Okay. But the spark was already gone. It didn't have to be that
00:35:37.040 | way. It didn't have to be that way. He could have at any point in time tried. There were so many
00:35:48.400 | people around him who were conscious of his struggles, who were full with empathy, filled
00:35:54.560 | with empathy, right? Understanding. I'm not an unempathetic person. I understand when people
00:36:00.480 | have trouble. I understand that things are easier for some people. I know that there are things that
00:36:04.800 | are easier for me than other people. I would never go into someone's life and say, "Well,
00:36:08.640 | you just have to be like Joshua or anybody else." But he never even tried. And that's what makes
00:36:16.640 | you feel like, "What a waste. You never even tried." You were surrounded, surrounded by
00:36:23.200 | resources, surrounded by people, surrounded by a network of people, of friends, of people who
00:36:28.400 | would engage, and you never tried. Friend, if you find yourself pulling back into isolation,
00:36:36.640 | don't. Stop. I mean, don't do that. Stop it. You have to press forward and maintain your engagement
00:36:46.640 | with people. Your community is one of the most valuable assets that you can build. And so, if
00:36:52.880 | you find yourself struggling and alone, it's not good for man to be alone. You have to reach out.
00:37:02.400 | You have to be proactive. You have to try and make a friend, build a relationship.
00:37:11.440 | You have to try. If you're married, great. That doesn't automatically solve anything.
00:37:18.720 | If you're not married, invest yourself into other people. And I often think of people in my life who
00:37:24.880 | have made a difference for me. I have had many middle-aged single men who have invested into me
00:37:30.480 | and who have helped me. It wasn't the family that magically changed it. It was their
00:37:38.160 | mindset, their worldview, their way of thinking about things. And so many men have impacted my
00:37:43.680 | life. And they sought to sow into me as a child. They sought to set up sports. They sought to
00:37:54.480 | hire me for work. They sought to take me fishing. They sought to encourage me, to engage with me.
00:38:00.320 | And those men, when they die, I can say something very different at their funeral.
00:38:08.400 | I can honor them for reaching out to me. I can honor them for doing things for me that I couldn't
00:38:14.320 | do, right? For paying for things for me that I couldn't pay for. One friend of mine was so
00:38:21.440 | faithful. All through my college years, he would continually... We would hang out. We would go to
00:38:27.200 | dinner. We were involved in some community things. We'd go to dinner. I didn't have the money to pay
00:38:30.640 | for it. He would cover my expenses. He would let me... He would take me... We would go on trips
00:38:35.360 | and whatnot together. And we had a great time. He was a mentor to me and a very meaningful part of
00:38:40.240 | my life. And I can say something very different about him than my other friend who just was
00:38:46.400 | a lump on a log, didn't ever try. Don't be the person who doesn't try.
00:38:54.160 | Now, how does this follow through? Well, a next thing that just struck to me is my friend did not
00:39:01.200 | ever grow. He never grew. When I reflect upon 35 years of knowing him, he was always the same.
00:39:10.640 | He never grew. I saw him decline, with what I'm telling you about when he retired. I saw him
00:39:17.280 | decline, but he didn't grow. He didn't have a growth mindset. He didn't have something that
00:39:22.800 | was challenging him. I would casually, in a friendly way, I would always try to engage him.
00:39:29.840 | Like, is there a hobby? Is there an interest? I was... For years, is there something that you're
00:39:34.160 | interested in? Oh, you could do such and such, right? You're interested in such and such.
00:39:37.360 | Have you thought about maybe taking a class at the local library? Oh, look, here's a class,
00:39:40.880 | or here's something really interesting. Here's a way you could do that. Nothing. He would not grow.
00:39:45.760 | He would not learn. He would just sit. And you could see that reflected in all areas of his life.
00:39:52.720 | He never developed any kind of a passionate long-term career. That's another thing that
00:39:59.520 | could have been completely transformative for him, is if he had simply chosen one thing and said,
00:40:05.520 | "I want to master this one thing. I want to get good at this one thing." That work would have
00:40:11.040 | kept him alive, and not only just physically alive, it would have kept him alive in his spirit,
00:40:15.840 | if he had just kept working. I reflect on that many times. I thought, "Did I... Should I have
00:40:22.080 | pushed harder?" And it was so painful for me for years to watch him after he retired. And he
00:40:28.000 | stopped working and he lost that one connection to the world. If he had just had a job where he
00:40:34.560 | could do a good job and have the satisfaction of a day's work well done, that would have made all
00:40:40.320 | the difference in the world. But man, you feel horrible when you sit back day after day and day
00:40:46.480 | and do nothing. You feel great if you work a long week's work and then you have a weekend off to
00:40:54.480 | engage and rest and rejuvenation. Going to the lake, going to the beach, sitting at home with
00:41:00.320 | a cold drink in your hand and reading a book, watching a movie, all of these things feel great
00:41:05.760 | after a week's diligent labor. But when every single day you do those things,
00:41:13.680 | none of them feel great. You feel like a slob. You feel like a worthless person, somebody who
00:41:21.040 | doesn't contribute to anybody. And it eats at you, it destroys you as it destroyed my friend.
00:41:27.120 | If he had just simply gotten a job and engaged with a career and there were many things that
00:41:32.960 | he was suited for, many things he could have done very well, just never started,
00:41:36.640 | it would have transformed his life and it would have transformed his money.
00:41:40.640 | It was exceedingly sad to watch him with the money because what happened is he grew
00:41:47.040 | dissatisfied with some of his personal living circumstances, but he was stuck.
00:41:51.760 | Exactly as I told him it would happen was exactly what happened. Before he took a social security,
00:41:58.960 | I told him, "If you do this, you're going to be stuck. It's not going to be easier for you at 67
00:42:05.120 | to get a job than it is at 61. It's just not going to be easier. It's not going to be easier to go
00:42:10.960 | and get a job later after you've been unemployed for four years than it is now." And he said,
00:42:14.800 | "Oh, no, I'm going to do it. It's okay. I can go get a job in the future." Well, year passed on to
00:42:19.360 | year, year after year, year after year, same thing. And it's one of those things where I,
00:42:25.520 | on the one hand, you look at welfare programs, you look at things like social security. In this case,
00:42:31.520 | my friend, he was a veteran and so he died in a veterans hospital. And on the one hand, you feel
00:42:38.240 | like you say, "You know what? That's nice that at least he had some income. That's nice that at
00:42:43.360 | least he had some retirement income. So when he needed it, then he had it." Right? There is that
00:42:48.880 | sense. Then the other side of me looks at it and I get really frustrated and angry about the fact
00:42:55.760 | that he had a social security income there to live on. Why? Because the social security killed him.
00:43:00.560 | I know, again, I'm not being hyperbolic. He sat down and did nothing.
00:43:06.400 | He sat down and did nothing. And he never should have been put in a place where he could do that.
00:43:13.200 | Life is designed where you have to do that. And this is where you look at a program that's
00:43:17.120 | ostensibly a program of caring, right? Here's somebody who's not disciplined enough to save
00:43:21.680 | for themselves. They're not disciplined enough to provide for their own future. So we, the government,
00:43:25.760 | are going to come in and we're going to mandate that he and his employer contribute from his
00:43:29.120 | wages into this program that's going to provide him with a pension. It's going to alleviate poverty.
00:43:33.280 | Maybe it did, right? But I'm convinced my friend would be alive today if he had still been working.
00:43:41.120 | I'm convinced that he would have been far happier if he had still been working. I'm
00:43:44.640 | convinced he wouldn't have wasted so many years if he had still been working.
00:43:48.240 | Work is good for a man. I even came to the point, this is sad, but it's true. I told you I lived
00:43:58.320 | next door to him for a long time. I would frequently invite him over to dinner, frequently spend time
00:44:05.680 | with him, frequently talk to him. Eventually I came to the point where I couldn't do it in faith
00:44:10.160 | anymore. The Bible says, "Those who will not work, neither shall they eat." And I came to the point
00:44:16.720 | where I was convinced that he will not work. And he was being allowed out of the place of pain that
00:44:22.960 | God designed by the social security system. And I came to the point where I could no longer feed him
00:44:28.160 | because I thought, "I can't, this is not honoring to God. I can't feed a man who will not work.
00:44:32.880 | I can't invite him over for dinner." I would still try to talk to him and engage with him when I
00:44:37.920 | could, but I couldn't invite him over to my house anymore. I could just see more than I've ever seen
00:44:43.040 | with anybody else the destruction in a man's life when he will not work and when the circumstances
00:44:51.120 | around enable his not working, enable his laziness. And I watched it destroy his life
00:44:58.560 | over the course of those years. When you look at these programs, you look at some of the stuff,
00:45:07.440 | you look at social security, you look at welfare programs, you see the destruction in human lives.
00:45:15.600 | You watch the way it destroys character and it's so sad. Now, I don't believe the same thing occurs
00:45:21.520 | if you accumulate capital yourself. Why? Well, if you're accumulating capital yourself,
00:45:26.720 | if you're denying your current desires intentionally so that you can save and
00:45:31.760 | accumulate more, you're building a strength of character that I think sees people,
00:45:37.520 | many people successfully through those retirement years. You see people, but in my time,
00:45:45.120 | I've never engaged with somebody who saved a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars or
00:45:52.240 | millions of dollars, and never coached them, consulted with them, and found them ever to lack
00:45:57.760 | character or to lack even vision of what they wanted to do when they retired. I still warn them,
00:46:04.320 | but generally people say, "Oh, I'm retiring so I can do such and such, so I can be involved in this
00:46:08.560 | thing. And I'm not going to go to my job anymore, but I have these other 18 things that I've just
00:46:13.040 | been waiting for more time to do. I'm going to have more time and I'm going to do them." And
00:46:17.120 | they continue to be productive people. I do not believe that a man has to work for wages
00:46:22.320 | in order to eat. He just needs to work, right? And that work can be many different things. There's
00:46:26.640 | no prohibition on certain kinds of activities. But when a man accumulates his own money through
00:46:33.440 | thrift, through diligence, through denying his own current desires to accumulate for the future,
00:46:38.800 | it transforms his character. And I'm not necessarily saying that social security is
00:46:46.000 | morally wrong. It's run in a criminal way. It's a giant Ponzi scheme. But I'm not saying it's
00:46:52.960 | morally wrong. I'm saying that it doesn't have good results. If my friend had also saved and
00:46:58.640 | invested and had that character transformation, then the social security check would have been
00:47:01.920 | nice for him. But he didn't do it. Couldn't do it. And back to what I said about sowing the lives
00:47:08.080 | of others. One of the things that always limited him was his money. How could he say to, you know,
00:47:12.240 | the teenagers, "Hey, guys, let's go and do a rafting trip or let's go do a camping trip or
00:47:17.280 | something," because he didn't have any money, because he was living on the dole. It's just
00:47:23.040 | a total disaster on all sides. A total disaster. And finally, when someone gets in that situation,
00:47:35.200 | what do they have to look forward to? When you have somebody that's not growth-oriented,
00:47:40.080 | that's not engaging with a career, with a future, when they're not looking forward and saying,
00:47:46.960 | "In the future, I'm going to do such and such," when they're not being forced in the present to
00:47:51.040 | work towards something that they want, what do they have to look forward to? More Netflix? More
00:47:56.560 | YouTube? More Sunday afternoon shopping trips to the same grocery store you've been going to for
00:48:01.760 | 15 years? More sitting in your house doing nothing by yourself? What a catastrophe.
00:48:11.040 | Is it any wonder why you're dead soon? Is it any wonder why retirement kills you?
00:48:18.240 | That kind of disengaging and decoupling from life, decoupling from growth is deadly.
00:48:23.600 | It's deadly. I don't fully understand how it kills you. I can't sit here and give all the
00:48:31.840 | medical things, but we've heard so many stories about people just lose their will to live.
00:48:36.720 | Spouse dies, someone they've been married to for 70 years, and they just say, "That's it. I'm going
00:48:41.520 | to die. I've seen it with my grandparents who've died." They lose their will to live, and then the
00:48:46.320 | diseases come on. And so, maybe it's a disease like COVID. I don't know how my friend got COVID,
00:48:52.400 | barely left his house. Who knows? He got COVID. But who knows what the actual cause of death is?
00:49:01.600 | It's listed on the death certificate, but it's that disengagement from life. It's that retirement
00:49:06.080 | that disengages you from life. So, what's the answer? What are the alternatives?
00:49:09.600 | Here are some things that I think are important to contrast that with.
00:49:14.880 | More than anything else, I am convinced that the secret to aging well is to always make your future
00:49:24.880 | bigger than your past. No matter the stage of life you are, no matter where you are,
00:49:31.280 | you always need to make your future bigger than your past. If your future is bigger than your
00:49:38.960 | past, then there's hope in the future. And if there's hope in the future, there's power in
00:49:44.960 | the present. There's something that can keep you pressing forward. When somebody gives up hope,
00:49:51.280 | when somebody gives up a vision in the future that's bigger, something that's pulling them
00:49:54.960 | forward, they die. They die now. To me, that's the first and most important lesson. Always make
00:50:02.080 | your future bigger than your past. Then you'll grow successfully. Now, how do you make your
00:50:08.320 | future bigger than your past? Well, there are some areas that are fairly obvious, right? When you see
00:50:13.040 | people that are involved socially with other people, but usually the wife and children,
00:50:18.400 | right? You say, "I want to see my grandchildren. I want to see my great-grandchildren. I want to
00:50:21.120 | play with them. I want to enjoy those relationships." And that can influence many people to
00:50:25.440 | make changes in the present that will see them to that goal. And there's a natural ebb and flow to
00:50:31.200 | life in these normal family relationships where you see, they bring you a focus, they bring you a
00:50:36.000 | joy, they bring you a clarity of goal. And so they're very impactful. You can see it in your
00:50:41.360 | community. When people are laboring for something, could be the group of students that they mentor at
00:50:46.960 | the local Boys and Girls Club, or the Boy Scout troop that they volunteer with, or the church
00:50:55.040 | organization that they spend time in, or whatever it is. And there's something there, and you have
00:51:00.160 | a change you're trying to see in the world. One of the most important things you can have is to
00:51:03.520 | develop a quest, something that you want to impact. Generally, I think a good place to start
00:51:09.360 | is to go look around the world and find some wrong that you want to right that's at the scale where
00:51:14.640 | you can actually have an impact and start laboring at it. And then if you fix that thing, then pick a
00:51:19.440 | bigger thing. So you always have some more thing that you're looking for, some more thing that
00:51:24.160 | you're seeking to change and to adjust, to improve. It can be financial goals. It can be a career,
00:51:32.880 | right? You're wanting to advance a certain thing. You're wanting to improve a certain thing. You
00:51:38.800 | always have to find a way to adjust what you're doing and not look back upon your glory days,
00:51:43.760 | but look forward to your future glory days. And if your imagination is failing you, then you've
00:51:50.240 | got to feed your imagination until you can look forward and build another quest in the future
00:51:55.600 | that's going to bring you forward. It has to be something you care about. My quest is not yours,
00:52:00.560 | but it has to be something that brings you forward, that you care about.
00:52:07.760 | That's lesson one. Always make your future bigger than your past. The day at which your future
00:52:15.200 | is dimmer and smaller than your past is the day that death sets in for you.
00:52:19.920 | It might take a little while for your heart to stop, but that's the day that you start dying.
00:52:28.480 | Don't let that happen to you. Always make your future bigger than your past. Find something
00:52:35.440 | that you're working at. And life is full of so many inspirational people, so many people who've
00:52:41.040 | gone before us, who have charted the path and proven how it can be done, why it can be done.
00:52:47.760 | Take your inspiration from anywhere. I always think about a guy like Stephen Hawking, right?
00:52:55.120 | Here's this guy who suffered this incredibly debilitating illness, and yet there he is,
00:53:01.840 | still seeking to use his mind, to use his intellect, to build something, to make a
00:53:05.920 | difference, to develop a theory, to adjust something, and seek to leave his mark upon the world.
00:53:11.200 | No matter if you're wheelchair-bound, no matter whether you're paralyzed,
00:53:18.080 | you can find fulfillment and purpose in something. That something doesn't have to
00:53:28.480 | integrate with other people. It may just be you. Maybe you're painting. I think of someone like
00:53:34.080 | Johnny Erickson-Todd, right? Paralyzed young girl, but became this beautifully talented painter,
00:53:39.520 | and very inspirational, spoken to and encouraged, you know, millions of people with her testimony.
00:53:44.000 | But maybe you just stay at home and you say, "What I'm doing is I'm becoming a better painter."
00:53:50.160 | You need to see that you're improving in something. You need to be trying with something.
00:53:56.800 | Something that you're scared of, something that you could fail at.
00:53:59.920 | Playing piano, caring for the neighborhood children, feeding and visiting the widows and
00:54:08.240 | orphans around you, ministering to the homeless. Find something. I tried so many times, my friend
00:54:15.520 | who died, I tried so many times to get him involved with somebody, to find an organization.
00:54:19.760 | Because one of the most important things that you can do when you are depressed
00:54:25.120 | and when you're struggling is go and find someone to help. Go and find someone to serve.
00:54:30.480 | You'll quickly start to diminish your own problems. I have a friend of mine right now
00:54:38.560 | who's isolated from COVID, can't go anywhere, everything's locked down, and I'm begging her,
00:54:44.720 | please, you have to go and find a place to go out and get involved in the community. You have to
00:54:52.320 | find a place to serve. You have to find a ministry, a relief organization, someplace where you can go
00:54:59.360 | and help people who are less fortunate. Because the risk of dying of coronavirus is far, far lower
00:55:06.800 | than the risk of dying from loneliness and solitude and self-pity. Hear me clearly, my friend who died
00:55:15.280 | this morning did not die of coronavirus. Without question, without question, he had coronavirus.
00:55:24.160 | Without question, coronavirus caused the physical symptoms that took his life.
00:55:28.880 | He didn't die from coronavirus though. He died years ago. It was just a matter of time and a
00:55:34.480 | matter of what's going to take him. It wasn't coronavirus that killed him. It was his decisions
00:55:40.720 | in life that killed him. Just took a few years for the death to actually occur. Make your future
00:55:47.840 | bigger than your past. Engage with others. Social contact is the key. Serve others. Serve others.
00:55:56.800 | What did Jesus say when being asked about the greatest law by the Pharisees? He said,
00:56:01.840 | "Love God, love neighbor." You don't need anything more than that. Love God, love neighbor.
00:56:10.160 | Usually, the way that we know that you love God is by how you love neighbor.
00:56:14.720 | All right, so what James said, "I'll show you my faith by my actions." How do you know? What did
00:56:23.520 | John say? How do you know your love for God? By your love for one another. Love God, love neighbor.
00:56:29.680 | If you're going to love God, you're going to have to love your neighbor. You're going to have to
00:56:34.960 | find someone and serve them and engage with them and help them and stay engaged with them. Keep
00:56:41.680 | that social contact. Press forward. Strive forward. Last thing I would say, specifically about money,
00:56:49.440 | I have other lessons as well, but I need to wrap this up. Specifically about money.
00:56:53.120 | I don't think you should get into a point where your income is constrained.
00:56:58.800 | One of the things that was so, I think, really bad in watching my friend's story was he was so
00:57:04.080 | constrained by his lack of money. He didn't have any money. Why didn't he have any money? Because
00:57:08.800 | he made certain choices that put him onto a fixed income. He didn't have any money.
00:57:11.840 | Now, could he have still given? One of the things that the Bible says is that, "Why do you work?"
00:57:19.040 | Says, "Let each of you labor, working with his hand so that he may have something to give."
00:57:23.760 | If you don't have enough surplus in your budget to give to others, you need to work more.
00:57:28.160 | If you don't have enough surplus in your budget to give to others, you need to work more.
00:57:33.920 | Now, you can do that with a very, very small amount of money. We can all see a person's heart
00:57:40.880 | when there's someone that's generous, that's giving to others, even if the dollars are
00:57:43.920 | small. We rightly honor people. We don't honor one man who carelessly gives a million dollars
00:57:50.240 | that means nothing more than we honor someone who gives $100 that means everything to them.
00:57:54.720 | We honor the one for whom it's the hardest impact. But when you find yourself saying,
00:58:00.640 | "Oh, I can't give to others. I can't labor in others. I can't sow into other people's
00:58:05.280 | lives because I don't have." Well, go and get something so that you can do it.
00:58:09.520 | Again, just imagine the psychology of living on a fixed income,
00:58:15.920 | a very small income where you're physically trapped. You can't move. You can't go and move
00:58:23.200 | into a different apartment because, "Well, where am I going to cope with the first,
00:58:25.440 | last and security deposit?" You can't go and do the other thing. You can't move.
00:58:31.120 | Don't allow yourself to be in that situation. There's always a way to do it.
00:58:34.320 | There's always something more you can do. I tried, my friend, I tried him so many times. I said,
00:58:39.280 | "Why don't you drive for Uber? You're a good driver. You like to drive. Can you drive for
00:58:43.360 | Uber? You have a car. Do this." No, it's not going to do it.
00:58:47.680 | I hope that these lessons are things that you can use. I know it's outside of the normal ebb and
00:58:58.160 | flow of financial planning, but man, it's so meaningful. I find it so painful to say some of
00:59:06.960 | the things, the harsh, hard truths that I have said about my friend's life.
00:59:10.960 | You don't want to say uncharitable things about people that you love, people that you care about.
00:59:24.080 | It just feels like such a waste. And that is not a good feeling
00:59:29.680 | for your friends and your family to have at your funeral.
00:59:33.840 | If you are somebody who is wasting your life, I beg of you, stop.
00:59:39.760 | Stop. You may or may not believe that God exists. That's okay. It's an important question,
00:59:50.960 | but I understand different perspectives. But what we can all agree on is that your life,
00:59:58.320 | I hope we can all agree on, your life matters. You want your life to matter.
01:00:02.640 | And so, whether you believe that the work that you do in this life prepares you for the next life,
01:00:10.000 | as I do, or whether you believe that the work that you do in this life is all there is,
01:00:16.240 | I just simply beg you to observe and to notice that the way that you live this life
01:00:21.760 | has an impact. It has an impact on you. You can be entirely successful,
01:00:28.720 | or you can sit back and wait to die. Don't do that.
01:00:38.000 | I don't know how I could possibly encourage you more strongly with that.
01:00:44.880 | Just make your life matter. If you've never reflected on your death, think about it.
01:00:50.080 | Do you want some random guy on the internet saying hard things about you at your death?
01:00:55.760 | It's not going to be me, of course, but somebody else. Your friends are watching,
01:00:59.040 | and they're learning. Make sure that your life is a life they can learn from,
01:01:04.800 | on the positive side, not learn from as a negative example. If you'll live a life
01:01:14.400 | of labor, of work, if you'll love others, if you'll engage with life, if you'll not be passive,
01:01:21.120 | if you'll press forward within the context of your personality, you don't have to ignore your
01:01:25.840 | personality, but if you'll press forward and engage with life and engage with things that
01:01:31.280 | matter to you, then when you die, your friends can rejoice over the meaning of your life.
01:01:36.880 | Doesn't matter whether you die at 30, at 60, or at 100. They can rejoice over that.
01:01:43.360 | My other friend that I'm foiling with, two people, died of coronavirus, similar ages,
01:01:48.160 | neither one of them had any apparent health conditions, but they both died. When I went
01:01:53.600 | to my other friend's funeral, I was sad to lose him, but I wasn't sad for the meaning of his life.
01:02:00.240 | He left a rich legacy, a rich, rich legacy, even though he only had 60-ish years to do it in.
01:02:09.120 | You may only have 20 years to do it in. But brother, get busy
01:02:15.040 | sowing a legacy. That legacy is going to involve work. I hate retirement.
01:02:23.600 | I hate retirement because I believe that retirement, if by retirement we mean withdrawing,
01:02:33.520 | I believe retirement kills people and makes them unhappy.
01:02:36.160 | So, think very carefully before you retire.
01:02:40.640 | To me, I have for years watched my friend systematically decline since he retired. I
01:02:50.080 | knew what I said to him, I knew at the time what I thought would happen, and watching it happen
01:02:54.880 | exactly as I thought it did has been even more sobering for me than you can imagine.
01:03:01.280 | Don't retire. If you want to stop working for labor, for wages I mean,
01:03:07.120 | stop working for wages because you have something else that you're going to do, great.
01:03:10.240 | But, that sounds so corny, re-fire, right? Find something that you're going to work at,
01:03:17.440 | something that's going to keep you on that growth mindset. Make sure that your future
01:03:21.200 | is always bigger than your past. Don't isolate yourself. Don't pull back from people.
01:03:27.360 | Pour out your life loving others. And then, when people hear of your death,
01:03:33.680 | they'll be sad for their loss, but they'll be satisfied for a life well lived,
01:03:41.040 | and hopefully be rejoicing that you received the reward for your life well lived.
01:03:45.200 | Because it's a painful, painful thing for your friends to hear that you've died,
01:03:51.360 | and for them to first think, "Well, what a waste."
01:03:55.520 | I don't want to end with that sense, I just say that I appreciate many things about my friend.
01:04:02.240 | He was a kind man. He was a kind man. I don't know what else to say. He wasn't a mean man.
01:04:09.600 | But when you see someone's potential, and you see what they could have done,
01:04:14.000 | and what could have happened, and how they could have grown, and you see that they didn't do it,
01:04:18.400 | for whatever reason, to me it's sad. And I don't want that to be the case for me, or for you.
01:04:24.960 | I want to live full out. I want to live…I may have many flaws.
01:04:28.720 | We've all known many people with many flaws. We all have many flaws.
01:04:33.920 | Having flaws is not…to have flaws is to be human.
01:04:43.600 | None of us are perfect, nor will we ever behave perfectly. But there's a sense of passion that
01:04:51.200 | you appreciate about certain people. That passion does not have to be on a grand scale.
01:04:56.480 | Your passion does not have to be mine. But when probed, somebody should find that sense of
01:05:04.880 | passion in you. So, if you're not currently experiencing it, it's okay. Right? It's okay.
01:05:12.640 | But don't make decisions that are going to continue to disengage you with others.
01:05:17.040 | Don't make decisions that are going to isolate you. Don't make decisions that are going to cause
01:05:21.440 | you to be able to indulge your laziness. Don't make those decisions. It leads down a wrong path.
01:05:29.760 | I hope that a useful message has come through this show.
01:05:33.520 | Don't know what to do other than just to honestly share how I feel, and hope that as I reflect on
01:05:41.120 | for myself, I don't want the legacy of my life to be anything like the legacy of my friend.
01:05:46.800 | And I don't want it for you either. God bless you. Have a great day.
01:05:51.600 | What do you get with a 100 million dollar renaissance? A timeless hideaway in the heart
01:05:58.960 | of Death Valley National Park. Now better than ever. Visit oasis at deathvalley.com