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My name is Joshua, and today we're going to focus on living a meaningful life. And we're going to do it in the context of speaking about death. Woke up early this morning and got the news that a friend of mine, someone I've known my entire life, passed away this morning, early this morning due to COVID.

And kind of the normal complications from COVID, had been in the hospital for the last few weeks, been on a ventilator for a couple of weeks and things took a turn, you know, just steadily declining. And he passed away early this morning. Wasn't entirely unexpected for reasons that I'll elaborate on in just a moment.

And so I've been thinking a lot about his death this morning. And it's something that is impactful for me personally, although probably not in the way that you would expect. And I'll share with you why his death is so impactful to me. And I'll share with you why in the context of talking about money and living a life well, the context of financial planning, because it's appropriate and it's part of even what his life means to me.

And so I want to share this with you as a way of even just for me articulating some things that I have thought about for many years. My friend's death this morning is quite painful to me, but not in the ways that you might imagine. He was in his mid to late 60s, which is not particularly young, right?

It wasn't such a tragic thing like when you go to the death of a 10 year old or something like that, go to a funeral. But I'll explain in just a moment why his death for me is very painful. And again, it's not why you might think. I don't generally mind going to funerals.

I don't want to go to them, of course not, none of us do. But I don't usually mind going to funerals. I don't dread going to funerals. Generally, there's even times when I enjoy going to funerals. I find it very satisfying to go to funerals of old people. I like to go to old people funerals.

I think it's very satisfying to go and to gather when somebody dies, to gather together with friends and family and relatives and hear about the meaning of that person's life. I like to listen to the stories of what Bob did for so and so or what so and so did for this person.

I like to listen to those stories and think about how I can apply the lessons in my own life. I like to go to funerals because I think about my own death and I think about what my funeral is going to be like, and it helps me to keep clearly in mind the fact that the days are short and none of us knows when our last day is.

I don't find funerals particularly discomforting because of my Christian worldview. I have a firm confidence that God is the one who ordained death. He's the one who is on both sides of death. He's the one who has conquered death at the cross and proved his power over death by raising Jesus Christ from the dead.

So that brings me tremendous confidence that God is there. I have confidence in God's sovereignty over the world and that he controls all things. He knows the date of all of our death. And so for me, I don't have any fear over death, and I recognize that death is a universal experience, right?

All of us will pass through death at some point. And so when I think about that, I don't find death particularly troubling. It is often tragic and difficult when we go to those deaths that are tragic. Usually young people or people who died in a particularly tragic way where we feel the pain of death much more intensely.

Those are hard. Those are harder. But even in those times, my Christian faith gives me the comfort to know that whether or not I understand God is in control and in the fullness of time, all things will be revealed. And since he's a good God and I can trust him, then I don't need to worry about the temporary, the pain, the things that seem tragic.

And I've done enough philosophical homework that I'm not bothered by intellectually, I'm not bothered by the difficulty of evil, etc. Those intellectual questions are fully resolved in my mind. Doesn't mean that there's not pain associated, of course, but the intellectual questions, the philosophical questions are clearly and fully resolved.

And so I don't mind going to funerals. In fact, again, when they're old people funerals or mature people's funerals, I generally like to go to them because I like to go and remember my friends or my family members. I like to hear the stories and I like to reflect on the meaning of life.

I like to reflect on what life meant, what this person's life meant. And at a funeral, you get to see in a very clear way what this person's life meant as people gather together to celebrate their life. And so I don't find usually a deep level of pain when somebody dies the way that other things are.

Now, it's harder, of course, when someone's close to you. I'm not saying that I don't experience the emotions that we all do, just saying that I'm not particularly bothered by thinking about death or funerals. And so when my friend passed away, it didn't give me pain over the fact that he had died.

What gave me pain was the fact that I feel like he almost never really lived. And that's a harsh and difficult thing to say about somebody that you've known literally your entire life. And somebody who died in their mid-late 60s, 67, 68 years old, something like that. It's a hard and harsh thing to say, and yet it is a true thing.

It sounds extraordinarily uncharitable to say something so harsh about a friend, someone that you care about. And yet it is true. I feel like my friend wasted his life. And so as I've been reflecting this morning, I've been considering why do I think that, and is it true? First of all, is it true or am I just being uncharitable?

But is it true? And if I think that, why? And what do I need to do to not waste my life? Because I don't want to arrive at the end of my days and have someone say, "Well, Joshua died," from whatever, and I feel like Joshua wasted his life.

To me, that's utterly unacceptable. I don't want that. And I doubt you do either. And so it's important to reflect on the examples that we see around us and consider them. And usually I think it's very productive for us to consider the examples of people that have won, people that have been successful.

We don't necessarily always go and study failures if we want to learn how to run a business. You go and find people who have been successful with business. Go and find people who have been successful as parents and study them and model their behavior. But I also feel like it is actually valuable to study failures.

It is actually valuable to study a business that goes into bankruptcy and say, "Why did this end up there?" It is valuable, and I do it, to study a parent who winds up isolated from their children or with a bad relationship with their children and say, "How did it happen?" And I try to ask the questions, even when I can and when it's appropriate, "What did you do?

What happened here? Do you have any understanding and insight?" And so when somebody arrives at the end of their life and someone who knows them well and who loves them much and who has known them their entire life thinks to themselves, "What a waste of a life." To me, that's an example worth studying.

So I want to tell you about it even as I process it. I want to be quick to start with some of the things that I do appreciate about my friend. First, of course, he and I had a very long relationship. There are pictures of him shaking me on his knee when I was a baby.

Shaking me on his knee, that didn't come out quite right. Bouncing me on his knee when I was a baby. And so I have known him literally my entire life. And we have always lived somewhat close to each other, even to the point where for a period of years I was his next door neighbor.

I've always known him. I've always had a good relationship. He was in the church that I grew up in and I've had a relationship with him for many years. And so it wasn't something where I was far from him. I've never had any conflict with him personally. There's never been a point in time where we've had an argument or we've had a fight or anything like that.

My friend was not particularly into conflict. He was more of a person who would turn from conflict and shut down rather than, he wasn't a fighter. He was somebody who would avoid conflict. My friend was always very nice. He was always kind. I've never heard him speak harshly to anybody.

He was generally kind and he was sometimes helpful. He would do things from time to time to help. He was the kind of person where if you invited him over he would bring over something for dinner, etc. But he was always a loner. And I worked hard for years when he was my next door neighbor.

I spent a lot of time with him trying to understand a little bit about his past. And we would spend a lot of time together. I'd probe him to try to understand about his past. I think there was some pain and some trauma from his childhood that was probably never resolved.

He never shared with me all the details, but the signs were there indicating that there was some pain, some significant pain that he endured. He was in the military as a young man, got out of the military, and after the military just basically worked a series of jobs, a series of very simple jobs.

He went from one thing to another. He wasn't a drifter. He was a loyal person. It wasn't somebody who would just be switching jobs every six months. He was generally competent enough at the things that he would do. He would develop the basic skills that he needed and he would be basically competent at what he was doing.

But he never particularly had a lot of ambition. He never had a lot of drive. He wasn't a go-getter. And so he wasn't particularly driven to enhance himself, to grow. He was always quiet, reserved, was not the kind of person who would talk a lot. He wasn't the kind of person – and he wasn't weird about it.

You know, if I had him over for dinner, I could get him talking. If we would spend time together, I could get him talking. But he wasn't someone who would stand up and, you know, take charge. He wasn't somebody who would ever take leadership. He would always kind of pull back and pull back and not press forward.

With his career, which is important for what I have to say from a financial planning context, again, he never really developed a career. He worked a series of jobs at one point in time. I think it's one of his longer running jobs. He worked as a washing machine repair tech.

There was a business that repaired appliances and he worked as a technician repairing appliances. He was good. He understood things. He had a good mechanical mind and he was able to do that. He was smart. He didn't have – I wouldn't say – I don't know his IQ, but he wasn't – he was the kind of person who was perfectly smart and perfectly normal.

He wasn't slow or dim-witted in any way. He was smart. He was capable and he was capable. I don't know all the circumstances of his earlier life. At some point in time, he had – at one point in time, he had gotten a job working as an assistant for an accountant, did that for a number of years until the accountant moved and then he lost that job because the accountant moved.

He got a job and then towards later in his life, when he was in his late 50s, he had gotten a job where he was working for a car dealership processing applications on – processing paperwork for the car dealership. And then he got into an interpersonal argument, tiff with the – his manager and he was fired from that job when he was about 60 years old.

At that time, he didn't have much money and he was unemployed for quite a while, but he never developed the confidence and never had the go-gettiveness to go out and get another job. And this was one of the few times in my life where I strongly spoke to him and I tried to give him some counsel.

And I became aware of the fact – financially, he would never – he didn't talk much about certain things. There was a point in his life where he had gone deeply into debt – he had – when he had had a stable income, he'd lived a modest lifestyle. He always rented a small room, he rented a small house, kept his expenses modest.

There was a time in his life where he bought a bunch of cars and then he eventually realized the error of his ways and stopped buying all these cars. He had, I would say, certain kind of tendencies of fixation. I think – I personally think there's a very good chance he was somewhere on the autism spectrum where he would get fixated with certain things.

And so, you know, he'd get fixated with audio equipment and buy a bunch of fancy audio equipment. And he went into credit card debt at one point in time with overspending, didn't work for a period of time, went into credit card debt. Then he had a bunch of medical debt and then later declared bankruptcy and cleared the credit card debt.

And then after that he was living on a very small budget. He later went on and when he was 62, he applied for early social security, early retirement with social security. And I remember at the time I strongly, strongly – I don't – I have learned in life not to interfere in other people's affairs.

I used to butt my nose into other people's business. These days I desperately try not to. Imperfectly, I would guess, right? When you really love someone and really care about them, sometimes it just feels like you have to go and speak and say what you think somebody needs to know or somebody needs to hear.

And I don't think that's necessarily wrong. But in general I've just taught myself don't give my opinion unless it's asked for and don't give it generally unless it's paid for. Because free advice, people don't value it. And, you know, if they don't – if no one's asking you a question, they're not interested in an answer.

But I remember very clearly that, again, we were close at the time. I had worked hard at building a relationship. I had spent a lot of time just trying to be a friend to him and trying to do things. And I became aware of the fact that he was going to apply for social security early retirement.

And I begged him. I said, "Don't do it." I said, "Don't do it." I said, "There's nothing wrong with you. There's no reason in the world why you can't get another job." I said, "You desperately need to go and get a job because you need to be – have that structure to your life.

You need work." And I said, "Financially, if you get social security early retirement, it's going to be a very small number. I don't know the exact number, but something on the order of less than – certainly less than $1,000 a month." I said, "You're going to be stuck and hamstrung for basically the rest of your life." I said, "Because you're going to have this tiny income that you've got to figure out how to survive on this tiny income, but you're not going to have any wiggle room.

And so you're going to be trapped. You're not going to be able to have enough money to adjust, to grow, to change. You're going to be stuck. You're going to be trapped." 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 get a job. Why is unknown. I think it was because he just didn't have the confidence to do it. He didn't have the personal confidence to go out and apply for a job. It's hard for people when they start to feel the age discrimination that people feel when they're starting to get in their 50s and their 60s.

And it's especially hard for people – I mean, it's hard enough for people who are highly accomplished. But when someone is not highly accomplished, it's very difficult for them. And so he just never – he never kind of screwed up the courage to go out and do it. And so he got Social Security early retirement.

And basically for – I would say that's about seven years ago now, maybe seven years, six to seven years – he's basically just sat. He has sat in his house and done nothing for six or seven years. And lo and behold, he is now dead. I am convinced that retirement kills so many people.

I know that sounds brash and hyperbolic. I don't believe it is. I believe it's accurate. I am convinced that retirement kills people because they lose a sense of meaning, they lose a sense of contribution, they lose a sense of connectedness with the world. And it causes them – it's a downward spiral, it's a downward slide.

Hear me clearly. I am not saying that you can't stop working for wages and do something else, right? There are certainly many people who reach a certain age, they turn 65 years old, or they turn 60 years old, or whatever, or 35 years old, who cares? Early retirement, doesn't matter.

There are people who reach a certain point in time and they say, "I have accumulated enough money. I no longer want to do that for work, for money." But there has to be an answer of what they do want to do. I want to go and do this. Now, this can be anything that you want.

It can be working for wages if you want, it can be starting a business, it can be a hobby. But it has to be something that you're going to do. There has to be something that you're retiring to, something that you're going to do that is calling to you so that you're going to be active and engaged.

Now, I think that work is probably one of the best things for you to go and do. I don't think that we're designed for seven days a week of leisure. And I'll use my friend as an example. We're not designed for it. We're designed for work, for labor, for concentration, for contribution.

And it's important to have rest. There's no problem with rest. There's no problem with leisure. There's no problem with relaxation. But we're not designed for a lifestyle of rest. We're not designed for a lifestyle of leisure, for relaxation. That kind of lifestyle of just doing nothing will kill you, as it killed my friend.

When I was talking with my wife last night, knowing my friend was in the hospital, we were just trying to talk. I was like, "Can we pray for him?" And I didn't sense the faith to pray for him. Not that he would be healed, right? I just sensed no faith, no faith whatsoever to pray for him.

And she didn't either. And her comment was, "You know, I kind of feel like he wanted to die. I kind of feel like this is what he wanted." And I would say, "That's true. I think it's what he wanted." My friend never would have gone and committed suicide like some people do, but he was just sitting and doing nothing.

And for six years he sat and done basically nothing. I lived, again, I lived next door to him and I tried for years to engage with him. And I watched his life up front. Basically, he would sit, he would get up in the morning. He was a very structured guy.

He would get up at a certain time, do his routine and whatnot. At the same, you know, cook his breakfast and kind of go through this very structured lifestyle that he would live. He would always go grocery shopping at 3.30 on Sunday afternoon. You know, regular clockwork. Look out the window, there he goes, go do his weekly grocery shopping, etc.

So, very structured guy with regards to his personality. But he would just sit and watch TV, Netflix. He would watch Netflix and he would just do things. YouTube and Netflix, YouTube and Netflix, YouTube and Netflix. I guess I'm just sharing my frustration at having tried with whatever I could do to help someone and yet seeing how bound he was by those certain personality quirks.

And what angers me, angers me so much is when you get to the end of someone's life and they die. And you sit back and as a friend, somebody who cares about them, your honest assessment is kind of a wasted life. That is a terrible feeling. That is a terrible feeling.

To reflect on the death of somebody that you cared about, that you knew, that you were friends with, and get to the end and say that person wasted their life, that is a terrible testimony of a life. Now, you may think I'm too harsh. I hope I'm not harsh.

I hope I have...I know that I'm saying something that's hard. And usually we don't say things that are hard. I wouldn't go to a public funeral where there were friends and relatives of this man and say anything about him. But you know what? I don't think there's going to be any kind of funeral.

Why? Because he didn't impact anybody. He didn't touch anybody. He didn't connect with anybody. He didn't try. I'm not blaming him. None of us know the shoes, the path that another man has walked. If I were walking in his shoes, perhaps I would have lived exactly the same way.

I don't know. I don't know what he had in his past. I don't know what he had in his present. I don't know the things that he wrestled with in his heart to overcome. I don't know. I did my best to engage with him and to be a friend to him and encourage him in everything that I saw, and I know so many others in my family and in the church and in the community that tried the same way and nothing ever seemed to be effective.

What do you do except leave a man in God's hands, right? None of us are called on to give a final judgment about the meaning of another person's life. So, I just want to share with you some lessons that I have, some observations that I have from my friend's life and some lessons that I have taken to heart for me and consider them for yourself.

Number one, I asked myself the question, "Why do I feel like my friend wasted his life?" Reason number one is that he was a loner. He was a loner. Now, let me expand upon that because I try to be thoughtful in what I say. We all have different personality types.

I'm an introvert. I do well alone. I gain energy from being alone. I often find myself emotionally depleted when I'm with a lot of people, although I try to do it, but I like to be alone. So, I understand to some degree why people like to be alone, and I understand that there are some people who have that personality, that personality where they're happy with themselves and they're happy with being by themselves.

But when you think about the end of someone's life, being a loner has consequences. My friend, for example, never married. I'd asked him about it at different times in his life. He didn't really ever open up all that much. I got the idea that he had experienced some heartbreak and some hurt early in his life, but he never really shared much about it and he just wasn't particularly interested in marriage.

And I've known a number of men like this, right? They're just not particularly interested in marriage. And of course, it's not required that anybody marry. I think it's fine. You're not morally superior if you marry or morally superior if you don't. But by choosing to be alone, choosing to not invest into the work of being married with someone, choosing to not invest into having children, those things are difficult.

They lead to a certain life down the road. There have been many times facing the many responsibilities that I face where I look at somebody who's unmarried and I think, "Man, how great it would be just to be free, footloose and fancy free, not have to care for all these people, not have to arrange all these details, just be able to come and go as I like." So, it's not like there's one perfect answer.

But you look at the end of a man's life and that decision to not marry, to not have children, that decision brings with it a certain set of consequences. And what I have observed is that by being a loner, he never had the opportunity to build confidence, he never had the responsibility to care for others, and he could let himself off the hook at every stage along the path.

There's something I've wrestled with for years in my own mind, trying to understand if there's a causal relationship or a correlation. The data indicates generally that married men make more money and have more wealth than unmarried men. Generally also, the data indicates that married men live longer than unmarried men and that they enjoy higher levels of health.

Years ago, I read a book called Healthy at 100, and one of the points that that book made when talking about the factors that contribute to long-livedness is that a married smoker has a longer life expectancy than an unmarried non-smoker, statistically. And so, I've often wondered why, why? I've thought a lot about the wealth.

Why is it, right? Is a married man sometimes wealthier because maybe he has a dual-income household and he has his wife's income and they have lower expenses? Or is it just an accident, right? I don't think that you need to be married to get wealthy. I would never tell someone, "Oh, you're broke.

Go get married." No, like, silly. I know lots of single people out to have lots of money, right? So, it's not like there's just an automatic direct relationship. But I often have looked at my own life and I've thought about the things that I do, and I observe that in many things, I am motivated by my responsibilities, my obligations towards my family, but also my aspirations, my goals, the things that I want to provide for my family.

But I observe more than that, right? It's not just a matter of, "Okay, I have certain obligations or certain aspirations." It goes deeper than that. I see it as even a confidence booster. I have watched carefully. I have been married now for 11 years. No, nine years. Nine years.

I've been married for nine years. And as I observe my life and I watch the trajectory of friends of mine, even my own age, who have not married, I observe every year kind of a widening of the gap in terms of my own personal levels of responsibility, my personal levels of confidence, my personal levels of self-discipline, etc.

And I probably don't even want to talk about all of those things publicly, but it just seems obvious to me that I have personally benefited by being charged with the responsibility to lead a wife and children. And that has changed me. It has transformed my character. Parents will often reflect on this, right, when you have a child.

It can transform your character. You just don't have the choice any longer to lie in bed lazily when your little baby is calling out for you. You just do what you need to do. And there comes a cost with that, certainly, and it seems oftentimes like, "Oh, it'd just be so much easier," right?

"It'd just be so much easier if we could just hang out and stay in bed all Saturday morning. It'd just be so much easier." But yet, these things transform us in a profound way. I'm convinced. So, I can't prove any of this. All I'm doing is reflecting on my experience.

And I observe in my friend's experience, who never married and never had children, that he never was obligated to come out of himself. He always could let himself off the hook. He could always face a challenge and say, "Well, that's okay. I don't need to follow through." And there was nobody there expecting more of him.

There wasn't a wife there believing in him. And so, he could just take the easy road, take the low-pain road. Being a loner, I don't see did any good for him. I would never, to be clear, I would never have encouraged him to marry badly. But when I've watched his life of having never married, it just seems profoundly sad.

His name will die with him. His legacy ends with him. To me, that seems sad. Now, what else could he have done? Well, one of the other big observations that I have is that he never engaged proactively with others. So, to repeat, because it's important, while I believe that marriage and children can be a transformative influence in our lives, I don't believe that they are a vital experience.

I believe that there are many single men and women who live very meaningful lives, who will leave a legacy whose names will not die with them. And I don't believe that they should just go get married because somehow that's the only thing you need to do to be complete in life.

I don't believe that. But what my friend also did not… I just believe that there's a natural… there's kind of a natural normalcy to that pattern. That's the normal pattern that does certain things for us as humans. But if we don't have that pattern, what can we do? Well, we can proactively serve others.

We can proactively engage with others. And this is what my friend never did. Now, was it a personality quirk? I don't know, but he lost because he didn't do it. Let me contrast his death with the death of another friend of mine about a month or so ago. My other friend was also a similar age, I guess.

I think my other friend who died a month ago was a little younger. He was in his early 60s. My other friend did have a lot of children, but my other friend had also been very active in the local community. He had established basically a youth group in his home, and his children were involved, and they would invite all the children in the local community over, and they would do all kinds of things.

He was always going out and working to help others. He was very proactive, kind of a very intense mission focus. And the feeling at the death of my friend who was proactive was very different than the death of my friend this morning. The death of my friend this morning feels tragic to me because it feels like a life wasted, whereas the death of my friend a month ago felt tragic because it was a life cut short, and you felt like this man had so much more to give.

There was a massive difference in the number of people that their lives impacted. And when I reflect on my friend and the opportunities that he had, I think about how much he could have done if he had just simply tried, if he had just simply engaged with others, if he had sought out others and sought to help them.

He never would do that. He would come over to your house if you invited him, and he would come, you know, he was happy to come over and eat. Wouldn't work much when you're there. If you asked him specifically for help, I would ask him for help on certain things.

He would help sometimes, most of the time actually, he was fairly reliable, to help you move or something like that. But he wouldn't ever take that second step. He wouldn't ever initiate something, never invited you over to his house, never invited you to an event, never invited you to dinner, never said, "Hey," you know, to a young person, "Would you like to go fishing?" or "Maybe I can go and teach you a certain thing." Just stayed by himself.

And so, what happened is, because he never engaged with others proactively, he never built that social community around himself. He never did the work to sew into other people's lives and to serve other people that would create the kind of rich, warm, social fabric that he could have enjoyed.

So, he stayed the loner, always the loner. But not the happy loner, not the adventurous loner, just the loner, the loser loner by himself, watching Netflix, watching YouTube, waiting to die. What an awful thing to say. But it's true. And I personally believe in the value of the truth.

I think you shouldn't tell lies even at someone's funeral. More lies are probably told than almost any other forum in the world. Don't be a loner. Now, let me expand on this loner theme for a moment. What you could see over the years was that the more detached he became from people, the less and less confident he became, and the more of a loner he wanted to be.

The one thing that kept him attached to people and kept him connected was, used to be his work. Was his work. I guess I should say work and church. So, with his work, when he lost his last job, that cut that off. And then later he disengaged for a variety of reasons from church.

And you could just see from an outside perspective that he was suffering. And no matter what you did to try to reach out to him, no matter how you tried to engage him, you'd just suffer more, suffer more, because he had no contact with people, had no accountability, had no friendships, had nothing.

And so the confidence just fell and fell. And so, whereas at 62, before he took Social Security, he could still probably have gone out and gotten, he was, again, a smart guy, could have gotten any basic job. And yet at 64, he had been out of it so far, he couldn't even imagine the idea probably of going and applying for a job.

"Oh, I'm just not interested in anything." He would hide it under all these things, but not interested in anything. And that lack of engagement, it killed him. Killed him. It was only a matter of time. He's already dead, right? Off by himself, doing nothing. It's just a matter of, okay, what's actually going to take out his life?

In this case, COVID. Okay. But the spark was already gone. It didn't have to be that way. It didn't have to be that way. He could have at any point in time tried. There were so many people around him who were conscious of his struggles, who were full with empathy, filled with empathy, right?

Understanding. I'm not an unempathetic person. I understand when people have trouble. I understand that things are easier for some people. I know that there are things that are easier for me than other people. I would never go into someone's life and say, "Well, you just have to be like Joshua or anybody else." But he never even tried.

And that's what makes you feel like, "What a waste. You never even tried." You were surrounded, surrounded by resources, surrounded by people, surrounded by a network of people, of friends, of people who would engage, and you never tried. Friend, if you find yourself pulling back into isolation, don't. Stop.

I mean, don't do that. Stop it. You have to press forward and maintain your engagement with people. Your community is one of the most valuable assets that you can build. And so, if you find yourself struggling and alone, it's not good for man to be alone. You have to reach out.

You have to be proactive. You have to try and make a friend, build a relationship. You have to try. If you're married, great. That doesn't automatically solve anything. If you're not married, invest yourself into other people. And I often think of people in my life who have made a difference for me.

I have had many middle-aged single men who have invested into me and who have helped me. It wasn't the family that magically changed it. It was their mindset, their worldview, their way of thinking about things. And so many men have impacted my life. And they sought to sow into me as a child.

They sought to set up sports. They sought to hire me for work. They sought to take me fishing. They sought to encourage me, to engage with me. And those men, when they die, I can say something very different at their funeral. I can honor them for reaching out to me.

I can honor them for doing things for me that I couldn't do, right? For paying for things for me that I couldn't pay for. One friend of mine was so faithful. All through my college years, he would continually... We would hang out. We would go to dinner. We were involved in some community things.

We'd go to dinner. I didn't have the money to pay for it. He would cover my expenses. He would let me... He would take me... We would go on trips and whatnot together. And we had a great time. He was a mentor to me and a very meaningful part of my life.

And I can say something very different about him than my other friend who just was a lump on a log, didn't ever try. Don't be the person who doesn't try. Now, how does this follow through? Well, a next thing that just struck to me is my friend did not ever grow.

He never grew. When I reflect upon 35 years of knowing him, he was always the same. He never grew. I saw him decline, with what I'm telling you about when he retired. I saw him decline, but he didn't grow. He didn't have a growth mindset. He didn't have something that was challenging him.

I would casually, in a friendly way, I would always try to engage him. Like, is there a hobby? Is there an interest? I was... For years, is there something that you're interested in? Oh, you could do such and such, right? You're interested in such and such. Have you thought about maybe taking a class at the local library?

Oh, look, here's a class, or here's something really interesting. Here's a way you could do that. Nothing. He would not grow. He would not learn. He would just sit. And you could see that reflected in all areas of his life. He never developed any kind of a passionate long-term career.

That's another thing that could have been completely transformative for him, is if he had simply chosen one thing and said, "I want to master this one thing. I want to get good at this one thing." That work would have kept him alive, and not only just physically alive, it would have kept him alive in his spirit, if he had just kept working.

I reflect on that many times. I thought, "Did I... Should I have pushed harder?" And it was so painful for me for years to watch him after he retired. And he stopped working and he lost that one connection to the world. If he had just had a job where he could do a good job and have the satisfaction of a day's work well done, that would have made all the difference in the world.

But man, you feel horrible when you sit back day after day and day and do nothing. You feel great if you work a long week's work and then you have a weekend off to engage and rest and rejuvenation. Going to the lake, going to the beach, sitting at home with a cold drink in your hand and reading a book, watching a movie, all of these things feel great after a week's diligent labor.

But when every single day you do those things, none of them feel great. You feel like a slob. You feel like a worthless person, somebody who doesn't contribute to anybody. And it eats at you, it destroys you as it destroyed my friend. If he had just simply gotten a job and engaged with a career and there were many things that he was suited for, many things he could have done very well, just never started, it would have transformed his life and it would have transformed his money.

It was exceedingly sad to watch him with the money because what happened is he grew dissatisfied with some of his personal living circumstances, but he was stuck. Exactly as I told him it would happen was exactly what happened. Before he took a social security, I told him, "If you do this, you're going to be stuck.

It's not going to be easier for you at 67 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 and get a job later after you've been unemployed for four years than it is now." And he said, "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 year, year after year, year after year, same thing. And it's one of those things where I, on the one hand, you look at welfare programs, you look at things like social security. In this case, my friend, he was a veteran and so he died in a veterans hospital.

And on the one hand, you feel like you say, "You know what? That's nice that at least he had some income. That's nice that at least he had some retirement income. So when he needed it, then he had it." Right? There is that sense. Then the other side of me looks at it and I get really frustrated and angry about the fact that he had a social security income there to live on.

Why? Because the social security killed him. I know, again, I'm not being hyperbolic. He sat down and did nothing. He sat down and did nothing. And he never should have been put in a place where he could do that. Life is designed where you have to do that. And this is where you look at a program that's ostensibly a program of caring, right?

Here's somebody who's not disciplined enough to save for themselves. They're not disciplined enough to provide for their own future. So we, the government, are going to come in and we're going to mandate that he and his employer contribute from his wages into this program that's going to provide him with a pension.

It's going to alleviate poverty. Maybe it did, right? But I'm convinced my friend would be alive today if he had still been working. I'm convinced that he would have been far happier if he had still been working. I'm convinced he wouldn't have wasted so many years if he had still been working.

Work is good for a man. I even came to the point, this is sad, but it's true. I told you I lived next door to him for a long time. I would frequently invite him over to dinner, frequently spend time with him, frequently talk to him. Eventually I came to the point where I couldn't do it in faith anymore.

The Bible says, "Those who will not work, neither shall they eat." And I came to the point where I was convinced that he will not work. And he was being allowed out of the place of pain that God designed by the social security system. And I came to the point where I could no longer feed him because I thought, "I can't, this is not honoring to God.

I can't feed a man who will not work. I can't invite him over for dinner." I would still try to talk to him and engage with him when I could, but I couldn't invite him over to my house anymore. I could just see more than I've ever seen with anybody else the destruction in a man's life when he will not work and when the circumstances around enable his not working, enable his laziness.

And I watched it destroy his life over the course of those years. When you look at these programs, you look at some of the stuff, you look at social security, you look at welfare programs, you see the destruction in human lives. You watch the way it destroys character and it's so sad.

Now, I don't believe the same thing occurs if you accumulate capital yourself. Why? Well, if you're accumulating capital yourself, if you're denying your current desires intentionally so that you can save and accumulate more, you're building a strength of character that I think sees people, many people successfully through those retirement years.

You see people, but in my time, I've never engaged with somebody who saved a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars, and never coached them, consulted with them, and found them ever to lack character or to lack even vision of what they wanted to do when they retired.

I still warn them, but generally people say, "Oh, I'm retiring so I can do such and such, so I can be involved in this thing. And I'm not going to go to my job anymore, but I have these other 18 things that I've just been waiting for more time to do.

I'm going to have more time and I'm going to do them." And they continue to be productive people. I do not believe that a man has to work for wages in order to eat. He just needs to work, right? And that work can be many different things. There's no prohibition on certain kinds of activities.

But when a man accumulates his own money through thrift, through diligence, through denying his own current desires to accumulate for the future, it transforms his character. And I'm not necessarily saying that social security is morally wrong. It's run in a criminal way. It's a giant Ponzi scheme. But I'm not saying it's morally wrong.

I'm saying that it doesn't have good results. If my friend had also saved and invested and had that character transformation, then the social security check would have been nice for him. But he didn't do it. Couldn't do it. And back to what I said about sowing the lives of others.

One of the things that always limited him was his money. How could he say to, you know, the teenagers, "Hey, guys, let's go and do a rafting trip or let's go do a camping trip or something," because he didn't have any money, because he was living on the dole.

It's just a total disaster on all sides. A total disaster. And finally, when someone gets in that situation, what do they have to look forward to? When you have somebody that's not growth-oriented, that's not engaging with a career, with a future, when they're not looking forward and saying, "In the future, I'm going to do such and such," when they're not being forced in the present to work towards something that they want, what do they have to look forward to?

More Netflix? More YouTube? More Sunday afternoon shopping trips to the same grocery store you've been going to for 15 years? More sitting in your house doing nothing by yourself? What a catastrophe. Is it any wonder why you're dead soon? Is it any wonder why retirement kills you? That kind of disengaging and decoupling from life, decoupling from growth is deadly.

It's deadly. I don't fully understand how it kills you. I can't sit here and give all the medical things, but we've heard so many stories about people just lose their will to live. Spouse dies, someone they've been married to for 70 years, and they just say, "That's it. I'm going to die.

I've seen it with my grandparents who've died." They lose their will to live, and then the diseases come on. And so, maybe it's a disease like COVID. I don't know how my friend got COVID, barely left his house. Who knows? He got COVID. But who knows what the actual cause of death is?

It's listed on the death certificate, but it's that disengagement from life. It's that retirement that disengages you from life. So, what's the answer? What are the alternatives? Here are some things that I think are important to contrast that with. More than anything else, I am convinced that the secret to aging well is to always make your future bigger than your past.

No matter the stage of life you are, no matter where you are, you always need to make your future bigger than your past. If your future is bigger than your past, then there's hope in the future. And if there's hope in the future, there's power in the present. There's something that can keep you pressing forward.

When somebody gives up hope, when somebody gives up a vision in the future that's bigger, something that's pulling them forward, they die. They die now. To me, that's the first and most important lesson. Always make your future bigger than your past. Then you'll grow successfully. Now, how do you make your future bigger than your past?

Well, there are some areas that are fairly obvious, right? When you see people that are involved socially with other people, but usually the wife and children, right? You say, "I want to see my grandchildren. I want to see my great-grandchildren. I want to play with them. I want to enjoy those relationships." And that can influence many people to make changes in the present that will see them to that goal.

And there's a natural ebb and flow to life in these normal family relationships where you see, they bring you a focus, they bring you a joy, they bring you a clarity of goal. And so they're very impactful. You can see it in your community. When people are laboring for something, could be the group of students that they mentor at the local Boys and Girls Club, or the Boy Scout troop that they volunteer with, or the church organization that they spend time in, or whatever it is.

And there's something there, and you have a change you're trying to see in the world. One of the most important things you can have is to develop a quest, something that you want to impact. Generally, I think a good place to start is to go look around the world and find some wrong that you want to right that's at the scale where you can actually have an impact and start laboring at it.

And then if you fix that thing, then pick a bigger thing. So you always have some more thing that you're looking for, some more thing that you're seeking to change and to adjust, to improve. It can be financial goals. It can be a career, right? You're wanting to advance a certain thing.

You're wanting to improve a certain thing. You always have to find a way to adjust what you're doing and not look back upon your glory days, but look forward to your future glory days. And if your imagination is failing you, then you've got to feed your imagination until you can look forward and build another quest in the future that's going to bring you forward.

It has to be something you care about. My quest is not yours, but it has to be something that brings you forward, that you care about. That's lesson one. Always make your future bigger than your past. The day at which your future is dimmer and smaller than your past is the day that death sets in for you.

It might take a little while for your heart to stop, but that's the day that you start dying. Don't let that happen to you. Always make your future bigger than your past. Find something that you're working at. And life is full of so many inspirational people, so many people who've gone before us, who have charted the path and proven how it can be done, why it can be done.

Take your inspiration from anywhere. I always think about a guy like Stephen Hawking, right? Here's this guy who suffered this incredibly debilitating illness, and yet there he is, still seeking to use his mind, to use his intellect, to build something, to make a difference, to develop a theory, to adjust something, and seek to leave his mark upon the world.

No matter if you're wheelchair-bound, no matter whether you're paralyzed, you can find fulfillment and purpose in something. That something doesn't have to integrate with other people. It may just be you. Maybe you're painting. I think of someone like Johnny Erickson-Todd, right? Paralyzed young girl, but became this beautifully talented painter, and very inspirational, spoken to and encouraged, you know, millions of people with her testimony.

But maybe you just stay at home and you say, "What I'm doing is I'm becoming a better painter." You need to see that you're improving in something. You need to be trying with something. Something that you're scared of, something that you could fail at. Playing piano, caring for the neighborhood children, feeding and visiting the widows and orphans around you, ministering to the homeless.

Find something. I tried so many times, my friend who died, I tried so many times to get him involved with somebody, to find an organization. Because one of the most important things that you can do when you are depressed and when you're struggling is go and find someone to help.

Go and find someone to serve. You'll quickly start to diminish your own problems. I have a friend of mine right now who's isolated from COVID, can't go anywhere, everything's locked down, and I'm begging her, please, you have to go and find a place to go out and get involved in the community.

You have to find a place to serve. You have to find a ministry, a relief organization, someplace where you can go and help people who are less fortunate. Because the risk of dying of coronavirus is far, far lower than the risk of dying from loneliness and solitude and self-pity.

Hear me clearly, my friend who died this morning did not die of coronavirus. Without question, without question, he had coronavirus. Without question, coronavirus caused the physical symptoms that took his life. He didn't die from coronavirus though. He died years ago. It was just a matter of time and a matter of what's going to take him.

It wasn't coronavirus that killed him. It was his decisions in life that killed him. Just took a few years for the death to actually occur. Make your future bigger than your past. Engage with others. Social contact is the key. Serve others. Serve others. What did Jesus say when being asked about the greatest law by the Pharisees?

He said, "Love God, love neighbor." You don't need anything more than that. Love God, love neighbor. Usually, the way that we know that you love God is by how you love neighbor. All right, so what James said, "I'll show you my faith by my actions." How do you know?

What did John say? How do you know your love for God? By your love for one another. Love God, love neighbor. If you're going to love God, you're going to have to love your neighbor. You're going to have to find someone and serve them and engage with them and help them and stay engaged with them.

Keep that social contact. Press forward. Strive forward. Last thing I would say, specifically about money, I have other lessons as well, but I need to wrap this up. Specifically about money. I don't think you should get into a point where your income is constrained. One of the things that was so, I think, really bad in watching my friend's story was he was so constrained by his lack of money.

He didn't have any money. Why didn't he have any money? Because he made certain choices that put him onto a fixed income. He didn't have any money. Now, could he have still given? One of the things that the Bible says is that, "Why do you work?" Says, "Let each of you labor, working with his hand so that he may have something to give." If you don't have enough surplus in your budget to give to others, you need to work more.

If you don't have enough surplus in your budget to give to others, you need to work more. Now, you can do that with a very, very small amount of money. We can all see a person's heart when there's someone that's generous, that's giving to others, even if the dollars are small.

We rightly honor people. We don't honor one man who carelessly gives a million dollars that means nothing more than we honor someone who gives $100 that means everything to them. We honor the one for whom it's the hardest impact. But when you find yourself saying, "Oh, I can't give to others.

I can't labor in others. I can't sow into other people's lives because I don't have." Well, go and get something so that you can do it. Again, just imagine the psychology of living on a fixed income, a very small income where you're physically trapped. You can't move. You can't go and move into a different apartment because, "Well, where am I going to cope with the first, last and security deposit?" You can't go and do the other thing.

You can't move. Don't allow yourself to be in that situation. There's always a way to do it. There's always something more you can do. I tried, my friend, I tried him so many times. I said, "Why don't you drive for Uber? You're a good driver. You like to drive.

Can you drive for Uber? You have a car. Do this." No, it's not going to do it. I hope that these lessons are things that you can use. I know it's outside of the normal ebb and flow of financial planning, but man, it's so meaningful. I find it so painful to say some of the things, the harsh, hard truths that I have said about my friend's life.

You don't want to say uncharitable things about people that you love, people that you care about. It just feels like such a waste. And that is not a good feeling for your friends and your family to have at your funeral. If you are somebody who is wasting your life, I beg of you, stop.

Stop. You may or may not believe that God exists. That's okay. It's an important question, but I understand different perspectives. But what we can all agree on is that your life, I hope we can all agree on, your life matters. You want your life to matter. And so, whether you believe that the work that you do in this life prepares you for the next life, as I do, or whether you believe that the work that you do in this life is all there is, I just simply beg you to observe and to notice that the way that you live this life has an impact.

It has an impact on you. You can be entirely successful, or you can sit back and wait to die. Don't do that. I don't know how I could possibly encourage you more strongly with that. Just make your life matter. If you've never reflected on your death, think about it.

Do you want some random guy on the internet saying hard things about you at your death? It's not going to be me, of course, but somebody else. Your friends are watching, and they're learning. Make sure that your life is a life they can learn from, on the positive side, not learn from as a negative example.

If you'll live a life of labor, of work, if you'll love others, if you'll engage with life, if you'll not be passive, if you'll press forward within the context of your personality, you don't have to ignore your personality, but if you'll press forward and engage with life and engage with things that matter to you, then when you die, your friends can rejoice over the meaning of your life.

Doesn't matter whether you die at 30, at 60, or at 100. They can rejoice over that. My other friend that I'm foiling with, two people, died of coronavirus, similar ages, neither one of them had any apparent health conditions, but they both died. When I went to my other friend's funeral, I was sad to lose him, but I wasn't sad for the meaning of his life.

He left a rich legacy, a rich, rich legacy, even though he only had 60-ish years to do it in. You may only have 20 years to do it in. But brother, get busy sowing a legacy. That legacy is going to involve work. I hate retirement. I hate retirement because I believe that retirement, if by retirement we mean withdrawing, I believe retirement kills people and makes them unhappy.

So, think very carefully before you retire. To me, I have for years watched my friend systematically decline since he retired. I knew what I said to him, I knew at the time what I thought would happen, and watching it happen exactly as I thought it did has been even more sobering for me than you can imagine.

Don't retire. If you want to stop working for labor, for wages I mean, stop working for wages because you have something else that you're going to do, great. But, that sounds so corny, re-fire, right? Find something that you're going to work at, something that's going to keep you on that growth mindset.

Make sure that your future is always bigger than your past. Don't isolate yourself. Don't pull back from people. Pour out your life loving others. And then, when people hear of your death, they'll be sad for their loss, but they'll be satisfied for a life well lived, and hopefully be rejoicing that you received the reward for your life well lived.

Because it's a painful, painful thing for your friends to hear that you've died, and for them to first think, "Well, what a waste." I don't want to end with that sense, I just say that I appreciate many things about my friend. He was a kind man. He was a kind man.

I don't know what else to say. He wasn't a mean man. But when you see someone's potential, and you see what they could have done, and what could have happened, and how they could have grown, and you see that they didn't do it, for whatever reason, to me it's sad.

And I don't want that to be the case for me, or for you. I want to live full out. I want to live…I may have many flaws. We've all known many people with many flaws. We all have many flaws. Having flaws is not…to have flaws is to be human.

None of us are perfect, nor will we ever behave perfectly. But there's a sense of passion that you appreciate about certain people. That passion does not have to be on a grand scale. Your passion does not have to be mine. But when probed, somebody should find that sense of passion in you.

So, if you're not currently experiencing it, it's okay. Right? It's okay. But don't make decisions that are going to continue to disengage you with others. Don't make decisions that are going to isolate you. Don't make decisions that are going to cause you to be able to indulge your laziness.

Don't make those decisions. It leads down a wrong path. I hope that a useful message has come through this show. Don't know what to do other than just to honestly share how I feel, and hope that as I reflect on for myself, I don't want the legacy of my life to be anything like the legacy of my friend.

And I don't want it for you either. God bless you. Have a great day. What do you get with a 100 million dollar renaissance? A timeless hideaway in the heart of Death Valley National Park. Now better than ever. Visit oasis at deathvalley.com