Episode 17: Free Will

Welcome to wisdom from the aerial view. My name is Enid Borden. I'm the CEO of the National Foundation for Ending Seeming Hunger. I don't know why we have to give titles to ourselves, but we do. With joining me on this podcast is Dr. Mark Klein, and he's got a title too, and that is physician. Physician, heal thyself. We're gonna have an interesting conversation today. Something that I wanted to have this conversation, because I don't understand it. We're gonna talk today about free will. So let me just talk a little bit. Aristotle said, humans are responsible for the actions they freely choose to do, i.e. for their voluntary actions. Plato said, people have the freedom to develop virtues over their basic instincts, exhibiting a mastery of the self, using their free will. And you say, we control how we choose to feel about any situation. It relegates the concept of free will to a far less important state. Okay, why did I read those quotes? Because to be honest with you, Doc, I don't understand how you feel about free will, and this whole thing really perplexes me. You've got a whole chapter in the book on free will. I read it, I read it again, and I read it again, and you say free will.

Hahaha

It relegates to a far less important state. Huh? Explain this to me, will you?

Okay, well, that's the end. We're going to leave that question to the end of this conversation. So it basically says, in a sense, we don't have to worry about free will. So what is free will? So people think of free will, there's a religious connotation, of course. Is life predestined? And there's a sect of Christianity that believes that life is predestined and other groups as well.

Mm-hmm. Okay.

meaning everything's laid out and there are other people saying, no, no, no, our free will, we have the ability to make these choices and these decisions. And we've just recently talked about choices in a previous podcast. And so we do have free will and we are the captains of our ship, right? That's a big one, captain of our ship. Okay. Well, like most things from the aerial view, it's not quite what it appears to be. So we talked about the fact we make a choice. It is then impacted by the choices made by the billions of other people on the planet. So right away, from the very beginning, that choice, which is really expression of our free will, our free will, I'm going to go to the left instead of going to the right, is already right after you let go of that choice and release that expression of your free will, it's getting hammered by the choices and decisions everybody else is making. And really, almost instantaneously, it's out of your hands. which is why we talked previously about why you should make a choice and let it go and not fret about it because you have no idea what's going to happen down the road. It's impossible to know. You initiate a cascade of events and then everybody's decisions are whacking into yours and that's it. Okay. So free will is a little, it's a little bit of a misnomer because it sounds like we're in charge, but again, we're just victims and not victims, but we are affected by the choices everybody else makes. So I have an analogy I want to use. It's in the book, but I really like it. We talk a lot about using the book as a metaphor. So supposing somebody, so I say you want to write a book and you get a publisher and the publisher is, okay, yeah, I'm going to publish your book, but I have a couple of rules. Okay. What are the rules? Well, your book can have 240,000 characters in it. Right. That's all you can. You can't have any less or any more. 240,000 letters, right?

Okay.

And with those letters, you're going to make words and sentences and paragraphs and pages, right? So you can only have 240,000 letters, no more, no less, but what you want to do with them is yours. now you say, okay, well, I thought I kind of had free will, could do anything I want with this book, but I'm limited by the number of letters. But on the other hand, I can decide how many letters are in each word, how many words are on each page, and therefore how many pages in the book. So if I want to have more pages in the book, I can have shorter words and fewer sentences per page. And if I want to have more pages in the book, I do the opposite. So, the opposite of whatever I said originally. But the point is you have some control. You get to choose how big the words are and how many sentences per page and so on. But the total number of letters in that book is fixed, right?

But the point is, you have some control. You get to choose how big the words are and how many sentences to take, and so on. But the total number of letters in that book is fixed. Can I stop? So are you equating free will to control? You have control. Okay, it's the same. We're talking about the same thing then? Free will means control?

Sure.

Well, to a certain degree, implies, that's how the concept of free will is often portrayed, that man has free will to do as he or she wants, right? That men and women have free will and that we are captains of our ship and we determine our fate, right? So,

Right, right.

Here's a great example. You decided you went to college and then you decided you had a few other jobs and eventually got into the nonprofit world. You rose to the head of a large nonprofit. You're still ahead of another nonprofit. So you could say that you were the captain of your ship. But the truth is you didn't start out when you were six years old thinking, I can't wait to be CEO of Beals on Wheels or run a bunch of nonprofits. That wasn't necessarily your plan. What happened was

Right.

You made a decision and you made another decision and things happened. And all of a sudden your life got, you met certain people, you got in certain situations and your life was kind of almost like in a little bit of a river that you weren't quite controlling. And then you ended up at this particular port and boom, now you're in the nonprofit world, right? So you made a lot of decisions along the way about where you're to end it up, but what you wanted to do, but where you ended up.

Right.

was actually a lot less under control than you had imagined because events and interactions with other people directed you towards where you ended up being. So you had some control, right, but not nearly as much as you think, right? That's kind of the way it works. So if people would say to me, is there such a thing as free will? I would say, well, in the concept that you're as a captain of your ship and controlling your fate, very little, very little. You make that initial decision and then get out of the way because you're going to get walloped by not, you're going to get, your decision is going to get walloped by the decisions made by all these other people and where they end up, we don't know. We talked about that previously. So that's really a critical component of free will. If where your decision ends up is not in your control, then by definition, you've overestimated your degree of free will. And I think we do overestimate our degree of free will. Now, is that a big deal?

you're going to your decision is going to get wild by the decisions made by all these up and where they end up we don't know so that's really a critical component of free will if where your decision ends up is not in your control then by definition you've overestimated the degree of

No, doesn't matter. Right. And that's what you alluded to previously. So, the reason is, is because of something we talked about earlier, which is that we have complete control of how we feel and react to every situation. So let's say that you had this limitation of your free will, you make a choice, but as it turns out after a

Yahoo!

know, 10 minutes, it's out of your control and the events of the world and the decisions and choices by other people are moving your choice to a place you hadn't anticipated, which happens to all of us, right? Okay, so you could get very upset about that, right? This isn't going the way I wanted. This is not what I had in mind. This is not the career I had planned or the life I had planned or whatever, right? You can lament it up and down, you know, because I thought I was the captain of my ship and

you can implement it up and down.

I guess I'm not, right? And you can get very sad and depressed and so on. But remember the secret weapon that you get to choose how you want to respond to any situation, right? The Viktor Frankl rule, right? I call the Viktor Frankl rule. The one thing nobody can take away from you is your decision of how you want to react to any situation. So that's a really good thing because if you...

Yes, right.

But that, in essence, that's your free will, isn't it?

That's okay. Well, that's a good way to put it. That's legitimate. Yes. It's not what most people think of as free will, but I like where you're going with this. Right.

Right, but... Yeah, yeah. That's when I read your chapter, kept thinking, I actually thought of Victor Frankl, I thought, to me, that's the free will, that's the power of the free will, in that I make the decision in my own head as to my reaction to whatever is happening to me, and that, to me, is my free will. And that, me, is a power that you can't take away from me. To me, that was free will.

That's 100 % right. Can't take the weight from me. So I would say that most people when considering the concept of free will wouldn't see that as free will, but I think your point is spot on. It's an excellent point, right? Which is what we've talked about, that you are in control of how you feel. in a sense, so my point was exactly what you're saying. You don't have to lament the fact that your expression of your free will quote did not end up that you couldn't, that your free will isn't as omnipotent as you think. In fact,

Right.

It's probably impotent instead of omnipotent. But it's okay because of what you just said. You get to decide how you feel. And from the aerial view, again, we got to pop up to the air to see that there's no right way for things to work out. I remember when you said previously, you talked about what you wrote in our yearbook about you want to leave footprints in the sands of time.

Could be, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right.

You've realized that the ocean washes us from prints away. There's no such thing. So the idea that we have a certain path we're going to take, right? If you're stuck on that path, you this is the only path that's going to work and serendipity does not deliver you that path, then you're going to be unhappy. But it's a mistake to feel that way. There is no right way for your life to work out. This is not something I thought we would talk about today, but we've mentioned it before.

So the idea that we have a certain path we're going to take, right? If you're stuck on that path, and this is the only path that's going to work, and don't, and serendipity does not deliver you that path, then you're going to be unhappy. It's a mistake to feel that way. was no right way.

Benjamin Hall. Benjamin Hall was this Fox reporter who was in Ukraine and he was in a car and the Russians attacked the car. He's a reporter and he was with his photographer and his assistant. The Russians hit him with a missile twice, I think. and his cameraman and his assistant were killed, but he survived, but he lost limbs, he lost an eye. And he's written a couple of books since then. He's been on every network, even though he works for Fox, I've seen him on other networks, talking about how this has changed his life for the better. For the better, right? I mean, he's lost, he's had, I think he's lost at least two limbs. I think he's lost a hand and a leg, I don't remember, but he's lost limbs, he lost an eye.

about how this has changed his life for the better. For the better. I think he's lost it.

He looks pretty good, but he's obviously majorly compromised in terms of the things he can do. And he's like the most optimistic guy you've ever seen. And in a way, he's like grateful for what happened to him. Why? Because he was able to get to the area of view and realize there's no there's no correct single way for our lives to work out, no matter what we think. So our free will says, I want to grow up to be a doctor. And then along the way, something happens and you don't get to be a doctor. Right. For whatever reason. OK. You could say, my free will is to be a doctor. It was suppressed. Bad things happened. I'm not a doctor. I'm really, you know, even though I don't say it out loud, I am still bitter about it all these years later. And that's an

Okay, you could say, my free will to be a doctor, it was suppressed, bad things happened, I'm not a doctor, even though I don't say it out loud, I am still bitter about it all these years later, and that's a street view only way of hoping. In the aerial view, you realize there's no one way for a

street view only way of looking at it. From the aerial view, you realize there's no one way for a life to work out. As we talked previously, there's no correct choice. There's no best choice or best decision. There's no best way for a life to work out. You have to sort of go with the flow. You have to appreciate the fact that you're here for a reason, but you can't predict how that's going to be expressed. You're here for a reason to prepare. to make that evolution from selfish to selfless, from inward to outward focus. But there's no one single best way for that to be expressed. So things happen in life. Your choices interact with the other choices and they send you down paths you had not anticipated. And so you can get upset about it and frustrated about it and depressed about it, or you can say, This is just my life taking a different path. It's okay. I still have the same focus. I still need to make that evolution. I still need to become the best person I can be. It doesn't matter which path it is. And that's what Benjamin Hall is screaming to us. He's brilliant. He's saying, look what happened to me. You think I planned to lose limbs and get blown up and all these things. Do you think I wanted this? No, of course not. It's made me a better person. I'm stronger. I see the world differently. I appreciate my children differently. I appreciate my wife differently. I appreciate my friends differently. I'm grateful for every day, whatever it is. He's not alone. There are other people like that. So we have a choice, right? We can get frustrated that our free will didn't get expressed in the way we wanted. Benjamin Hall wanted to be a reporter for his career and he was, and he wanted to keep doing it in war zones and so on, whatever. His life took a different path.

life took a different path. And it sounds like it took a terrible path, but he doesn't see it that way. Right? This is not me looking at him and saying, Benjamin, you should see your life differently. No, he's doing this. It's quite remarkable because he's got the aerial view. He understands the perspective. He says it doesn't matter that our free will doesn't get expressed as we wish. We have the ability to, as we said, to be frank with him. have the ability, like you just said, beautifully. We have the ability to decide how we feel about it.

And it sounded like it took a terrible path, but he doesn't see it that way, right? This is not me looking at him and saying, Benjamin, you should see your life differently. No, he's doing this. It's quite remarkable because he's got the aerial view. He understands the perspective, understands it doesn't matter that our free will doesn't get expressed as we wished. We have the ability to, as we said, the Viktor Frankl rule. We have the ability, like you just said beautifully, we have the ability to decide how we feel about these things.

Yeah, so it's fascinating in that I guess when I look at, again, I get back to this whole notion of semantics. me, free will is the Viktor Frankl notion. And the aerial view to me is the optimistic view. If Benjamin, if Mr. Hall could be optimistic about what happened afterwards, then we all ought to be optimistic. The question is, how does one put aside the bad and say, okay, let's go forward with optimism and understand that we can make a different path. You can actually choose a different path, whether it's right or wrong, whatever. It's still the best path for you, the best choice for you. And you're saying no, that I've got it wrong. Do I have it wrong? Okay, tell me why I've got that wrong. Well, but it's not, okay.

No, I do. Well, I don't want to, I'm not going to tell you you have it wrong because we're friends and I wouldn't treat you that way. But what I'd say is there's a different way to look at it. Let's put it that way. So you can't give it.

then I'll tell you you're wrong. But okay, good, I'm kidding. Go ahead. No, no, We can have a difference of opinion. Again, I get back to it's how you're looking at things now. I'm actually looking at it the same way you are, but I think I'm just saying it differently. Go ahead.

So let me, me, let me get, so you just said something very important. We have to look at the bad, right? You said something was bad. You assigned it a value. We've talked previously, we assign everything a value in our brains, right? But I can say to you, yes, some things are bad. Getting blown up by a missile in a car is bad. But what Benjamin Hall was saying, no, it's not. That's not bad. Let me finish. It looks bad.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Right. Bad. Bad.

It looks bad. It seems bad to everybody. What he's saying is there's no such thing as...

It seems bad to everybody. What he's saying is there's no such thing as in this very real sense, this is a hard one. This is a very hard one. From the aerial view, we've talked about this, things don't have any value. There's no bad or good. They just are. Right? So from the aerial view, there's no such thing as a bad event or a good event. We talked about as a hurricane, a bad or a good event. It depends, you know, when in time you are, where you are, what you are. Right? So Nothing has any intrinsic value by itself. It's what value we place on it. And what Benjamin Hall is telling us is that what looks like a bad event, a terrible event, turns out is not a bad event. It's just an event that took him down a different path, but his life is maybe in some ways even more fulfilling than it was previous to that event. But you and I would look at that, and most people would look at it go, well, no thanks. I don't want to get hit by a missile, right? And I don't think I can, I may not be able to end up as optimistic as Benjamin Hall, but what he's teaching us is something very important. bad is a relative concept. It's an assigned value. He has decided it wasn't bad. He has decided what looks terrible and bad is not. Every event is just an event.

He has decided what looks terrible and bad is not. Every event is just an event. It has no intrinsic value until we assign it about it. We have to choose. He has taken an event that all of us would think is a bad event and given it a different value. That's the point. That's what you understand from the aerial view. So it's just, you heard me say this. We live a life. It's just a life.

It has no intrinsic value until we assign it a value and we get to choose. He has taken an event that all of us would think is a bad event and given it a different value. That's the point. That's what you understand from the aerial view. So it's just, you've heard me say this. We live a life. It's just a life, meaning it has a beginning, a middle and an end. So...

It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. So no matter what we do, we cannot change that. It's a limited time engagement. We might change the length of it by taking, by exercising, eating right, and so on, but we're not changing the last page of that record. We can move it maybe to the right so it's a little further away, but the last record is always our down. So that can, so we have to focus on that all the time. We're here for a reason. What Benjamin Hall is telling us is that all events contribute equally.

No matter what we do, we cannot change that. It's a limited time engagement. We might change the length of it by exercising and eating right and so on, but we're not changing the last page of that record. We can move it maybe to the right so it's a little further away, but the last record is always our death. So we have to focus on that all the time. We're here for a reason. What Benjamin Hall is telling us is that all events contribute to what is our lifespan, contribute to our lives. We can assign whatever value we choose. We can choose to sign a value of this event that happened to him as the worst thing ever, crawl up in a bed, never move again, be depressed, sit in his wheelchair. Well, he's not a wheelchair anymore because he has artificial limbs, but just never put his limbs on, stay in bed, drink all day, smoke joints. That's the choice. A lot of people would choose that after that event. He's saying, no, no, no.

Yes, however, my point is, this is why I

I'm going to assign a different value to this event. I'm going to assign this event an awakening, a realization and go forward. Yes, I will have fewer limbs than before it happened. I'll only have one eye that works instead of two eyes, but it doesn't matter. It has focused me more on why I'm here and what I need to do in my life. And so I choose to assign it as a good event, not a bad event. See the point? You

beg to differ. I think the value that I put on being crushed by a bomb from the Russians is bad. Okay. But I can take the bad event and make it into a good thing, but it still does not negate the badness of the original intent of that bomb. It was bad. The value I placed on it, no, the result of the bomb. So I'm still saying that that bad, I can turn bad into good.

Wait, wait, intent of the bomb or the result of the bomb?

but it doesn't negate the bad. It's still there.

Okay, that's semantics. I'm going to guess Benjamin Hall would disagree with you. He would say, it's not bad, but that's fine. It doesn't really matter because at the end result, you're calling it bad. He's calling good, but you're moving in the same direction as he is. You're going to turn it into something positive for you. So that's fine.

All right. Yeah.

Right, to me, but to me, I think in a way that's the way I would look at the world. would say, I've got, in my life, I see poverty. Okay, it's there, it's bad. The value I place to it, it's bad. But I'm gonna turn, if I can in any way, shape or form, because I am the captain of my ship, I can turn that bad maybe into something a little bit more positive. And so again, you're right, this is just semantics, but it's the way it plays out. Pardon me, in my life, to take the bad, assign the value to it, the value is still bad, no matter what, it's bad. But I can take that and try maybe using my free will to turn the negative into a positive. Am I crazy? Am I wrong? Am I off?

No, you're not crazy. Would you feel better? Think about this, Enid. Would you feel better instead of saying that event is bad? Would you feel better if instead you said that event is not bad? You don't have to call it good, but it's not bad. It's a turning point. And I'm not going to assign it a value of bad, which is what Benjamin Hall decided to do. My guess is you would feel better.

Yeah.

The end result is the same, but you would see it in different light. It would make you feel better. This is very important. In order to be optimistic, in order to be positive, in order to be able to move through this life in a way all of us really, nobody wants to be a pessimist. Inside every pessimist is the wish to become an optimist. Every pessimist wants to be an optimist. They just don't know how.

Correct, absolutely.

And the way to do it is to look at these events and sign them a different value, because you have that ability. Remember, no event has any intrinsic value. It's just the way the world is. We assign it a value. We've talked about this before. So if you decide to assign it bad, that's going to put you in a certain mindset. Now you've got to climb out of this hole to get to move in the right direction. Whereas if you assign it and say, okay, it's just an event, you have to call it good. I wouldn't call it good. It's just an event in my life. It has changed the course of my life. I'm going to use that event to move in the direction I so choose, that I think is more positive and more optimistic and so on. You'll feel better. So from the aerial view, you appreciate that events don't have any value unless you assign it a value. If you assign it a negative value, it's going to suck you down. Why would you intend, not you, why would anybody intentionally do that? When you don't realize you have the power to assign it any value you want and you can feel better. So I'll give you an example, right? So I just had hand surgery, right? You know, we've talked about this.

you'll feel better. So from the aerial view, appreciate that events don't have any value unless you assign it value. If you assign it a negative value, it's going to suck you down. Why would you intend to not use it? Why would anybody intentionally do that? When you don't realize you have the power to assign it any value you want, then you can feel better. So I'll give you an example, right? So I just had hand surgery, right? know, it turns out it's like the seventh surgery I've had.

And it turns out it's like the seventh surgery I've had. most, think the last four have been in the last couple of last 10 years, right? You before that, never, most of all, I've never had anything. I didn't even break a bone. I think I broke a finger once, but that was it, right? So nothing. So when I have these medical events now, and I've had a fair number, my first, your first reaction is initially, oh crap. And that lasts for me about a second. And then usually it's followed by some laughter because as we've talked about previously, I see myself on page 375 of the book. That page has always been there. I just happen to be appreciating it now. It's OK. All those other pages that came previously in my life are still intact. They're still occurring. I'm still young. I'm still doing all those things. I happen to be appreciating this page now. So it's just another it's just a page in my story. Why would I get upset about a page in my story?

So it's just another, it's a page in my story. Why would I get upset about a page in my story? It was always there, it was always going to be there. And now in a way it's kind of humorous to me because I think, oh boy, I've reached that point in life where stuff starts to happen and I find that kind of entertaining. I don't like it. And surgeries, they're not fun. They're always painful. Recovery is never fun. But yet most of the time I'm smiling about it.

It was always there, it was always going to be there. And now in a way, it's kind of humorous to me because I think, boy, I've reached that point in life where stuff starts to and I find that kind of entertaining. I don't like it. I've had surgeries, they're not fun. They're always painful. Recovery is never fun. But yet most of the time I'm smiling about it. Because I just appreciate it from the aerial view that don't give it a value that it doesn't deserve. It's just another moment of my life. So I'm going to give you, we're going to shift to something else. I don't want to too much time, but I love this analogy. So I like to look at life a little bit differently than everybody else. Most people look at life sequentially, A to B to C to D, right? Childhood to adolescence to adulthood, ba-bop. So. I don't look at life that way because I actually am pretty confident that that perspective is incorrect, which is why we get back to the jukebox of time where every moment exists contemporaneously, every record exists forever. And so I like to look at life as taking a shopping cart and going through the supermarket. So when you go through the supermarket, you go down one aisle, the other just tossing things in, right? Right. You finish your shopping, you get to check out. Nobody says to you, what order did you put these things in your shopping cart?

Okay.

Did you put the milk in first? Was the butter? Did you get the produce? Or did you get the broccoli before the lettuce? What was the order you did these? And you look at this person and go, I don't know. And I don't care. Right? Well, we could look at our life as the progression of events from A to B to C, or we could look at each moment as its individual, separate entity, which is how life, in my view, time should be viewed.

of events from A to B to C, we can look at each moment as an individual, separate entity, which is how life, in my view, time should be. Each moment is an individual entity. It's like the Kraft American cheese that slices individually wrapped. That's kind how I look at time. Each moment is individually wrapped. So it doesn't matter in what order you put it in. You think it does. We would swear that A led to B, that there's cause and effect.

Each moment is an individual entity. It's like the Kraft American cheese, each slice is individually wrapped. That's kind of how I look at time. Each moment is individually wrapped. So it doesn't matter in what order you put them in. You think it does. We would swear that A led to B, that there's cause and effect. And we don't have a lot of time left today to talk about this. We'll talk about this again in more in the future because it's interesting. But we've also known from physics, for instance, that the future can affect the past. We're not going to talk about that now for sure. But there are experiments that have shown quantum physics experiments that what happens in the future can affect the present or the past. That sounds crazy, right? How could the future affect the present or the past? But it does. It's the same thing here in our shopping cart analogy. Don't worry about what order things happened. They're all in there at the end. All the moments of your life are in there at the end. Don't worry about the order. It really doesn't make nearly as much difference as you think. All moments of your life are like the things in your shopping cart. They all just got there and it really doesn't matter what order they occurred in. It's hard. for people to wrap their heads around it. We'll talk about it more in the future because it's interesting, but let's just accept it for the time being. So that's a really cool way to look at life because then the whole idea of free will, which is how we started, becomes way less important because you couldn't possibly have made the decision for all those things to end up in your shopping cart, all those moments of your life to end up there. There's no way you could have predicted that or had the free will to do that. Most of them were the result of interactions that occurred based on your choices interacting with other people's choices. So the whole idea of cause and effect is really not very important. So the whole idea of free will isn't really that important because of what you said brilliantly earlier in our conversation, that we get to choose how we feel about every situation. It's the Benjamin Hall thing we're talking about. He could not have predicted he was going to get hit by two missiles. and almost die and sadly lose his friends and lose his limbs and all that stuff. That wasn't part of his free will. He didn't predict that. He didn't want that. But it happened to him. But yet he's turned this into a situation where it's an awakening for him. It's a realization of what life is, that it is a limited time engagement. We do have a mission and he's on a mission. He gets it now. He's full speed ahead on his mission to do as much good as the world he can do with his family.

But it happened to him. But yet he's this into a situation where it's an awakening for him. It's a realization of what life is, that it is a limited time engagement. We do have a mission. And he's on a mission, right? He gets it now. He's full speed ahead on his mission, right? To do as much good as the world he can do to his family, as guess four daughters now, to help them lead the proper life, to instruct others how to.

I think he has four daughters now, to help them lead the proper life, to instruct others how to be optimistic about life, to live life to its fullest, not to be depressed, not to be sad, not to interpret event as bad. An event just is. Once you label it as bad, you're going to be sad. You're going to be depressed. You're going to be unhappy. Don't label an event as bad. Accept it as an event in your life, as one of the things that showed up in your shopping cart.

be optimistic about life, to live life to the fullest, not to be depressed, not to be sad, not to interpret event as bad. The event just is. Once you label it as bad, you're gonna be sad. You're gonna be depressed. You're gonna be unhappy. Don't label an event as bad. Accept it as an event in your life, as one of the things that showed up in your shopping cart. It's just another thing in your shopping cart. Don't lament the broccoli.

Right? It's just another thing in your shopping cart. Don't lament the broccoli. Right? Right? It's not as good as the chocolate. I could be my next one. You'll never know. You see the point though? Am I making this clear?

That's a good title for a book. That's a good title for a book. Don't lament the broccoli. Yeah. That could be it. Thank you. I do. I absolutely see the point. It's fascinating to me. I got to be honest. As a woman of a certain age, I've never had surgery. Never, thankfully. I don't think that I could laugh about it if I did. So God bless you that you can do that. Maybe as a doctor, you're... wiser than I am about the implications of surgery, but good for you. But I still think that, yeah, and you still laughed and you Yeah. Yeah.

no, no, I knew exactly what could happen. Yeah. I'll tell you, let me give you one quick anecdote. This is something I probably shouldn't say to the public, but a number of years ago, I had kidneys, so I had part of my kidney removed. It's a pretty good story on its own. But anyway, so I go to the Johns Hopkins University Hospital, very famous place, and now they're ready to take him back for surgery. And the first thing they say, okay, go into the dress room and take off all your clothes, right? So I start taking off my clothes. And the last thing, of course, they take off is my underwear. And as I'm taking off underwear, I stop and I start laughing. go, this doesn't seem like a good thing, right? That last piece of clothing coming off, I'm thinking, this doesn't seem like a good idea. This doesn't seem like it's good. And I'm laughing, right? Knowing somebody's about to put me to sleep, open up my abdomen, take out a piece of my kidneys. Turns out I had some problems after that, complications. But I was laughing as I did that. because I recognize this is just another page in my story. It's not good or bad. People say, kidney surgery, that's bad. No, it just is. I don't have to assign it a value. It's another page in my book. It's another fruit in my shopping cart. Get it? Don't assign values to things. Just accept them as part of your story. It's a way to be optimistic and not become sad and depressed. As soon as you assign something a label is bad, you're gonna feel lousy.

Yeah, I'm always picking that fruit. My food happens to be a lemon. Okay, we have run out of time. And as per usual, I'm going to end this one with quotes from your book. And it's interesting because you talked about the book and having somebody tell you how many words, cetera, et cetera. So let me end like this. You say, no one picks up a book, counts the number of letters, and from that calculation decides whether to read it.

Hahaha!

A great story can be told in a handful of sentences. Similarly, the number of days we are granted is less important than we think. Like the fictional author who is granted a fixed number of letters, each of us is granted a fixed number of moments. Our job is to utilize those moments to write a story worth reading. Amen to that. With that, I thank you. Thank you for this podcast. Thank you for your inspirational words. Thank you for laughing at surgery. And final word, doc, what else you want to say?

Yes, would you mind our listeners if they want to send us a question, can or a comment or criticism, whatever suggestion, go to just send us an email at question at wisdom from the aerial view.com question at wisdom from the aerial view.com. And we look forward to your comments and statements. And thank you all for listening. And thank you, Enid, as always, for another joyous 30 minutes. Bye bye.

Thank you. Have an optimistic day. Peace.