Episode 54: Breaching our comfort zones

Welcome to Wisdom from the Aerial View, the podcast for those who wish to learn how to crush their anxiety and find meaning and purpose in their lives. Hello Mark, how are you today? Markekleinmd (00:11.0) I'm finding it so good to see you as always.

It is good to see you. You know, for today's podcast, I was reading an article, I do this a lot. I read things and I ruminate on them and I think, well, this would be something we ought to talk about. And this was in November, so it was a while ago, but it has stuck with me. And the name of it was Thanksgiving Shranked Down to the Size of a Screen, and it was written by Will Leach. I think that's how you pronounce his name. And I thought, well, that's interesting. What's this about? Let me just read. to you from it because I think this is something we should talk about because it's fascinating. He talks about it being Thanksgiving and he said, Walmart stopped opening at midnight for Black Friday years ago, but the culture has moved on from jingle all the way style shopping battles anyway. Black Friday is now mostly virtual. The deal we're after is just a click away and depending on the aggressiveness of your particular AI agent, maybe even closer than that. And while I doubt there's much nostalgia, for trying to box out some dude in aisle three, I do wonder if some of what makes Thanksgiving special has slipped away. And he says, I'll just go on risk quickly. He says, as we become an increasingly shut in society, the culture has shifted to meet us where we are, the couch. The idea of heading out into the public to do anything, let alone wrestle a stranger for a television or a doll has become faintly unpleasant.

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even anachronistic, like waiting outside a record store at midnight for an album release. Thanksgiving remains a day of service for some, a day of volunteering at soup kitchens or giving out meals to the needy. But even that has gone virtual to a degree. Feeding America, America's big, big, big food bank, they are now, big food, Thanksgiving food drive is conducted entirely online. What are we doing? We don't even talk to each other. Everything is virtual. So I wanted to have a conversation with you today about that. Can you believe that even a virtual food drive? Come on, what are we doing? Thoughts?

Yeah, I'm with you. You know how I feel. If I had a list of two most important things that lead to happiness in your life, they are... both related to interacting with people. Number one is relationships, by far. Relationships are the most important thing. I just got off the phone a little while ago with a friend of mine. We finished medical school at the same time. We met in our internships. And I won't tell you how long ago that is, but it's a long time ago. And we've stayed friends. He actually delivered my youngest son and he retired just a little bit before I left my practice. And...

Mm-hmm.

In those days, we used to see each other in the hospital every day because we were working in hospitals. So you'd have this camaraderie in the hospital. We had Dr. Rainer on a few weeks ago, and he still works in a hospital every day. And what he talks about a lot is, and I think he mentioned it when we interviewed him, is that he has his family in the hospital. His team comes in with him at night to save somebody's life. And he loves these people, and they're all close. And when you work in a hospital,

Yes.

you develop this very close camaraderie with the people with whom you work because it's very intense, it's a lot of pressure. But once you have success together, there's this bonding and you really do begin to love each other. I was back in my office the other day because I had another injury. And again, yes, at two minutes after my injury, I was laughing, of course. And so I went back in and so I had a little imaging procedure, everything's fine.

Mm-hmm. Clutz.

but I was with my people again. And we're hugging each other and a lot of them are still there, not all of them, but it's a dwindling crowd, but still. And I loved it. So here I am in my old office as a patient this time. And going through a procedure and I knew it was going to find something not life threatening, but something abnormal that would require some treatment. Luckily it's minimal, I'll be fine. But all I can remember from that was how happy I was to see my people, right? And this whole idea, we've talked about quiet quitting and people working at home and this idea that people say, I only want to go into the office at the most one or two days a week. This is terrible.

You're right, sure.

And it's not terrible for the company or the productivity or the economics of the country. Maybe it is, but that's not what concerns me. What concerns me is what concerns you, right? You lose this, you lose this. And this is where the joy in life comes from. If you take that away.

Yeah.

Yes.

We're going to have more mental illness. We're going to have more mass shootings like we don't have enough already. We're going to have all this stuff. It comes from this isolation and you get into your own head and you lose that rapport you have with other people that, hey, I actually like most of the other people. People go to work and they go, there's always one guy or one woman who is difficult. Most everybody else is fine and you laugh about that other person and you share times together and you share each other's lives, you know about each other's significant other and kids if they have them and their parents. You learn about all this stuff and you develop these relationships that are the source of joy in life. They are the number one source of joy in life. You take relationships away and we've got a problem.

Yeah, yeah, I know that's what I wanted to talk about. I know we've done a couple of shows on it. We've done connections and relationships, but it's important to keep talking about it because it's not getting any better. And I guess one of the things that we know is we know that our listeners, some of them are skewing younger now and they're the ones that are staying home and not necessarily going into the office as much. And they're beginning to get comfortable with that fact. It's become kind of, this is kind of nice. I can work on my couch. I can do other things. can go out and take a nice long lunch, because who's going to know I did that? And so it's not a question of cheating, if you will. It's a question of what are we doing for our own sake, for our own mental and emotional health? And I don't know how do we change that. How do we say to people, whether they're young or old, you really do need to socialize more. You really need to get out. Go play bridge. Go play mahjong. As you know, I, you know, yeah.

Oh, I have friends who I have friends who play bridge online. With other people with other people on zoom or something. Yeah, I know people who do that. Yeah.

Okay, there you go. Seriously? They're playing online?

So again, they're not even getting out of the house and even just getting out and seeing somebody in person. mean, get my, yeah, you know, a lot of people don't want to do that. I gave a hug to one of my neighbors the other day. She was gassed. I went, okay. And you know, let's talk about that, that sense of touch. A friend of mine is a nurse. And one of the things that she and I talked about is that one of the reasons we like doctors and nurses, they touch us.

That's right. Impress. him a hug. Give him a hug. Right?

touch.

They physically touch us, even if it just means to put a stethoscope to my chest to see if my heart is still pounding, they touched me. And it's not a sexual thing at all. It's just a very physical thing. When you touch somebody, it means a great deal. How do we get back to that?

I think you're a hundred percent right. mean, as a doctor, would frequently, well, I was doing, I was always touching people because one of the things I spent a lot of time doing was one of the procedures I did all the time was ultrasound. In the days, I always insisted, this is an interesting sideline, most people have had, many people have had an ultrasound where they're, when they're pregnant women, certainly, or, you know, for pelvic pain in women, know, breast ultrasound or... abdominal, so I'm looking for gallbladder problems, liver problems, kidney problems. So I did all this stuff. But the way ultrasound works is if you really want to do it right, the doctor should do it, him or herself. Now, nobody does this in the country anymore, nobody. But it's the right way to do it. And rather than get into the explanation of why I feel this way, getting back to our conversation, so I'm touching people all the time, appropriately. But I am.

Yeah. Yes, right.

And I'll often put my hand on somebody's foot or ankle when I'm talking, because they're still on the table. And I'll say, look, this is fine. You're to be OK. I agree with you. This contact, we need contact. need visual contact. We need touching contact. how people are made. And this absence of this is causing a huge problem. know, so people go on to say, Yeah, okay, we have all these mass murders and things like that, and the mental health. Yes, that's the worst part of it. That's the end point. But there's a continuum about this. And so this idea of being by yourself, I have a friend of mine, who is about our age, who is still working actually as a doctor. And which is fine. And I know one of the reasons that this person is still working is because they're worried about loss of contact with other people. Because we're still in an office, this camaraderie, you see these people. Like I said, I was in office the other day. I love being with these people. I miss that. I absolutely miss that. And

Yes.

So how, so the question is, so how do we get around this computer way? I don't want to commute to work. I got to be in the car 45 minutes each way. It takes, I can be doing other things, blah, blah, blah. Okay, this is all true. I commuted every day. would take me a half, 35 minutes in the morning and almost an hour getting back every single day, five days a week. But the payoff was that I got to spend time with patients and I got to spend time with my coworkers. And that was worth the trade off. And I still think it is. I think people are missing, they're only seeing the downside of getting to the office and so on. They've lost the concept of what the upside is, because they took it for granted for so long. So how do we get people back together? Number one, or one of the things we need to do is no more of this offsite work. Maybe a day a week, fine. But you got to be in the office, not just because of the maybe it's more efficient, but because we need this as people. have to have this. Number two, we talked about this. We need public service. Young people need to do public service. Either the military or something else, they need to do public service. Find out that other people who they thought were very different turn out to be very much like them. and get us together and understand each other's cultures and each other's points of view, whether it be political, religious, whatever, we need to do that. Every opportunity we have, we have to reverse this trend of being on our own. Sitting home and playing video games for men, and you know what the video games they're playing, they're not playing Mario Kart, they're shooting and blowing up each other, right? This is also terrible, so we gotta move away from that. Now,

Mm.

That's not easy. This is not easy to do. But I think we really need to focus on this because we want a society full of healthy, fulfilled people with meaningful, purposeful lives. It's got to involve all the people. Relationships are key. There's no getting around it.

Right. So let me get personal with you because a lot of our viewers, not viewers, our listeners are older too. And you've retired. And you just said, you just admitted you went into the office and you really felt good about it because you missed everybody. So what happens to someone when they retire? They no longer have the opportunity to go in every day. And those of us who are older are not, I mean, we lived in a generation where you didn't work from home. four days a week and go in what? You went in five days a week. I used to commute from my house to my office in Baltimore, Maryland. It would take me two hours to get there in the morning and longer to get home. Okay, you just did it. My father did it, we just did it. But now you're retired and now maybe I'll retire. So what do you do? How do you keep those social connect? What do you do?

Right, right.

Well, I'm retired from seeing patients, but as you know, I started a new company to promote a certain kind of colon cancer screening to save a lot of lives in this country. I don't want to talk about it the podcast. don't want to push something I'm doing, but I spend a lot of time with this new company. And we have a lot of meetings, but they are mostly virtual. I do have, try and have lunch meetings with people. meet my, I try and meet friends regularly for lunch, but am I out as much as I'd like? No, I'm not. And

It's hard.

It's hard and I do miss that. And so I try as best I can. You and I had lunch not too long ago. I try and keep this up as much as I can because I really like it. I don't think I so much at this point need it because I've, but I like it and it's better for me. Right. And so it is harder than, you know, look.

Yes, right, right.

You still go into an office every day or most days. And I think we have to create environments for more social violence. Don't play bridge online, play bridge in person. You know, I play, you know, I play golf. rarely. And I'd like to play more because I like to be outside. I'm terrible at it, as I told you, but I like being outside with other people, right? I like being with the people. So I'll try and do that more. think for me, know, social organizations, whether they be, you know, related to sports or related to music, for instance, I have a good friend of mine I just got off the phone with who joined. He moved up into Massachusetts. He's in a large choral group. And it has been the sort he loves it. He loves the singing. But more importantly, he's created this new this new family of friends.

Yes.

And he talked to me about that for a while, how these are his new friends. These are my new people, he told me. We all need that. So yes, I think we have to work hard as we get older. But I'm actually, as you know, I'm more concerned about younger people. You know, we have... Hopefully we'll live a long time, but we're okay, right? Because we had that, those many, many years of social interaction. So the more the better for sure, we shouldn't stop. But I'm more concerned about younger generations because they don't have this. They're growing up without it. They're growing up online, Instagram, all the social media, TikTok. know, video games, this is really completely unhealthy for them. They're not going to have fulfilling, rewarding, meaningful, purposeful lives if they don't develop these relationships. And they're not. People aren't dating. People aren't getting married. This is a disaster for this society. People talk about, are the biggest problems in our society? Well, that's it. That's the number one problem. can, rest of them are not unimportant, but that's it. We're going to end up with a real mess on our hands until we reverse this. And I'm confident we will. I just...

Yeah, yeah.

And you know, we were talking before we went online how I'm trying to, in other manner, trying to convince people to move in this direction, to move to more interpersonal relationships. It's fun, right? It's where the joy is, helping other people, right? When you help other people, you're often involved with them personally in some way. And those relationships are what are gonna generate the most enjoyment in your life.

You know, it's interesting because a lot of times when we're looking at people who are mass murderers or whatever, the one thing that always stands out to me is they always say, this person, man, was a loner. He was a loner. These are people who live within themselves. They don't get out. They don't socialize. I don't understand what happens, the mechanism in the brain that causes them. to be violent. And again, we've talked about violence on the podcast a lot. And one begins to put the two together, you know?

So I've started posting this other project you and I talked about on Instagram, and I will continue to do so. But I've never used, not never, I've rarely used Instagram. But when I scroll through it now as I'm posting this, or... seeing what's going on and everything is violent, not necessarily just shoot them up violence, but the way we talk to each other, the language, our language has become violent, our interactions have become violent. And that's what people see. So here's what happens when you're by yourself and you're scrolling through Instagram or TikTok, and you're seeing not so much even just violent behavior with a gun, but violent behavior, the way we talk to each other, they treat each other, language, all these things, you go, that seems to be the way the world is now, because you have nothing to compare it with.

Yeah.

And then you get inside your own head and then you start to create an argument in your own head that you're being taken advantage of and whether it be powerful people, rich people, successful people, know, they're the problem. They're why I am lonely and by myself. And you create this scenario in your head and there's nobody out there since you're by yourself to say, actually what you're thinking is, I won't say it's crazy, but it's wrong and here's why. And you need, it's the interaction with other people to make you realize, oh, I have this wrong. But when you don't have any contrary opinion or opportunity to get out of your own brain, it just gets worse and multiplies and multiplies before you go pick up a gun and shoot a couple of people. So this is all tied in. We have to get to be back to a more social society. It's parents, it's teachers, it's the government. It's mostly parents and mostly parents, I would say families, because that's where the real problem is. That's where it starts there. And I think we're seeing this, you're seeing right now this movement to move kids away from phones and screens. That's gonna pay off. Well, know, Jonathan Haidt wrote this whole book and now that's a big thing. And now you see that Australia just banned social media under the age of 16 and.

Well, where? mean, a lot of times... Yes.

Alright, let's talk about that. How do think that's going to go? You think it's going to work? But who's going to, who's the enforcer?

Well, it's not going to be perfect. Yeah, I think it's going to help. You don't have to get 100%. You won't get 100%. You'll never get 100%, but you get 80%. You're on the way, right?

But how do you get 80 %? How do you get kids? And by the way, sometimes parents will look to Instagram and TikTok as babysitters. Well, they don't have to deal with the kid and so let them go get online. It becomes sort of an easy caretaking environment. Well, all right, just go get on Instagram. I will be honest and proud of the fact I've never been on TikTok and I've only went on Instagram once. It's just not for me.

No, it's not for me either. But if I'm trying to make a difference, you got to meet them where they are, right? I mean, that's what kids are watching, right? That's what people are watching. They're scrolling through Instagram, looking at YouTube.

There's not enough, right, yeah.

Well... How do you get them to watch you? Why are going to watch you?

They may not, but that's how things work. If they find it interesting, they will. you know, I have, I make it very clear what my goal is. I only have one goal here. I'm trying to make your life better. That's it. I don't want money. I don't want fame. I don't care about any of that. I want to, I want to help. And if you're interested, great. So you got to look, do I know this is going to work? Heck no. Right? But there's two choices, try or don't try. I'm in the try business. I spent my career trying to help people as a doctor. Well, it doesn't stop. So if you're trying to make the world a better place, you do things that might look stupid or silly or you got no chance. you know, all the important things that have happened in this world have started with one person. Right. And so you give it a shot. Good chance you'll fail. But you never know. But if you don't do anything, you're never going to succeed. And I can't sit by. I have kids. have grandchildren. I feel responsible to them. You may sit by.

No, actually I was just being a generic you, didn't even mean you, but I agree. No, I understand what you're saying. think that, yeah, but I still think that, and maybe there's, somebody invented this. I mean, everything begins with an idea. Somebody had an idea to do this and it worked. it's, I don't know, do people have our ads on TikTok? How does it make, how does, are there, I've never been on it. I don't even know what it is. know? No.

No, no, I know.

yeah, sure. yeah. Yeah. I honestly I've never been on TikTok either. But I've seen it. It's a similar Instagram. The idea is the same, right? So that has a little younger excuse to a younger population, but the ideas are the same. Keep you scrolling. Why do they want you scrolling? So can sell you stuff. I that's where it's monetized, right? That's where the money comes in. So yeah, they had an idea. you know, could this is one of his thing. You talk about parents. I want to go back to that. When you become a parent.

Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, sure.

You're signing up for something, right? You're signing up to grow a child, to take a child, to evolve that child from a screaming, selfish brat, which they will be if you don't train them. to it's like, no offense, I've had dogs too. It's the same idea. You don't train your dog, they'll pee in your house and bite you, right? So you got to train them. You have to do the same thing with kids. But people go, oh, I'm so tired. I got work. I got this, I got that. And I get that because I have four kids. And I often babysit grandchildren. So I get that too. But You have to stop and think, okay, why am I here on this earth? What is my role? My role is to help as many people I can. Well, you got to start with your own kids and your own grandkids. So as tired as you are, or you know, you want to be, I want to go, I want to be playing piano. I want to do something else, you know, right now in my life. But even as a parent. I always felt that you have to, I looked at it as a responsibility, but it was also a joy. And that time I spent, like I spent, my kids call me a lot and they're all grownups, they all their own kids, except for one who's my youngest, who's just finishing education. But they call me and you know what? Their spouses call me and it's great, right? So why do they call me? Cause they know I care. Cause they know I love them and that I'll do anything for them. And for me, is it work? Well, sometimes, but mostly I realize I'm helping. I'm helping grow people, especially when they're young, into something valuable who will have meaningful, purposeful lives, what this podcast is about. So yes, it's a responsibility, but it's also a great joy if you look at it the right way. I don't give parents, I don't give them any slack. I don't cut them slack. worked, you know, when I had my first kid, I was a resident. So I was working 90 hours a week.

Maybe more. And I wasn't working five days. I was working at least six, sometimes seven. But my responsibility was to my kid when I wasn't working. And. You know, and it's not that hard. You just have to you just have to know you love him. That's it. You tell your kid every day, I love you, I love you, love you. And you show him you love him and you try not to yell at him, which I did a little too much in retrospect. I never hit my kids, certainly. But I probably could have been a little kinder and gentler. But. You know, they turned out fantastically, knock on wood, because they know I love them. They know I care about them. They know I have their back. They know I'll do anything. If a kid knows they're unconditionally loved, you're not going to have an evil child. You won't have an evil child. No, I don't believe it. I don't believe it.

Well, well, we've seen it. Well, we've seen an instance of that just this week. had people.

You don't know, I don't want to criticize anybody, especially somebody who's not here anymore. All I'm saying to you, yes, there are exceptions to every rule. It's not perfect, but generally speaking, right, if your kids know you love them and you set boundaries and you set rules and expectations, the expectations and rules can be quite high. But if they know you love them, then you don't have, then it's fine. Most kids want that. It's when you try and assuage your kids by saying, oh, know, I don't want to be too hard on you. If you want to go do that, go do that. If you want to do that, if you want to hang out with those people, no, don't do that. You can be a tough parent, but as long as it's accompanied by unconditional love, that's it. It's not that hard. And I've done this a lot. I mean, I'm talking out of experience, right? So, no, nobody's perfect. I wasn't a perfect parent by far, but... that kids always knew I loved them. The first thing I say to my grandkids when they were young, I always say, they call me Pop. I go, how much does Pop love you? A little or a lot? Right? And they always go, a lot. Right? Okay. Mission accomplished. People need to be loved at all ages. And especially it starts when they're young. So I know we didn't plan to get into this, but this is what we're missing in this society. We're missing that love, especially from parents to kids. That's what we're missing. And it's okay to set rules and boundaries and kids want you to set rules and boundaries. They love, they scream about them, but they want them. And as long as you, they know you're loved, they do, and I'm telling you, as long as they know you're loved, you're going to be fine and you're going to grow great kids and that's what we need to do in our societies but it's all that's what is that that's a relationship

you know, a spouse and, you know, two people who live together, two friends, a spouse and significant other, whatever, and kids and grandchildren. These are all relationships. This is the of our lives of humanity. This is how we make this evolution from selfish to selfless, from inward to outward focus through our relationships. That's the most important thing by far. And so the more we spend time on those, the better we'll be. And what you had brought up in the beginning is we're losing that because we're sitting by ourselves on screens.

That's right.

and you've hit the nail on the head, that is the problem. And we have to address that particular problem. So anything we can do to get kids off screens, get parents more involved, get teachers more involved. Teachers throw these kids on these computers. have all these computers in these schools now. It's a disaster. Kids don't need computers in school. They need to interact with the teachers, with the other kids. The last thing you want them to do is be on a computer. You can teach them to type. Fine, spend an hour a day teaching them how to do keyboarding skills. Fine. The rest of the time, no, no, no computers, no screens, no iPads, no high tech gadgets, no. Interact with them, right? Now when they're on their own, you can have all kinds of AI induced learning. That's fantastic as tutors, but not while they're in the classroom, not while they're together. That's a time for socialization, for creating these relationships. That's where the joy in life is going to come.

Thanks.

It shows you how old we are when we were growing up. had blackboards. They don't do that anymore. They're no chalk or blackboards. They don't do that anymore. Now they're whiteboards, right? They went from blackboard to whiteboard. Yeah, no, it's true. But I agree with you. Although I didn't want any more discipline in my life, so I don't agree with you on that one. I wanted to be on my own, I do think we spend an inordinate amount of time on screens and looking at things. And I do it too. I admit it, I'm constantly

Now they're whiteboards. You ride on them. Right. Right.

I check too often, I check Twitter or whatever they call that. I want to know what's going on in the world. I have my little baseball blogs that I look at, I admit. But when you are alone, I'd rather read a book, but that's still a very solitary thing. I agree with you, we need to get out. The one thing I love about you, every time I talk to you, you're out having lunch with this guy, you're having dinner with that one, you do that, you do get out and you do... Socialize that way. I want to do another podcast not today obviously called breaking bread Because one of the things and I'll leave it with this one of the things I've noticed when people who are alone and want to get out and socialize other people They do it over a meal. It's always let's go have lunch. Let's go have dinner I did that just this past week I had a wonderful lunch with a gal that I worked with many many years ago and it was a fantastic time It was over lunch. We do that I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that we're breaking bread. So we'll do another podcast.

No, people break bread, like you said. It's the same thing. What you're talking about is this need for us to be with other people, to have that touch, to have the hug, to look each other in the eyes. Yes. And so I think one of the things that I think we can do, clearly for younger people, I think we need community service. 100 % that brings people together. I don't care whether they're cleaning up the neighborhood or in the military or what, I don't care. It doesn't matter. Just bring people together. As we get older, we need to make it easier.

Bingo. Yep, yep, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I think one of the ways AI could help is to create these scenarios that it makes it easier for people to meet up at any age, right? Meet up with other people of similar interests or different interests, whatever. And, you know, our politics is a result of this, by the way. We're all in our own shell and we think our team is the best team. And it's because we're not spending time with the other team. You spend time with the other team, you go, I like her. I like him. That's an interesting person. Once you start liking people, you go, I'm interested to hear what you have to say. you realize they're not evil people. These are nice people. You like them. So when they have a different point of view, you go, how did you come to that point of view? And they go, well, this is where I came to that point. And you go, I could see that. I might not agree with it, but I could see it. Then you don't hate them. Then you realize the other team isn't so bad. The other team is bad when you're only seeing them on a computer screen or reading X, which was formerly Twitter. And everybody's yelling at each other. Try that in person. See how well that goes. So we need more in person and then you don't hate the other group and you don't think that all, you know, whatever, I don't want to into any specific group. We realize that all groups are made of the same kind of people. Most of them are good. Each group has a majority of good people and a minority of bad people. And when you meet with these people, you realize they're not any different. And then you can then you're open to hearing their point of view and you're not screaming and hating. If you're doing it over a meal, it's even better. So this is what we need more of. And

I agree.

Agree, agree. I see where, I don't know where the time goes. Let me end this before I give you the last word with the final paragraph in this article that I read. And he said, yes, Thanksgiving remains a massive travel weekend. It's set to break another record despite learning concerns, blah, blah, blah. He said, but are we doing all that traveling to go from one television, iPad or phone screen to another? It's a lot of moving around just to end up sitting in a room

And that's what I think we should be focusing on.

Not moving. Which does make you wonder if we're eventually going to eliminate the middleman. Why keep going over the river and to the woods to grandmother's house when grandma is now on FaceTime? I'll leave you with the last word.

Well, the reason is because it doesn't work. It's not how we're built, right? So we're gonna reverse back. This will reverse back because we can see it's not working. I don't know when. But things happen pretty quickly in our society now, so I'm not too worried. It'll happen. But I think we need more of that. We do need to go over the river and through the woods. By the way, anybody who's under like 50 probably has no idea what we're talking about. What does that mean? It means traveling to see somebody. I'll tell you a real quick short story. I take Italian lessons, and my Italian teacher who lives in southern Italy sent me a thing to work on. She sent me a thing about, it was kind of a skit about the relatives who visit on Christmas in the south of Italy. And they stereotype the grandmother and the grandfather and the aunts and the cousins, and it's a chaotic thing. But at the end of this 10 minute, 15 minute thing, it's like, why do we do it? Everybody hates all this stuff, but we do it because we're together. And we're sitting at a table together. At the end of the day, it's a beautiful thing, and we all realize it. And that's it. We know it's a beautiful thing when we're together. We need more of it, not less of it. And our job is to figure out, in this digital world, how to get there.

I Thank you. Good conversation. Look forward to it next time. Final parting words is let's all get together, even if it's not over a meal, go play Mahjong. You know, I did take up Mahjong. I am the world's worst Mahjong player. I still don't understand it. I can play it from now until noon and say, I don't understand the game. But anyway, I'm with other people and they're wonderful people and I like their company and they look at me and they say, this woman is an idiot. She can't get this game. I cannot get this game.

Always great.

But you're with other people and that's what counts.

Anyway, until next time my friend, love ya, peace.

I love you too. Bye everybody. Thanks for listening.