Illusion of Immortality

Hello everybody, welcome to Health Chatter. Today's episode is on the illusion of immortality, which actually links to a lot of the different health aspects that we've talked about on many of our shows. So stay tuned on this. It's gonna be interesting show with many of our crew who will be chiming in as well. We've got a great crew. We have researchers, Maddy Levine-Wolfe, Erin Collins, Deondra Howard, and Sheridan Nygard, all do excellent background research for us, give us some ideas, give Clarence and I some ideas what to talk about on these shows. And also, Sheridan does our marketing, so thank you for that. Then we have Matthew Campbell, who's our production manager, makes sure that the shows come out. Clearly for all of you, there will be a show typically every Friday. So watch your favorite podcast to check in your podcast channel. In addition, many thanks goes to Clarence Jones. We have a great colleague. We have a good time doing this show and we're learning a lot. So Clarence, thank you. Thank you also to Human Partnership. our sponsor for all of our shows. It's a great community health organization that does wonderful things out there, very creative. And I recommend highly that you check out their website at humanpartnership.org and ours as well at heal So thank you to everybody. So, all right, let's get this show going. This is kind of an interesting concept. I'll tell everybody a little bit of a story. When I was working on my master's in public health, I had a very interesting conversation in the home of a colleague of mine, Michael Bazeman. And we were talking about prevention and health promotion. And frankly, The concept of the illusion of immortality really came out of that conversation when Mike said to me, he said, you know, when you really get down to it, when you're talking about prevention, when we all talk about prevention, what are we trying to do? The ultimate form of prevention is really preventing death. And we all know in our heads that can't be. But there is that illusion around it that kind of drives us. And also it drives how we respond to our health, how we take care of our health and what we do to actually maintain it using various things. So. What's interesting is the illusion of immortality or the concept of immortality is embedded in medicine and in public health. The symbol, for instance, the symbol of medicine is called the caduceus, which if any of you have seen it, it's a combination of a staff, like a cane of staff. and a serpent. The serpent is really the symbol of immortality and it is embedded not only in the concept of medicine but public health as well. For instance, and you'll see pictures of this if you go to our website, you'll see pictures of this. The first physician according to Greek legend was in the picture that you'll see, you will see the staff and the serpent that he's holding onto. The staff represents kind of the traveling nature of a physician. And again, the serpent is immortality. How is it that a physician can help us to live forever? Interestingly enough, he had a daughter, Hygiea, that became the symbol of public health. And she too. carries a snake in her hand, a serpent in her hand. Again, the concept of immortality, all embedded historically, and it's all in our minds as we proceed through life. Clarence, some of your initial thoughts about immortality. You know what, Stan, I wanna just tell you this. I love what you just said because it's so interesting. I mean, you started off talking about, you know, your work. And so my concept, my thinking about immortality really was shaped by my Christian upbringing. You know, the whole idea about life after death. I mean, so immortality and death were just kind of combined. But it's interesting when you talked about the symbolism, I always thought about snakes as death. Yeah, interesting. So as you were talking about this whole thing, I just want to enter into this conversation. And I'm really excited that we have our colleagues, our younger colleagues who are part of this because it was a conversation that was generated by them that caused me to really want to enter this question. So I'm just here to learn. Immortality, and I think it comes from this whole idea about being young, you don't think about death. You think about you're gonna live forever. So therefore you're willing to take all kinds of risks. You really do all those kinds of things. And so it's just kind of interesting. So I'm ready to rock and roll and talk about this topic. So that's my initial thought. You know, when you think about immortality, again, I think there's a balance that we all kind of keep in our head. One is how we live life, just the process. of living. And then at the same time, we kind of balance it with, call it restoration. Okay, it's like when you get sick, how is it that you restore yourself so that you can keep going? And there's that constant balance going forward. You know, for me, I'll tell you, for me, yeah, it really hits you, I think. um you know the concept of immortality is struck um when you lose somebody okay for the for the um for the first time or you know even if it's for me you know like you know my father passed away when i was young and so um that created a um a dent in me for the rest of my life. And then also. kind of a sense of mortality, okay? It's like that idea of, geez, you know, what's next for me? You know what I'm saying? And I don't know if that's true of most people, if immortality or mortality is really addressed for the first time when you lose somebody. You know, I think Sam, what's interesting to me in what you're saying is this, is that I think sometimes the way that we address this issue is based on our worldview. You know, for some folks, this is only life we get. So you're going to do everything you can at this particular point and that's how they determine their life. But for me, the whole idea about immortality is one that we all struggle with. And so I just want to hear from my younger colleagues, their thoughts about immortality. What do they think? I mean, what's their worldview? Because we don't have to agree. We just have to have a conversation. So my fellow colleagues, younger colleagues, not Stan and I are out, what are your thoughts about immortality? Sheridan, Betty, Diahga, Dina. Yeah, I can go ahead for sure. So I think I was the one that kind of sparked this conversation in the first place in one of the other episodes. We have several episodes on death, dying, hospice care. A lot of these things bring up these thoughts and feelings of mortality and immortality. And I, like Stan, had been around death pretty young and you're confronted with the reality of death when you don't even necessarily have a full understanding of what it means to be alive. That was my experience. And as I grew up and I continued to be surrounded by death and dying, as I grew up and I got a little bit older, I realized despite seeing death, I did have an illusion of immortality probably up until I was like 21. I think that might have something to do with brain development. That might have to do with you know, education, learning, I'm not really sure, but now that I'm 25 now and I work with research participants that are 70, 80, 90, 100, and seeing and speaking with these people on a day-to-day basis that are at a much different place in their timeline of life than I am, they remind me of my mortality at despite me being so young, I think about that. And I think that it has such a positive impact on my life, believe it or not, because I've turned myself into a little bit of a yes man, where I don't say no to things, unless there's a really, really good reason for me not to do things, because I know that I might not have this opportunity again in my lifetime, and life is to be lived while you're alive. And so I think that without the reminder that I get from my research participants, from the elders in my life, I don't think I would have the same outlook. And I truly think it makes me a better person. And I don't think I always had this outlook. I definitely had the illusion of immortality. When I was, you know, you're 16, you're like, what could happen? Like I'll speed, I'll do these crazy things. Nothing could possibly happen. When you get older, you realize anything could happen. At any moment, anything can happen. So that's kind of been my transition at least. And I know that that's kind of a unique position to be in at my age, but I do think it's a positive thing in my lifetime. Well, I agree with you. I think that, I mean, what you're saying resonates with me, Sharon. And I think that, you know, as an observation, I see that, I see that it's kind of like a maturity that you convey. But, you know, I was thinking about this issue of immortality. I remember as a kid, I'm not, I hope I'm not a history major. But do you remember the stories, was it Ponce de Leon? I'm trying to use my Spanish here. Wasn't he the guy that was looking for the Fountains of Youth? Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was one of the stories that I, as a kid, I just kept reading over and over again, this guy, he kept looking for the Fountains of Youth someplace in Florida, someplace, I don't know, in America, like that. But that whole idea about immortality, And the various ways in which it's conveyed and portrayed is so, it just, in a variety of different ways, it comes at us in different forms. And so whether we're thinking, whether we use the term immortality or not, we're always thinking about it because there's always a way in which we look at the way in which we take risk. I'm not a big risk taker. I mean, I don't do crazy stuff. And I don't know that I'm trying to be immortal. It's just that that's just my view of the world. You know, it's interesting. That's called the fountain of youth. Yep. As opposed to the fountain of life. Yeah. Okay. So my sense is, is everything that is good or is longevity. immortality connected to just being younger. As we get older, that's not the case. All right, because there are certain things that are done to extend our lifetime. Sheridan. Yeah, I love that you guys are going the youth route with this because there was research Deandra put together and this is something I've also just noticed in my day-to-day life on. social media and being in a Sephora. I don't know when the last time YouTube stepped into a Sephora, but I've been in a few of them recently. And the demographics have actually changed of Sephora. Customers are getting younger and younger. There's eight, nine, 10 year olds in there getting anti-aging serums for their face. I am not even kidding you. It is a real phenomenon. Looks like Deondra has research on it. The anti-aging industry worth is at a 610 billion by 2025. That is a lot of money in just anti-aging. And it looks like since Deondra did the research, I'm gonna let her actually comment on this because I think she'd probably know more than I do. Yeah, I thought this was interesting and it was just something that I've seen on a day-to-day just being like on social media, on TikToks. And I think it's just this idea of wanting to prevent, I think I never thought about immortality in the sense of like wanting to live forever. I had definitely probably thought about it more as kind of what you're saying like. wanting to continue to be youthful and young and look younger and feel young and feel good in my body. And I think that's a big industry right now, specifically in skincare with younger women. So I know for me personally, I did not have a skincare routine with serums and all these things till I was like 26 or 27. And as Sheridan said, like the demographics for these young women going into these beauty supply stores are, you know, eight, seven, nine, you know, you can go on TikTok, you can see a 10 year old doing a get ready with me, you know, with their skincare routine, which that was not something at all that we were doing when I was that age. Like it's just kind of blown up into this big thing. And I think I think it's kind of nice in some ways where I think it's nice that young people really care about keeping themselves healthy, but I definitely see where it could be a hindrance. Like it can really like stunt maybe the way you're thinking about yourself and your like personal worth and things like that. Because skincare is, it's not cheap. These are expensive. products these children are, you know, asking their parents to buy them. You know, I have had bought, you know, a, you know, moisturizer that was $50, but I'm 31 years old, you know, I'm not 15. So I think it's just a really big industry that's popping off and it's interesting to see just kind of how it will affect kids mentally as they're developing. You know, it was interesting when I was teaching, one of the things, you know, I was involved with children and youth. And it's really interesting if you asked children, and we did back then, and youth, you know, about taking care of themselves, you know, for instance, it's good for your heart health or it will prevent, you know, cancer. or what have you. And I remember the response that I would get from these kids that, wait a minute, I'm not worried about a heart attack and I'm not worried about cancer. I'm worried about bad breath and zits on my face right now. But it becomes more of a reality for them if they have a loved one or somebody that perhaps have died. then they get this aha moment where it kind of kicks in where, oh, this is what people get sick from, or oh, this is what people die from. So it's kind of interesting. Clarence, I've got a question for you. What's your question? The African-American population. And I'm going to link it with another show that we've done on safety, basically, with firearms, et cetera. Do you sense or have you ever felt that sense of your immortality being compromised because of your safety in a community, like gun safety, for instance? Do you ever hear younger folk in your community saying things like, geez, I don't think I'm going to live until I'm 60 if I'm lucky? you know, that type of thing, just by virtue of being exposed to more violence, et cetera. Yeah, I tell you the truth, this honest truth, I never thought I was gonna live to be 16. And then I never thought I was gonna live to be past 21. And then when I hit 28, I didn't care, you know? But I don't necessarily think that we associate the word immortality with the fact that we're not. to safety. I think we associate, and again, this is my perception. Yeah. We associate death with immortality, because for many people, it's not about living. it's how do we live longer? I mean, you're in a structure, in a society where many times, whether it's something that you wanna think about or not, it's always before you, this whole idea about being safe, being stereotyped, being put into a type that you always are conscious of. I think, yeah, I think that that's part of it, Stan. I- You know, and like I said, this is health chatter. And so we talk about some things sometimes that are very difficult. I'm gonna tell a story. I feel like I need to tell this story because it's real for me. And this whole idea about living a life that you feel is going to be fulfilling and satisfying. When I was eight, though, I think I may have mentioned this once before. I lived in Chicago on the West side. And I remember I lived across the street of a park. And I remember one time walking across the street to the park and I said to myself, the white says the white man will never let me be anything. I will never let people know how smart I am. And I remember at that point, I actually saw myself splitting in two. I saw myself, I actually saw myself walking. Now I don't know how to explain that. I'm just telling you what, I'm just telling you very honestly what I felt. I actually saw myself walking across the street and it was a profound experience for me. But the real part was I didn't know any white people. You know what I'm saying? So I think sometimes when we start talking about these various things, about immortality, about death, it's not necessarily something that we have to personally experience. I mean, Sheridan talked about, you know, personally experiencing death. I think sometimes it's the culture and the environment in which we live that caused us to think differently. So when I think about immortality, I think about it as being connected to death and not life. Yeah. If that makes sense. Yeah, it does. Yeah. So, I have a question for all of us. Do any of you have a sense of being scared of dying? Has that ever come across your minds at all? Yeah, that's a pretty big question. I think it depends on, I think being in public health, we see a lot of different ways people can die, get sick, get ill, accidents, illnesses, cancer, heart attacks. Like we look at these statistics all the time. So I have a growing sense of fear, not necessarily of dying, but being one of the statistics that we work with. but that's a super specific feeling. I also think it's a cultural-based thing because a lot of cultures do embrace death and see it as a relief. It kind of depends on your religious, cultural, a lot of things. And I actually am still in that journey myself, but I do feel that fear towards some of the statistics that we will work with all day. Go ahead, Deondra. Yeah, I would say I kind of agree in the sense of working in public health. I think I have a heightened awareness of all the ways that life really can be taken from you that on a grander scale people aren't thinking about. I don't think it's a natural fear in my life. I actually, in college, throughout college, I worked in nursing homes as an aide. And I think that experience for me and just being around a lot of older individuals and kind of being around their last days or months or years of life. I just don't have a bad perspective on the concept of death. I just feel like I've, and a lot of these individuals were much older, but some of them were younger. Some people had young, early onset dementia, but... they just lived such full lives. So I think my ideas and my, just how I feel about it is not really very negative, but I think I'm just aware of it much more just from working in public health specifically. Yeah. You know, it's interesting how we as humans immortalize people. So for instance, one way that we immortalize people is through coins. Think about it, you know, a quarter, you know, has, you know, President Washington on it or a penny has Lincoln on it, a half dollar has Kennedy on it. So we immortalize. Certain people don't have to be presidents. We've we've you know on coins. We immortalize other people as well Yeah, shannon Yeah to continue your point stan. I even feel it's easier than ever to immortalize people now with the internet with Um, yeah, these health chatter podcasts are gonna live longer than we are um, not to mention also my dad does uh youtube for he makes these videos for people, kids that maybe grew up without a dad or a figure in their life that would teach them how to change their oil in their car or how to do these basic things like put windshield wiper fluid in their car, how to fix brake pads, like really simple things that maybe they didn't have a figure in their life that would be able to show them how to do that. So it's just this Midwestern dad showing people, here's how you do this. And this is his, he feels that this is one of his gifts to people and also that it's a way for him to kind of be immortalized. He will always be immortalized as a Midwest dad that likes to help people fix their cars and boats. And I think that that's kind of lovely. So I think it's easier now more than ever. Yeah, we have different, certainly different methods in order to communicate our thoughts about health and death and dying in our lifespans, et cetera. Yeah, Stan, you know what I think? I'm gonna talk to you about your dad after the show here, okay? But I think one of the things too that you brought up was the fact that because of the internet, because of the social and communication media that we have right now, people are seeking in a variety of different ways to be immortalized. Some of it's good and some of it's not so good. Some of it is that I'm going to do something so heinous. that I'll always be remembered for that. And I think that that's part of the challenge that we have with this whole thought is that people are, people seek it. I mean, they don't talk about it as much, but people are seeking to be always remembered. I mean, that's why I saw, I think sometimes in our lives, people do things to make us remember them because people wanna feel like they have some value. And I think that it's an important, With this particular topic, there is so much to delve into, but it's so real for us. I mean, it's almost like breathing. We as human beings, we wanna be remembered. I mean, that's why we do the things that we do. Yeah. It's interesting too, is how we today react to the diseases of our time. versus diseases that took place a long time ago. So imagine just for a second, you have this idea of immortality in your head, but you're living in a time where there's a lot of infectious disease going around, like typhoid or malaria or tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria. COVID. Yeah, okay. So, you know, that's one of our time. Yeah. And then, okay, then you fast forward. And by the way, many of those diseases that I mentioned, and there are others, were able to be reduced down to that causative agent, and we, you know, we could vaccinate against it. So we provided protection. in order to enhance our immortality. All right, then you fast forward to the diseases of our time that we're living with, you know, cancer, heart disease, where there isn't a magic bullet, so to speak. And what we have is things that we try to tell people about in order to combine hopefully will be some sort of a vaccination. So you take, you know, cholesterol medications or you exercise or, but that combined components of these things, we call it the synergistic effect. There's many, many variables that are causing the disease. But if you address them all somehow or other, you're getting this new kind of vaccination that will keep you living longer. Yeah. All right. Exercise until you're blue in the face or take this medication or that medication will help you. So we're dealing with differences today than we did yesterday. Yeah. Sheridan. I actually feel like this brings me to something from Deandra's research. Some things I think are the same, but just a little different. Like for example, commonly throughout history, blood was seen as a popular anti-aging remedy. And today there is a big push for anti-aging, like immortality. I believe the guy's name is Brian Johnson. He's a tech entrepreneur and he takes the blood of his younger son and. Infuses it with his own. And so it seems like even some of these things that we used to do to be immortal, make their rounds again. They come back. And I think that even that. Amazon's got their teeth into some anti-aging like cell rejuvenation thing. Google has their teeth in it too. It seems like it's a pretty hot topic right now and it seems like it's kind of always been. And some of the tactics or techniques that people think that they can achieve immortality have not changed, which I find quite amusing. You know, it's one of the things I think, and I thank you for bringing that up again because I always have this saying that I say, the color of America is not black or white, the color of America is green. It's about the money. And so if anti-aging is going to be the next moneymaker, the less what, that's what we're going to see. And I think that that's what the research is showing is that people are interested in being immortal, people are interested in living a longer, healthier life. And if corporations can find a way to make some money off of that, they're going to do that. So I'm not a fatalist. I guess I'm trying to be a realist. I mean, that's at my age. That's what I, what I'm finding. I don't know. What do you think, Stan? Is it about the money? Yeah. I mean, you know, if there's always, um, a creative component to, um, trying to keep us all. younger, healthier, live longer. And, you know, for a lot of us that are, you know, in the public health field or the medical field, we're kind of driven by research behind it all. Okay. Just don't go with it just because somebody says it's, you know, it's good. Okay. I was driven by this. I was reading this the other day in the paper, circadia bugs, these bugs that come out once every 17 years. They hatch and come out again. I'm thinking, God, if we were all circadia bugs, just think about that for a second. All of a sudden, you come out, you take a look at the world, 17 years later, every 17 years, you come out and you take a look at the world. jeez, what the hell is going on here? It's like, exactly. What did I miss by hibernating for so long here? And maybe we should adjust this life cycle that we're on because we can take advantage of some of these things going forward. But it's kind of an interesting little creature. Let me say this real quick, Stan. Some mornings I wake up after a night's sleep and I feel the same way, like what the heck is going on? You know what I mean? So it's, you know, life is quite interesting. Yeah, which, okay, which brings me to this point about immortality, life experiences and our overall experience, whether it be just life experience, work experience, or. or what have you, and how has that, how does it affect your perception of living? What's your sense of that, Clarence, as you've gotten older? Now that I've gotten older, I think, you know what, I think my life experiences has, I think when it comes to immortality, I think what my life experience has taught me is I need to pass it on. Okay, if my goal in life is, and I think this was a saying that I learned when I was a little kid, it says, that when I die, I want to have positively impacted two people. So my immortality would be to pass on the experiences that I've learned in this life to other people. And that way I feel like my life has been a success. So I think that it's kind of maybe a roundabout way of answering your question, but it's really how I feel. I mean, the fact is that I've learned a lot, I wanna share a lot, and I feel like then I will have done something positive in this life. Yeah, for our listening audience, we did a show on legacy basically with Dr. Barry Baines. What's your legacy and what is it that you want to make sure that you at least share before you leave this world? What you've learned that you think will have impact going forward for your children, your grandchildren, what have you? That's why, Stan, I think that's why people protect their names. You know, they want to have, they want their names to live on. They want to invest in their children. They want to, you know, they want to do something so that beyond their existence on this earth, that there is something that's said positively about that. So, you know, again, what I think is that we don't talk about immortality like we're talking about it now, but we talk about it. I think about that, we use a lot of, we translate a lot of other words to say the same thing. Yeah, yeah. You know, but that's interesting, you bring up a good point. It's like we carry on our names. So even if we're gone, our name is basically immortalized going forward one way or the other. To a certain extent, that's what cemeteries are about too. When you go to a cemetery, you see the names of all these people. And it causes you to reflect when you're at a cemetery about who's there and what did they bring to this world before they passed on. And we've marked them with a gravestone or what have you. And it's an interesting concept when you think about that. I think one of the stories I always heard, I don't know if we said this before, but when you go to a cemetery, you have usually you have the date of birth and you have the date of death, but then there's a dash there. And you ask the question of what happened during the dash. You know what I mean? Exactly, between those starts and ends. Exactly, what did you do? You know, what happened? What did you leave to the world? And I think that that's. I want to go back to this thing that was brought up by both DeAndre and Sheridan, which is this Brian Johnson person and his quest. I mean, you know, besides, I didn't realize that he was doing the blood thing with his youngest child, but I think that people are doing all kinds of things to be immortal. I mean, for him, you know, it says that he's taking 111 pills every day. I mean, that's a lot. I mean, just to live. And then you don't know if it's gonna work or not. You know, I mean, so I think a lot of this is a kind of experimental thing. And then he wears a baseball cap that shoots red light into his scalp. I don't know what people are doing, but people are doing a lot of stuff, a lot of things in order just to live longer or to be immortal. And it's quite an interesting conversation that we're having here. So that's what I wanna say. That's quite interesting what people are doing, you know, as to maintain or to gain immortality Yeah, something that I think about when I think about Him because I feel like I'm always seeing his videos like how to videos on YouTube is Like while he's on this quest to either like extend his life or live forever Like what is his quality of life during all these things? like if you're taking a hundred and eleven pills a day if you're you know, if you have to step into these devices and do certain exercise, like, are you, like, I guess to him that's living, but to me that's like, when do you have time to enjoy what life has to offer? Like you've spent your whole time living, trying to extend your life. Like, so I just, yeah, I feel like I am just constantly thinking about that too. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. And you know, by the way, we aren't the we aren't the first ones to think about immortality. I mean, you know, it's for instance, the classic of internal medicine that was written by the yellow emperor in the fourth century. BC it's the oldest known treaty written in the Chinese language and in it, the yellow emperor wrote people lived. a hundred years. Now keep in mind that fourth century, you know, if you lived to a hundred years that was a long, long time. People lived to a hundred years and remained active and did not become decrepit. And then a colleague of his Lao Tzu in the fourth, in the third century wrote in the happy land that Lao Tzu describes people were gently following nature. without wrangling and strife. Men and women wandered freely about in company. Marriage plans and bethrothals were unknown. And not until the age of 100 did they die and disease and premature death were unknown. So it's like, this has been going on a long, long time, this concept of. living, just living a long, long time. You know, I saw, I was looking at some of the work here. There was a book written in 1936 called the illusion of immortality. Yeah, yeah. And I didn't, I didn't, you know, I started reading some of the things and it was like, it was very interesting. So I didn't get a chance to read a lot of it. But I know, as you just said, this is not something, a topic that has been, you know, just new, you know, a lot of times, it's something that people have been thinking about long time. And so it's just part of, I think it's just part of being a human being is that, you know, how long can I live? Is your life after death? I mean, what, you know, what, what's going on in this thing? Those, so those are questions that people are pondering about. And, and so, you know, I, our goal here today is to really incite people to just, you know, Have conversation. And you know, we as human beings are kind of unique, I guess we have a sense of being able to think about the future, or at least think about it without knowing what the future necessarily will bring. But we also can reflect on the past. Animals, you know, like my dog, they think only in the present. They don't have a sense of a future. And and pass so that for them it's in the moment. And you know, maybe there's something healthy about that. Do you know where you just live for right now and just keep going, all right? And perhaps that's why we really embrace our pets because they have that sense and they bring that to us. Final thoughts. Go ahead. Yeah, no, I was just saying, that is, you know, so many people are living life is like this is the only life that we get. So therefore there's not a lot of concept or thoughts about immortality. But I do think that, you know, you can do that, but there's something about life, you know, and I think Sheridan kind of alluded to this, there's something about life. You go home living like that, there's something about life that this question will come up. And so it's just great to be able to have a, to be able to talk about it at this point. Yeah, yeah. And frankly, some of the, you know, we'll be able to chat about this even more when, you know, new medical science comes out on certain things. Like, you know, if we saw on the paper today, just for argument's sake, that there's an actual vaccination that would prevent cancer, all the different cancers. You take this one shot and that's it. You don't have to worry about cancer anymore. Well, think about that. It's like, wow, for how many years have we been worried about cancer and its treatments, et cetera, and disease management, and now all of a sudden, boom, we have the cure. And what... implications as I have for our sense of immortality. Last thoughts, Sheridan, anything? Yeah, I actually, I think I wanna tie everything, everybody had such great points and I kinda wanna tie in a few themes from this episode. What Clarence said earlier on our tombstones, we have the day we were born, a dash and the day we die. And I think I wanna ask readers, what do you want to do with your dash? What do you want to do? Your time is now. And as much as we don't want to think about death, that dash is happening now. And you get to decide what that looks like. You get to decide who is in your life. If someone is making your life a living hell, get them out of it. There, there is no need. Why waste any of your precious time on people that do not make your dash feel like a good time. So just think about that. Even if you're, even if you're my age, you know, you feel like you have all this time left. but you only have so much time in the body that you're in with the mind that you have. So you might as well use it to the fullest of it, your extent of what you think is best. You know, it's interesting. I don't see it as a dash. I see it as kind of a squiggly line that has its ups and downs and you know, as you go. Maybe it should be a squiggly line between your birth and your death, little more accurate representation of that time. Of life. Yeah. Deondra, your thoughts. Yeah, I too, like, I like what Sheridan said, just kind of like living for the now and everything. I think that is something that is, it's really hard to think about. It's really hard to think about, you know, no longer being able to do the things that you kind of once were loved and once could do before and just kind of being gone. But I think it's really important to just kind of focus on the present and, but you know, I think it's always still really nice to make goals and to look towards the future and to, you know, be excited about certain things to happen in your life. I definitely feel like as I get older, like the best times are just really seem ahead of me. And I did not think that when I was in my early twenties, but now, you know, it's just like, you just live so much life, you have so much more experiences. I think the best is really yet to come for a lot of people. That's a happy note. Yeah. That's a happy note to end our show with. I'm hoping that this gets everybody thinking a little bit and realizing that there is happiness on your dash or your squiggle line. And if you embrace the happiness, perhaps maybe that's. what this is all about. Yeah, I don't think I can top. It's hard to give an answer or final thoughts that are tied up in a perfect bow because it's such a grand question and topic. But yeah, I think what everyone said, Deondra and Sheridan, was really eloquently spoken. And I just think for me, I'm trying to, while I get older and realize that life is. and time is precious, just trying to be present every day and enjoy positive things and challenging things and just look for opportunities to lean into everything that life has to offer. So that's what I'll say as I continue to kind of wrestle with questions of mortality and immortality myself. But yeah, just being present and focusing on each and every day. Thank you. Clarence, your last word. Thank you. I enjoyed this conversation. Yeah, I did too. It kind of puts it all in perspective a little bit on all the different topics that we cover in Health Chatters. So we hope you, the listening audience. have enjoyed today's episode on the illusion of immortality. We have great shows coming up. Stay tuned and keep connecting with our podcast. Until then, keep health chatting away.