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July 20, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
40:29
Planning Your Life, Choosing Your Future
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Kayla wrote in and said, My family insists that I get a high-paying career before I have children, but I think doing what I love is more important.
Do you think that in order to start a family, you need to have a high income?
No. Well, let's see.
I used to work in software, and I became a podcaster shortly before my daughter was born.
So their theory is what?
You go and become like a A doctor or a partner in a law firm, and then you have kids and you've got financial security?
Yeah, well, it's my aunt and uncle.
They basically told me that they messed up growing up, so I have to go get the career, get the graduate school, get the career, marry a guy that makes a lot of money, and then I can have kids.
Well, wait a minute. If you marry a guy who makes a lot of money, why do you need to make a lot of money?
Because I have to also be smart.
To be smart, I have to marry someone else who's smart, that makes money.
Oh, and so the way that you know that someone's smart is to make a lot of money.
Yes, that's what they say.
But I don't think so.
And how do they feel that they messed up their lives?
What would they say if you asked them or if I asked them?
I assume they're not there, right?
Yeah, no, they're not here. Okay, okay.
Well, because they did a lot of drugs and then had a baby, got off drugs, and then...
Wait. I'm sorry.
I shouldn't laugh. They did a lot of drugs?
Yeah. And so the only alternative to not doing a lot of drugs is to have some six-figure income with a giant Korea.
Okay. Pendulum might be swinging a little far the other way.
And also, you're taking advice from people who did a lot of drugs, which, you know...
May not be there.
Yeah, well, I mean, because of my past, like with my foo or whatever, they were a little...
It was a really bad situation.
And when I ran away and got out of the house, my aunt and uncle took me in.
So I kind of feel like I owe them at least to take their advice, but it's almost like they're pushing.
No, no. You may owe them to listen to their advice.
You don't owe anyone to take their advice.
Yeah. Because that's surrendering your...
Sovereign consciousness, right?
You can't be programmed like a computer.
Listen, for sure, nobody's obligated to take anyone's advice, right?
Yeah. I mean, I'm not taking it like I actually am trying to do my own business and everything, but it's almost like, they're like, we love you and support you, but...
You need to be doing better and you're not doing good enough and you should be in school still and have a backup plan and all that kind of stuff.
Alright, so I'm just going to ask a couple of early 20s, is that right?
Yeah, I'm 22. You have that silvery voice of the early 20s that is like a lovely little dinner bell ringing in my inner ear.
No, it's true. Sorry.
Okay, so you're 22 and how many kids do you want to have?
Two. Two. Two.
Okay. And you know that in your late 20s, your fertility is going to start to decline.
Not catastrophically, but it gets a little harder.
Plus, your energy level is going to be lower because you're not younger, right?
Yeah. I actually want to have kids in two years.
You want to have kids in two years?
Yes. Okay. Do you have a sperm carrier of reasonable virtue floating around?
Yes, I do. I have a fiancé.
Okay. Oh, good.
So you have the necessary nutsack with a good heart attached.
That is, you know, important.
The internet tells me that's how it works.
Okay. And how much money do you want or what kind of lifestyle do you want for kids?
Well, me and him, we really just want to show our kids that you can do what you love and money's not really that important.
Of course, I want enough so we're not starving, which isn't that hard to do, but I don't know.
I figured even if I did like a small part-time job to pay the bills, that it wouldn't be a bad thing.
Like I don't need a set nine to five job to live happily.
How much money do you think you could save up over the next couple of years?
And you don't have to give me an exact figure.
I'm just sort of wondering.
Well, I have a wedding to pay for in June.
No, you don't.
No, you don't.
Look, I mean, you can pay for a wedding if you want, but you don't have a wedding you have to pay for.
I assume it hasn't already happened, hence the use of the word fiancé.
Yes.
Okay, so you don't have to pay for a wedding.
And I'm sure that your children would rather that you be home rather than out paying for a wedding they didn't even get to attend, right?
Yes. Okay.
I'm hoping that in the next two years, I'm getting on this budgeted plan to pay off my debt and then to actually have a stable savings account.
But I don't know.
I guess I haven't really put a full number to how much I want to save myself.
I don't know. Okay, yeah. I mean, look, there's some basic spreadsheet stuff to do, which is you don't need a lot of money when kids are little.
Yeah. Like, you don't.
I mean, what do they want?
Boobs, belly tickles, belly farts.
I mean, they're basically your fiancé.
You'll get the hang of it. Yeah.
It's pretty much the same thing for men throughout their lives.
But you don't need a lot of money to...
To be a mom when the babies are there.
In fact, I would choose time over money for babies.
So... Oh, yeah. Sorry, Mike.
Yeah. Insurance. Are you in the U.S.? Yes.
Okay. Well, so...
Okay. So if you don't have a lot of money, you get some Obamacare subsidies, assuming that the Supreme Court challenge about the state exchanges doesn't work or doesn't go through.
So you'll get...
You'll need to budget some money for doctoring, right?
Yes, yeah. Okay, but babies don't care how many bedrooms are in the mansion, right?
Yeah. The aforementioned boobs, belly rubs, and all that, that's what they're into, right?
Yes. You don't need a lot of money when kids are little.
I mean, my mom raised me with very little.
We were just broke all the time.
And that wasn't really the issue.
You know, people say you need a lot of money for kids, but man, I mean, in the 19th century, like 12 kids in a room, in a farm.
I mean, watch Old Yeller.
I mean, good Lord, you don't need a huge amount of money.
To have kids when they're younger.
Now, when they get older, if you want to put them in, I don't know if you're going to homeschool or put them in private school.
I mean, obviously, I'm not a big fan of government schools, to say the least.
But, you know, you can homeschool, and that's certainly fairly efficient if, you know, you get the right resources.
And, you know, rather than spending, what, $1,500 or $2,000 a year, a month, rather, on private schools, that's a pretty good job for you to do.
You sound like an intelligent young lady.
Yeah. I would love to do that.
Yeah, so if you've got a guy who can go out and pull in some cheddar, then you're probably going to be okay.
My parents had a house when I was first born, but they split up, I think, when I was six months old.
I lived in a little apartment.
We were in a one-bedroom apartment for a while.
We never had a car the whole time growing up.
We almost never went on vacations.
Yeah. You know, food was in short supply at times, like literally.
Yeah. I had to eat food that was furry and not like, you know, healthy roadkill.
This was like bad fur. Yeah, I actually had to do that too because when I grew up, I lived from house to house, car to car, church-funded housing.
So my family likes to kind of use that against me.
They're like, well, you don't want to go through what you went through when you were young.
Yeah. No, but the problem wasn't the lack of money.
The problem was the lack of stability, right?
Yes. The problem was the lack of love.
It was the lack of connection.
You know, it's not...
Poverty that results from chaos and abuse and a mess is not the same as poverty, so to speak, that results from a dedication to being there for your kids.
That's a very, very different situation.
Yeah. I mean, homelessness is different from being a monk, even though the incomes are probably pretty similar.
Yeah. Like, I've been really trying hard to, you know, be an entrepreneur.
Like, I started a little website, and I'm trying to make enough off of that, that if I needed extra income, that I could stay at home if I needed to, but not enough that it would take away time from my kids, because, you know, that's what I really wanted when I was younger, was someone there for me, but...
My family, they're like, well, your kids need to go to a good school.
They need to have a good car.
That's not true. No, listen, listen.
I mean, I just read something from Charles Murray about this, and he was referring to another woman's book that we're going to work on doing a review of because it seems that which school your kids go to have virtually no impact on how they do in life.
And there's some pretty strong arguments that even parents don't have, I mean, outside of abuse, parents don't have a huge, huge impact on the end personalities of their kids.
I mean, there's so much that's bound up in genetics, particularly in IQ, but there's so much that's bound up in genetics.
Your children, according to the research that I have yet to fully vet, so take this with a grain of salt, Your kids do not need to go to a good school.
Now, that doesn't mean that it doesn't matter where they go, but in terms of their success in life, you know, they measure kids' IQ when they're young and that pretty much determines how they're going to turn out.
And, you know, it's weird because, you know, I talk a lot about parental influence and I think it's important.
But in terms of, I think Charles Murray was saying, he's had four kids with his wife, right?
And he's like, he says, you know, I like to think that my wife and I helped our kids be nicer people, but the data is the data.
And it's pretty hard to find very strong ways in which parents fundamentally alter their children's personalities.
Again, outside of abuse.
And again, just because it doesn't matter where they go to school in terms of how they do in the long run.
Mm-hmm. That doesn't mean that it doesn't matter in terms of how they enjoy their childhood.
You know, I mean, if they go to a nice school or a homeschool by you, that's better than going to some god-awful government school.
Even though it may not have a strong effect on how they turn out in terms of their income or their professions or whatever they do, it's still nicer to go to a school that you enjoy than a school that you're terrified, right?
So it's not like it has no effect in the quality of their life in the moment, but In terms of outcome, you know, people say, well, you've got to go to a good school.
It's like, well, Bernie Madoff went to a good school.
Barack Obama went to good schools.
Lots of nasty Wall Street people went to good schools.
Lots of people high up in the military industrial complex went to really good schools.
Lots of leftist nonsense idiots went to really good schools.
I mean, some of the Marxist professors who taught me went to really good schools.
And Mark Twain didn't.
So, you know, it's kind of hard to...
It's kind of hard to make that case.
But okay, so my suggestion would be, like, figure out the old thing, right?
How much money do you need a month, right?
You can probably get by on two grand a month.
Yeah. Maybe $2,500 a month.
And between the two of you, you know, that's not a lot of harvesting and hunter-gathering to be able to make that, particularly if you've got a little bit of money saved up ahead of time.
Yeah. You know, it's hard to sort of say if I could live my life over because I didn't meet my wife until I was in my 30s.
But if I could do it again, I think there's a very strong case to be made, particularly for women.
Okay, if I was doing it over again as a chick, I think there's a very strong case to be made to have kids when you're young.
Your eggs are fresher, you're healthier, you've got more energy.
And if you get your kids to, let's say you have two kids in two years, right?
So you'll be 24. Mm-hmm.
And let's say that they're a year or two apart.
So, you know, by the time you're 30, 31, a significant portion of the important stuff around child raising, it's the first five years, first six years of the, you know, that defines the whole rest of the time.
So by the time you're 30, you got a good chunk of it under your belt, 31 maybe.
And let's say you're going to work till you're 65.
Well, okay, so you've got 34 years if you want to have a great career.
And... I think that's not a bad way to do it.
I think there's a lot to be said about that.
Of course, the problem is if you go and get educated now and go and start a career, if you want to be a good mom, then I believe it's important to be home.
And so then you've got to take seven years or so out of your career time.
And depending on your career, that's If you're in software, well, you're doomed.
You might as well just scrub your brain and start again.
It's like, I know QBasic and COBOL85. Sorry, maintenance programming dungeon for you.
Or if you're in law, of course the law has changed.
If you're in medicine, the medical field has changed.
I mean, it's hell to get back into things.
Even if you're in business, a lot of the financial instruments have changed.
Funding mechanisms have changed.
Even business philosophies have changed.
So if you take a seven-year gap in the middle of an established career, let's say you go out and start a career and then you're 31 or 32, then you've got to take your break.
And then what are you going to get back into the workforce when you're 40 or 41 when you haven't really kept up with whatever's going on in your field?
Now, if you're a waiter, okay, food get to customer.
Not much has changed, right?
But, you know, if you're talking about that, then you're not giving up much to be home with your kids, right?
So if you're talking about I know it's not legal and so on, but there may be some people who are like, oh, she's young, she's married, maybe she's going to want to have kids.
You can't ask people, as far as I know, those questions, but it doesn't mean that you're going to automatically get the job over someone who's Kids are grown or who's a guy or whatever.
It's just the way that things work to some degree.
Yeah. You know, it's hard to say, hard to prove, but it's certainly a very real possibility.
So from a money-making standpoint, I personally think it makes more sense to budget small, have kids.
I mean, you're not going out of the damn house much anyway, right?
Yeah. It depends where you live in the States.
But, you know, they're babies.
They don't want to, you know, hey, nine feet of snow, want to make a tunnel?
You know, they're They're babies.
You don't want them to lick your boob and have it freeze.
That's not the way it goes.
So I think it's a good case to be made.
Have your kids young when the money doesn't matter so much, when they get a little older.
If you put them in school or you keep them home or whatever, then there's a chance to really make things go from a career standpoint.
I mean, if they want to go to college, of course, that can be pretty pricey.
But if they're homeschooled, they'll probably get good scholarships, right?
I mean, they're stuck in the brain dungeons in public school.
So I think there's a pretty good case to be made.
I have significant skepticism towards go and get educated, start a career, and then take your 30s off to have kids.
I don't know. I mean, I think it's...
And I don't want to get into any details, but it's not purely personal experience that I'm talking about here.
It's a significant challenge.
And I think that careers tend to have momentum.
So if you start in your early 30s and you go for 35 years, that's momentum, right?
But if you're like, you know, start in my 20s!
Take off my 30s.
Try to get back into it in my 40s.
I think that's a pretty tough role.
Yeah. A pretty tough road to hoe.
Does that help at all?
Yeah, it does. One of the things that my family was really pushing against was I started this little website where I just kind of do editing, which I really enjoy.
And I could do it from home.
And I was doing it and I was making enough to just pay the bills and then...
You know, Kevin made the supplement income and then they started, they were really criticizing it for a long time, like, well, that's only temporary and you're not going to go anywhere with that.
And I'm like, well, it's a website.
Wait, what does that mean that, what, everyone's going to become William Styron?
Like, nobody's going to need editing anymore?
They're going to be like Mozart writing down the symphonies and all that?
I mean, what does that mean, it's temporary?
Do they think that, like, is English going out of style?
Do you not know Mandarin or something?
Well, they think it's because I don't have the doctorate that that's why it's only temporary.
They say people are only coming to you because they don't know any better, because you don't have the degree.
But then, you know, like a month ago, I hired someone who's got like a master's in creative writing.
And I'm like, look, I don't need the degree because I can hire people to do that.
You know, because that's what happens when you own a business.
Good thing they're not Bill Gates' dad.
Yeah. Steve Jobs' dad, you know?
Yeah. You know you don't have a degree.
You can't run a software company.
Are you crazy? Yeah.
Brad Pitt didn't go to RADA, Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, so obviously he can't possibly be an actor.
I mean, did Linda Evangelista go to modeling school?
I don't think so. I mean, how many...
Shakespeare, yeah, it's true, he went to government school, but for 12 weeks a year, did he ever take...
Theatre writing at the National Theatre School of the 15th, 16th century.
I don't know.
The idea that you need all these credentials...
I'm happy I had a Master's in this particular field, but I also...
Nobody should believe anything I say because I have a Master's.
Unfortunately, a few people do. I think that if you do a good job, then...
The work will, you know, quality wins out.
People will find you, if you're good to work with and you do a good job, you know, we don't do any advertising for this show, really.
We keep growing. Yeah.
Because I think there's enough quality and utility in what we talk about here that, so yeah, this idea, I mean, do they themselves have like a wall full of degrees and all that?
But yeah, my family, I mean, they're not really that high up there as far as money is, but I think they live outside of their means personally, but if I ever mention that, they would get really angry.
So, there are two government workers who are telling you how to make it big.
Yes. Do you see any particular challenge with that paradigm?
Yes. Right.
Well, I mean, it's I understand where they're coming from, you know, because it's like, I know that they wanted more for their kids when they grew up, but I feel like...
Wanted more what?
More, I guess, resources.
Like, they had to live in their parents' basement for a while until they got on their feet, and then they had to get...
Was that a lack of education or drugs?
Probably drugs. Yeah!
I mean, oh, don't do drugs.
Stay in school. Gotta get my job.
I mean, God. I mean, they may be missing a bit of the larger picture of...
Why their lives have had some challenges?
Yeah, and I can't really point that out because if I bring it up gently, they go on the defensive and feel attacked like, well, you know, at the time, best we could have done.
Hang on, hang on. Are you trying to tell me that people who are overly critical are defensive about being criticized?
First time ever!
Here's what you should do. I got all these answers.
Wait, what about these problems in your life?
What are you talking about? That's completely irrelevant.
I mean, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. I mean, I just don't think that's a very good approach.
Look, I've got some answers in my life that I think are pretty useful.
I mean, you've probably listened to the show before.
I mean, I don't tell people what to do.
No. I think there's costs and benefits to a lot of choices that we made.
I mean, okay, if you're going to go out and talk about strangling hobos, maybe we have a different conversation, but...
When to have kids, I don't know that there's a right answer to that.
And I think that if you're smart and if you're willing to learn about yourself, if you're willing to learn about how to provide value to people, you're going to be fine in this world.
I mean, unless there's some zombie apocalypse, then I think, or, you know, scientists wearing sexist t-shirts or whatever, then you're going to be fine.
You know that? So, okay, I'll tell you a really cheesy story.
And this is my rolling balls of Indiana Jones wisdom down the hill of years.
So when I was younger, I found a book at a friend of mine's place, and it was called A Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul.
Oh, no. Yeah.
Oh, I'm telling you. I mean, this was like you open it and like basically tentacles of treacle strike you in the jugular.
I mean, they're just it was like seriously sentimental stuff.
But I have a soft spot for sentimentality.
I mean, you know, give me what used to be called long distance commercials about grandparents reconnecting with grandkids.
I mean, it's yeah, I mean, I can I can squirt a league pretty easily when it comes to sentimental stuff.
And in it. There was.
A story. And the story was a woman who was, who'd been married for like 30 or 40 years and she was doing the wedding again.
You know, because they loved each other so much.
And she said, you know, when I was a bride, I was in my 20s and I was so nervous and I was so scared.
I wish I could send a message back in a bottle saying, don't worry, everything's going to work out well.
And I don't know about you, When I think about the number of times that I've been anxious about negative outcomes...
Well, first of all, everything I've been anxious about negative outcomes virtually has never, ever had a negative outcome.
Nothing I fear happens.
The things... That I end up actually being afraid of are the things that kind of come out of nowhere, like getting sick or whatever.
But like I was thinking the other day when I was, I don't know, 12 or something like that, I pretended to be sick and didn't go to school that day.
I can't remember why.
Probably some test that I, in family life, was too chaotic to study for or something.
And I was watching some daytime TV and Some people on some political panel or something like that.
Pretty boring stuff, but you know.
This is barely post-color TV, let alone internet.
And the school called.
Now, there's no call display.
It's this rotary dial, right?
Basically, one step up from smoke rings.
Pick up the phone and the school's like, why aren't you at school?
So I used the wonderfully subjective stomachache.
You know, you can't say headache because you can take an aspirin for that, right?
You can't say anything that could be tested for, right?
Yeah. So, so stomachache.
And then they said, does your mother know that you're at home?
And I was like, oh shit.
It can't be. I don't think my mom, I mean, my mom didn't even know what grade I was in.
Like I bring a note home. And she'd have to ask me what grade I was in.
So the idea that she'd called the school, unless there'd been some emergency, right?
Yeah. And I was like, oh my God.
I mean, my mom couldn't find a school on a map.
Could she have called the school?
Is this a trick, right?
Yeah. And I was like, the day I was like, oh God, you know, I'm going to go into school tomorrow and they're going to call my mom.
Right? Nothing happened.
Nothing happened. I'm telling you, the number of, like when I did my master's, it took, because it was a pretty unusual master's, I handed it in, and it took forever.
Everyone else had already gotten their degree.
It took forever, and I was like, oh my god, did I just spend all this time and all this money trying to get this master's?
It was fine.
I got an A. Guy called me up.
Yeah. Hard to, you know, yeah, got an A. All these things, wired about, afraid of.
For what? For what?
What did all that worry add to my life?
What did it get me?
What did it provide to me?
It's like I've walked through my whole life with my head in a bag waiting for a blow that never comes.
And all it did was subtract my enjoyment of my life for no positive end whatsoever.
Now, the world is incredibly dedicated to scaring the living shit out of you on a regular basis.
Advertisers love doing that stuff.
If your hair isn't this pretty, you'll never be loved.
If you don't have this kind of body, if you don't have teeth that blind the space station when you look at the sun, you will never be loved.
If you don't have a good education, you'll never make any money.
If you don't go to a good college, you're doomed.
Everybody has this incredible incentive.
And it's part of the market system, but the market system is conditioned by people's lack of self-knowledge and lack of commitment to virtue and lack of understanding of what love is.
And in the absence of understanding what love is, we have to go for base biological attractiveness, right?
If you don't know what love is, you've got to do a lot of sit-ups and squirt your boobs out the top of your bra on a regular basis.
And basically you've got to titillate rather than become connected.
And then we get paranoid, of course, because can we get the right level of attractiveness?
You know, a guy who's not so hot that he's a total player, but not such an unattractive people that people think I've settled for second or third or fifth best.
And then, of course, we doll ourselves up to make ourselves this pretty to attract people, which is basically using our biology to club them into submission.
We crank ourselves up to be this physically attractive.
And then what happens?
Well, we get pregnant, our bodies fall apart when we have babies, we get old, and then we're paranoid about all that stuff.
And we worry about money, and do I have enough money?
I remember, oh my god, so many times, I was like, I was broke, I'm broke, I'm broke, I'm broke, I don't have enough money, I can't eat.
I remember being in school, and I used to get $100 a month from the government, this is way back in the day.
And I remember, like, I'm hungry.
I'm hungry. And I'm going to the bank.
I have no money in my bank account.
Like, I was shameless.
Like, I would take out $2.75 from my bank account to go and have some food.
I went to the bank. I didn't even have that.
I took 80 cents in my bank account.
And I'm hungry.
And it's Thursday.
The bank's not open again, I think, until Monday.
I go to the bank with $94 or whatever it was.
Because my parents were broke.
And I go to the bank and I want to...
I'm not going to go have a feast.
I just want to get some money out to buy some groceries.
I'm hungry. I go to the bank and they won't let me have the money.
They won't let me have the money because the check has to clear.
And I got into a... I was desperate.
I mean, I can't... It was going to be like three business days or something.
I wasn't getting the money like Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week.
It's like, no, I need to eat, right?
I mean, right now your forearm is looking like a rotisserie chicken to me.
So give me some damn money.
I'm hungry. And I said, what do you mean you're waiting for the check to clear?
It's the government of Canada.
I don't think they...
Look, my name, my ID, it's not going to bounce.
I'm like, it's the government of Canada.
Look at my history.
Look at my history.
I've deposited this check every month for the last nine months.
Wouldn't give me the money. Call the supervisor.
Like, I'm like, I'm sorry.
Like, I'm in a Newt Hanson novel.
I'm like, I'm hungry.
Finally, the manager...
Let's me have $20 of the $94.
And that was a beautiful thing.
It really was a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Because I was hands-shaken hungry.
And that's how tight things were.
And I was anxious, scared sometimes.
But it all worked out.
I did not starve. I completed my education.
It all worked out.
I am 48 years old.
It's all worked out.
Boy, I'd love to send that.
I'd like to send that back like 40 years.
And I'm thinking that at the age of 98, I want to send it back to 48.
It's all going to work out.
And you can live like it's not, but then you've just got one foot in the grave.
One foot in the giant soul-sucking vortex of imminent disaster.
Now, I'm not saying this is your mindset, my friend.
I'm really not. But what I am saying is, worry is like singing an aria into a windstorm.
The sound gets pulled away.
You put your greatest passion into something that nobody can hear and affects nothing other than getting you a cold face in the middle of nowhere.
So believe me when I say in so many ways your future by the age of 22 Is largely mapped out in terms of, if you're interested in this show, I'm going to put you in 125 or 130 IQ right away.
You're interested in self-knowledge.
You understand economics.
You know how to negotiate.
You have some sense of virtue.
You have some sense of what love is.
You're going to get married to a great guy, I'm sure, of that.
And so you're already ahead of...
You know, all but 5.999 billion of people on the planet.
You have access to the greatest educational machinery and technology known to mankind.
I'm not just talking about this show.
I'm talking about all of the internet.
You have the Flynn effect, which still actually seems to be on your side, that you're going to be smarter than me and smarter than the people who came before you.
You have love.
You have youth.
You have health. You may not have the best advisors in your corner, but you can listen to them and, you know, accept, you know, some of what they say might be of value.
But if people have gotten to their 40s and they're not currently living in a cardboard box down by the river on a steady guy at a government cheese, they should have learned by then or by now That worrying is completely futile.
I'm not saying don't have any concern.
I'm not saying go smoke crack.
I'm not going to do that anyway, right?
No. But worrying, if you found the man that you love and you want to have children and you're not going to starve, which you're not going to do, If that's what you want to do right now, yes, there will be people who will try and put in all of this fruitless concern and possibilities and what-ifs and this and that and the other.
And I tell you, as a man who has spent, I don't think I'm a huge warrior, W-O, not W-A, maybe W-A-D, but I don't think that I'm a huge warrior, but the times that I have been consumed with worry, Are times that were barely living.
You know, the dread, the fear, the concern, the what-ifs, the escalations, the catastrophes, the what.
And again, it's not like this stuff consumes me.
I don't have a huge problem with it.
But when it does happen, those times are barely living.
And we got the rest of eternity to not be alive.
Let's not invite those tiny coffins of worry beads and death and ashes into our present.
And I'm saying this to you because you sound to me like a very together and an intelligent woman who's in a good position.
You've got skills.
You've got someone who's got a master's working for you.
That's not bad at 22 because I guarantee you they're not 22 unless some sort of super genius who went to college at 12.
No. So you've got a man who loves you.
And so I would say it is going to work out.
It's going to be fine.
And the only thing that's not going to be fine is worrying whether it's going to be fine.
Life is going to pitch stuff at you.
You are going to make good decisions with the information that you have.
And those decisions, because you're interested in this show, which is not just because of the show, but all of that means, those decisions are going to be better than 99% of all the people on the planet.
99% of all the people of your level of intelligence in your neighborhood, because you've got philosophy.
So your decisions, whatever life pitches at you, your decisions are going to be good, solid decisions, and it is all going to work out.
So do what makes you happy.
Do what makes your fiancé and husband happy.
Trust that you will handle whatever life throws at you in a very productive and functional way.
And promise.
Promise yourself that you will worry only in hell itself.
After you're dead, you can promise your worry wart brain, if you have one, you can promise that you will worry after death, for eternity, if that's what the worry wart part of you wants.
But now, this time is for living.
And the tiny death of worry It's something that can be a mosquito in your coffin from here to eternity.
If that's how it's gonna work out.
But to hell with worry in the here and now.
It prepares you for nothing.
It contributes nothing.
It averts nothing.
It only brings disaster into the present when there's no guarantee whatsoever it's going to happen in the future.
Wow.
Thank you very much.
And You sound like my fiancé.
Oh, good. I assume he's in his 20s, so I hope that I've approached the maturity of someone in their 20s.
That's good. Yeah. That's good.
That's great to hear. I actually, because of my past, I grew up with a lot of anxiety and worry, of course.
And ever since I started dating him, I really...
Have started worrying a lot less about everything and he's always that like the little shoulder angel coming in to say everything's gonna work out it's gonna be okay we're gonna be okay it's I don't know it's just kind of nice hearing it from you thank you good you're very welcome and do keep us posted how it goes and um again my advice is uh A little less on the wedding, a little more on the kids. If that is a choice, then that would be my suggestion.
But of course, you must take your own conscience as far as that goes.
But thanks very much for calling. And do drop us a line.
Before I go, real quick.
So, just to kind of...
Kind of like stick it to my family a little bit.
Can I just give you my website name so that if anyone who ever needs an editor can come to me and just support my goal of not falling into a government job one day?
It's absolutely your choice.
I'm certainly happy if you want to deal with an FDR editor listener, please go ahead.
Yes, I'd love to have more of those kind of listeners come into my site, but...
It's donetherightway.com and it's W-R-I-T-E. If anyone needs an editor.
It's nice to have a lady who's calling in with a website.
We can actually talk about some of the earlier ladies who had websites.
We're a little less shareable and probably fewer master's degrees.
Actually, maybe some of the fine arts master's degrees would be working there.
But anyway, yeah.
So best of luck. I hope that you get some business out of it.
Thank you very much. And I really appreciate you taking my call.
And I love your show. Thank you very much.
And best of luck with your wedding and your child raising if you have any other questions.
Happy to chat. All right.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
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