Have you ever wondered about the paths we stroll in life, and how the pursuit of wealth shapes our journey? Together with my insightful friend Cat Cougill, we take a moment to reflect on our personal and collective evolutions, while unraveling the intricate web of greed and its implications on society. As we traverse the landscape of our financial choices, we challenge the enduring myth that greed is a trait reserved for the wealthy and consider the impact of our 401k investments on global issues.
This week's episode is not just a conversation; it's an exploration of the American Dream and what sustainability truly means within its context. We dissect the historical rituals that mold our national identity and question the ideals that drive us toward a success that seems always just out of reach. Cat brings a generational perspective that contrasts the bright-eyed optimism of the past with today's more complex reality, leading us to ponder the changing perspectives on homeownership and the true value of material possessions.
As we near the conclusion of our chat, we embrace the beauty of adaptability and how it reshapes our outlook on life. We delve into the bittersweet 'grief of the grand adventure'—recognizing the paths not taken—and discuss why sometimes, the most productive thing we can do is to simply relax and play. Our conversation is an invitation for you to join us in this space where change is celebrated, and life's intricate tapestry is woven with each unique experience.
👉 Alive and Authentic
Thank you for listening!
Do you know someone or have a topic you would like featured on the podcast? Leave a review and let me know! I'd love to hear from you!
Have you ever wondered about the paths we stroll in life, and how the pursuit of wealth shapes our journey? Together with my insightful friend Cat Cougill, we take a moment to reflect on our personal and collective evolutions, while unraveling the intricate web of greed and its implications on society. As we traverse the landscape of our financial choices, we challenge the enduring myth that greed is a trait reserved for the wealthy and consider the impact of our 401k investments on global issues.
This week's episode is not just a conversation; it's an exploration of the American Dream and what sustainability truly means within its context. We dissect the historical rituals that mold our national identity and question the ideals that drive us toward a success that seems always just out of reach. Cat brings a generational perspective that contrasts the bright-eyed optimism of the past with today's more complex reality, leading us to ponder the changing perspectives on homeownership and the true value of material possessions.
As we near the conclusion of our chat, we embrace the beauty of adaptability and how it reshapes our outlook on life. We delve into the bittersweet 'grief of the grand adventure'—recognizing the paths not taken—and discuss why sometimes, the most productive thing we can do is to simply relax and play. Our conversation is an invitation for you to join us in this space where change is celebrated, and life's intricate tapestry is woven with each unique experience.
👉 Alive and Authentic
Thank you for listening!
Do you know someone or have a topic you would like featured on the podcast? Leave a review and let me know! I'd love to hear from you!
Welcome to Making Way. I'm your host, melissa Park. I have to admit I am overly critical of myself, always feeling like there are things I should have done better, could have done better and need to do better. Anyone else feel this way too. When I can remember to pause and reflect, I can look back and see how far I've come. So let's take a moment to reflect back. Here are a series of questions to help you get there. How old were you five years ago? Where were you living? What song was on repeat? What was most on your mind at this time in your life?
Speaker 2:Any kind of investment that I make through a 401k, just sort of out there, somebody in the nebulous world of finance making money for me. You know they're doing it on the backs of governments that exploit their people to gain more resources and extract more resources from the earth, on the backs of then these people who are then displaced from their places that they've lived, and now we have a migration problem.
Speaker 1:Today's guest is returning to the podcast for the third time. She is one of my favorite people and a very special friend of mine. Kat Kogel, a dynamic and powerful thinker who has an ability to connect ideas, experiences and emotions. She has lived many lives and has lived deeply with others. When she and I talk, we kind of just get into things. So when we jumped on this Zoom call to record for the podcast, we kind of just got into it and I just pressed record. What I admire about Kat is her willingness to be open, to learn and to change. I've been friends with Kat for over a decade and Kat 10 years ago is very different than Kat today, but her warmth and her heart is just as familiar and cozy as I remember it to be. So join us in one of our conversations as we digest, unpack and give words to things we've known in our hearts but couldn't yet speak with our lips until today. Enjoy.
Speaker 2:Greed is one of the underlying things that complicates the concept of what is enough.
Speaker 1:Define greed, because sometimes I think it's easy to think like, well, someone who might be wealthy, right? Oh well, that's like the image oh, you're greedy because look at them, they just keep accumulating wealth. But sometimes I also think, like you can be greedy without having much either. To a degree Maybe it's a little bit different, but because I also don't know if someone who is wealthy or has a lot is necessarily greedy, I think I really think it's a place in the heart, it's the motivator, it's the why.
Speaker 2:And if you can get to the why, why am I doing what I'm doing? No matter what it is that I'm doing, why am I doing it? What's the motivator behind it? And then the next level might be okay. If I pursue this, who am I taking advantage of? I have no expertise in this arena, but I am learning a lot more about even how our investments our investments might be really good, but who are they exploiting for us to be able to invest?
Speaker 2:Nearly every 401k program that somebody is a part of has what they call blue chip investments, which those are like the solid kinds of things that just are very stable, and all that they exploit indigenous populations all around the world in order for people to have the stability of these blue chip funds that we then invest in. And so indigenous people are being exploited around the world. So I am now faced with the knowledge that any kind of investment that I make through a 401k just sort of out there somebody in the nebulous world of finance making money for me. You know they're doing it on the backs of governments that exploit their people to gain more resources and extract more resources from the earth on the backs of then these people who are then displaced from their places that they've lived, and now we have a migration problem.
Speaker 1:When does that end? Because I feel like we can say that about almost literally everything we touch, from everything that's produced to everything that we consume. It's like you follow the trail long enough and eventually someone's being exploited. I mean you can think about 401ks. I mean I think something I recently listened to about that is like the reason why people don't stay in companies long, like why that's no longer an advisable pathway where, like you know, however, many decades ago, people would stay at a company for their whole entire career and the reason for a big part of that is because they had great pension plans and the longer you stay, the more you'd get and all this stuff.
Speaker 1:And then when I guess, when I don't know if it's a policy that changed, but then they brought in the 401k. It changed that, that accountability away from the company, now in the person. And so people, you know that's why they say, like now doesn't make sense for you to stay long, you know, for a long time at a company. And so even in that I question, like everyone's kind of like taking care of themselves, you know, watching out for their own bottom line and and this is how even companies do that too, you know, it just feels overwhelming, it feels endless to think. It doesn't mean to be apathetic, but I'm like, if I start thinking about one thing, like then another thing, and then it's everything. The computer we use, you know where's that produce, where's this metal produced from? You know, and most likely in some sort of third world country, maybe I don't know how the conditions are, you know, and what are we to do?
Speaker 2:You know, that's the. That's the thing I mean, our age difference. It's like. So for my generation I was born in the first year of Gen X.
Speaker 2:As I was coming to age, it was a time of extravagance and economic growth and reaganomics and all that kind of stuff. However, my understanding of the world was very limited. I have a rather positive outlook on life in general, but that was like greatly expanded, if that makes sense. It was like I had no understanding of an underbelly in the world. The underbelly that I was told about was me myself. What is my individual underbelly? That's what I need to be concerned with. That would have been taught through the church, through the influence of church upon general culture and culture in general society in general.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I actually really enjoyed doing, particularly when I wanted to just sort of shut the world out, I would, if the house my growing up years, if the house was quiet, I would go into the living room and pull the World Book Encyclopedias off the shelf and I would just read the World Book Encyclopedia, that and our local newspaper. Those are my only two links to this outside bigger world and we did not have the internet at our fingertips to ask a question, to go down a rabbit trail to pursue the understanding of the behind something. And so I just kind of grew up not knowing any of these kinds of things, and I have to say that over the past probably 20 years of my life, it's been more about me figuring out, oh my gosh, that underbelly there is a really, really big underbelly in the world, and it's in systems and it's in the things that nobody wants you to know about. So you're asking okay, well, where does it end? Well, the thing is for, like greed or you know, following the trail, the money trail or whatever it's like. It's not going to end until we, as humans, begin to examine and, first of all, these systems to get exposed, which is, I think, what is happening today. I don't know, I thought that I was supposed to just like get married, have children and live life this way, and that's what I started to do, because that's what I thought would make me a good Christian woman. And, little by little, those things have just been whittled away and whittled away, and whittled away. No, we can say no to these things Once again. It's like a house with a white pick fence. That means you have a mortgage. If you own that house, that means you have a mortgage.
Speaker 2:Well, I was educated under the falsity of this idea of manifest destiny from the 18, what was that? 1820s, under Jackson as president, and it was like this land is our land, from sea to shining sea. It's written into our national anthem and all these patriotic, nationalistic songs, yes, and it's like now, wait a second. I used to teach second grade. We stood up and said the Pledge of Allegiance every single day and I was supposed to take note of those people, those students who, for whatever reason, did not yeah, the only one. Well, they had to get special permission because either A they were Jehovah's Witness or something else like that, and it was like, otherwise they were supposed to be standing up and doing the Pledge of Allegiance.
Speaker 2:But it's just, it's this assumption that this land is ours and we own the property that we have a house on because we have a mortgage or we've bought it and we're paying the mortgage. And it's like well, wait a second, that land was extracted from somebody and when you follow that trail, I know that we're recording and everything. But man, this is just like. This is something that it's just like. We just keep getting more and more and more of this keeps getting revealed to me, and these are things I didn't know. And yet I grew up in an educated home and I was well educated for the time period, did well enough in school. I wasn't top of my class or anything like that, but I wasn't at the end of it. I did well enough in college. I was a well educated, privileged human being. And these are things I did not know.
Speaker 1:But I think it goes back to your earlier part of the story talking about, like this is what you're supposed to have the white picket fence, the house of the kids and you're kind of like conditioned to think well, I'm having a hard time, but like I'm supposed to have this, I'm supposed to want this, but it doesn't. It's like the feeling and what you have was kind of rubbing against each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and to think that 13 years later after that and we're living in that teeny tiny little two bedroom apartment in LA. So we actually had four kids in that two bedroom apartment for that length of time. So the youngest had their bedroom with bunk beds and then the middle two were on an air mattress that they were pumping one was pumping up every night and sleeping on, the other one was sleeping on the couch and that was the apartment that we had our small group in, where I got to meet you, you know, and it's like I think back to that apartment and how many feet walked over the threshold of that door in that one year period that we lived there. That to me is far grander than a very large house.
Speaker 1:I mean, even now for me, when I look at homes, I'm just like, oh, it's nice to look at, but the first thought is like, oh, how do you maintain this? How do you clean this? How much does it cost for the landscaper? All those questions, how much are utility bills?
Speaker 2:here. The thing is is that we are programmed to want the thing. We aren't programmed to think about the sustainability of that thing, of that wanting of that thing. If more of us were programmed to think in sustainable ways and not just have it as a buzzword of the day, but truly think about things, everything that we do through the lens of sustainability, it would alter how we make decisions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because sustainability means thinking out generations forward, not just about this moment of a want, which then, I think, actually aids in contentedness, you know it's tricky because where my brain goes to when I hear that, you know I'm 35 and only in the last five years where I really started learning and understanding more about financial literacy, and I think where my mind goes to with that is, you know, it's kind of a mix of what you said which is in the beginning. You're kind of taught, you know the American dream. You own a house, you have by a car and you know, forget about what was possible before. You know all these conversations about cost of living, cost of houses and stuff like whatever.
Speaker 1:I think when people think about buying a home at least this is what I hear a lot of my friends say is, and you know, just in general, it's an investment into my future, you know. And so I think some people will take that and say, well, if I do buy this large home or if I buy this home, this is for the long term, this is for the generations to come, this is for it to stay in my family, because I think that's how people do see their homes, which is this is for the future, this is for those memories, which are all wonderful and beautiful things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that that used to be an accurate mindset. Homes today are not built to withstand longevity like they used to be. Even the building materials that go into a new home today are of a lesser quality than they were 100, 120 years ago. Yeah, but talk about exploitation.
Speaker 1:You couldn't get those back quality, but now it's gonna cost you way more money. That's a luxury to have quality materials, quality builders, that's right.
Speaker 2:And my parents live in a house that was built in 1911. All right, and some arts and crafts, bunks, bungalows style oh, that's not nice. I love that style. You know it's in a very small community To find people who will actually work on a house like that, to have that craftsmanship. It's really hard to find the people who know how to work on that and then those people are at a premium to do that work. When you walk in my parents' house, it has a deep, dark wood everywhere. The banister is 10 by 10 square with a top on, you know, with a thing on top of it, and the wood goes all the way up the stairway and the baseboards are probably 10 to 12 inches tall. The framing around the windows, you know, it's all that original, maybe walnut. It's stunning, it's gorgeous, it's very warm and cozy and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:Back in the early 1900s, in the state that I grew up in, logging was so prominent. They just came in and they just eliminated all of these old growth trees, just took them out, so much so that there was an artist, tc Steel. He would paint in a region there and it was like he documented it because he wanted people to know this used to have trees on it. Now it's empty. So the quality of the trees we can't let the trees grow long enough for them to even get the hardness to put into the homes to bring them to the quality that we want. And it's like, well, would the trees be better left alone to grow and provide the oxygen and the cleaning of the air for us than if we're just destroying them? And I know that we just went down that rabbit trail.
Speaker 2:But it's like going back to the building of a house and having that American dream of this house. The sustainability of it isn't built into the idea of it like it used to be, and I don't know that that's important either. Because when we go back to when some of these homes were built, they were built to maintain a whiteness across America, whiteness as in the color of a pertness, person, whiteness as well as the concept of whiteness, the concept of civilization. That's what people are still trying to cling to. These homes that I'm talking about, you know, that were built in the early 1900s, that have all this character and richness and wonder in it. They were built to keep that way of living. That was the society, and so I guess what I'm saying is is I don't know how important that actually is Maybe actually providing more space at the table for those who are marginalized, those who have not had voices. Maybe build a bigger table instead of a bigger house.
Speaker 1:I think the housing too, though in some ways like that doesn't bother me too much because I also understand that as just a person, or you know, we kind of build things or create things that are maybe feel like us or important to us. Like Koreans, it's important to preserve the culture, you know, and you'll see different households have different kind of points of view on this. But, like, do I teach my kid how to speak Korean or do I teach him only how to speak English? And you'll see a lot of different opinions about that. It's twofold, which is like some people are just, you know, america is predominantly white and so there's gonna just be a lot of that around.
Speaker 1:At the same time, it's not the only voice at the table. You know to kind of like follow that analogy To me, like that makes sense, like why would someone do that? And then I think there's a point where it does take a turn and it becomes something dark. I am curious as to you've evolved so much in the way you think about the world and think about yourself. What's a good place to start in terms of that journey?
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's what the word evolved. I would not have allowed myself to utilize that word when I was a kid, or even as a younger adult, because it had so many bad connotations to Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution. Even to use that word, I find it liberating. I find the fact that we can evolve if we give ourselves that place and that healing, that space to evolve. So much emphasis is placed on youth and youthfulness. I still remember meeting so many different people and through my life, that when you talk to them about what they love the most, certain people will answer their glory days. If you ask them about their glory days, their glory days are like in high school and college. And I'm thinking to myself oh my gosh, you know, yes, I never want to go back to that. I never want to go back to that Now. Does that mean that I didn't enjoy myself along the way? A little bit, sure, I did. But, man, I feel so much freer in who I am today as a person, being 58 years old, than I ever did when I was younger, and so I know that I have evolved. How did that happen? Only now am I beginning to be able to recognize it happening in the moment, instead of just looking back and seeing it. It's because it's like, all of a sudden, my eyes have been opened to the fact that it can happen, so much so that it's like I'm now looking for it. Oh, this is going to be a place of evolution. This is going to be a place where I can evolve. This is a place where I can think differently. On the other side of this, whatever this is, I have the opportunity to think differently, and that is potentially really grand. So how did that happen?
Speaker 2:Because, I look back on it, it is part and parcel due to a positive outlook. And I'm not talking about positivity, it's a different mindset. Positivity is like everything's going to be okay and I will make it okay, trying to look for the best in somebody trying to look for what can I learn from this situation? How can I grow through this, that kind of thing. So that, to me, that's my perspective. I am not into positivity, that whole mindset. It's too close to prosperity gospel. But positive outlook is like okay, I'm in this situation. I might not like it, but how can I bring joy to the table? How can I bring growth to the table? How can I show up better, even though this is really sucky, so to me that's positive outlook. Then I would have to say flexibility and adaptability and learning how to sit in really hard stuff. Life is not a bed of roses. It's so funny you said that because I was thinking as you were talking.
Speaker 1:That's what came to mind about, like sorry to interrupt you, but just because you and I we've been through some hard stuff together and I just think, like you don't like come out of that, you know, going through certain things, maybe I don't know, at least for me. I don't feel like, oh, now I'm like an expert in this or like how to handle this, and no that came to mind was just more of like learning not even becoming more comfortable, but in some ways like becoming more comfortable with being uncomfortable and just like being in that situation there's no knowing how to navigate, but you just like just be there you know, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. That's right. I've had a lot of hard things in life that from the outside somebody might say, oh, that shouldn't be all that hard, oh, that looked like a grand adventure, and it's like you can't see this. But I have a whiteboard back there and it's where I kind of like put a lot of different things when I need to get things out of my head, and sometimes it might be like a blog post idea or something like that, you know, and I have one up there and it's called the grief of the grand adventure, because anytime that you say yes to something, you were saying no to something else.
Speaker 1:What do you mean by having a grief about saying goodbye to 2023? Because I think you know I don't know if that's a common saying that maybe people will understand what you mean by that.
Speaker 2:Because, yeah, we packed up our family. First of all, we moved five times in the same less than 100 mile radius of a big city in about 10 years of marriage. All right, and what I didn't realize at that point in time was how much I would miss the place that we had lived, and I had to process the grief of what we were missing in order to embrace what was before me. Even moving here to Salt Lake City this year, I mean, I moved here, scott moved here in February of 2023. I moved here in April and I have spent this, the better part of this year, grieving what was left behind and fully processing that, as much as I fully pro can fully process it in order to say, okay, I'm actually here now. Maybe it's my personality, I have no idea. Some people can just like they're like energizer bunnies and they just can keep going and keep going, but you know, eventually that battery runs out.
Speaker 1:I had a very full day the other day and someone said to me oh, you had a really productive day. And I said and I hated that, that's what they said to me. I said, yep, I just went. Yeah, I mean, I just had a full day, it wasn't. It wasn't a productive day, it was just a full day. And I shuddered when this person said that to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think that that's where Western society has gone in a stray, but why?
Speaker 1:do you think we're so enticed by that idea of productivity?
Speaker 2:well, it's been trained into us. A lot of it has to do with the Protestant work ethic, even going back to my indigenous conversation that I barely touched on earlier. But when people landed here, they saw this land as empty because there wasn't anything going on here. So because there wasn't anything that was financially productive. Therefore, nothing was of value here that existed. The land was empty. That's the words that they used Terra Nolas, the land is empty. When people landed here, it was all about how can we make this land work for us. So, getting back to what is productivity and it's linked to greed, it's linked to enough, it's linked to all those things. What is enough? How is there?
Speaker 1:something in your life where you went from being where that shifted for you from I'm productive to kind of having this change of mindset about that well, interestingly, I got my first job when I was like probably 10.
Speaker 2:I was a paper girl, had my own paper out. I had to deliver papers. I had to go and collect for each from each house to pay for the newspaper. So it was like essentially my own little business. But I went through the, you know the local newspaper from our town, so I had that.
Speaker 2:When I was 14 I started working at an ice cream store that was down the street from me. I was always busy. I was in gymnastics. When I was in high school I had a very lively life. I guess it was always babysitting. I lived a very productive life and then I went to college.
Speaker 2:I wasn't as busy as some people. I wasn't involved in any kind of a sorority or anything like that. Well, I started teaching school and I learned that it was like I can't teach school and be a mom. I realized that some people do that. I just knew that I couldn't, for a variety of reasons that had been understood in my own body growing up, and that I had seen and felt and I just knew that I fully could not do that. I didn't want to do that. It wasn't that I didn't want to work. My work shifted from being a paid job or paid jobs to being unpaid work. Mm-hmm. I worked every single day of my adult life. I just didn't get paid for it, and I think that that is really important that we think about. Well, what is work? Work is where we apply ourselves. You know you are working on your podcast. Does your podcast earn you any money?
Speaker 2:I lose money everybody exactly, exactly, yet you work at it. It's something that, first of all, it does bring you joy. It's something that is a creative outlet for you, it's something that you really love exploring and learning and growing in and applying yourself, and you work at it, mm-hmm, so, by defining our jobs that we get paid at and equaling them to our work and that's. It's like so, where do you work? It's like, um, well, that's a really odd question. I I don't find that question interesting anymore, because it's like I work every day and I am productive in my day and no, I don't make any money.
Speaker 1:There's a great bit on. I think that's it's a new Trevor Noah stand-up routine. He talks about his time in Paris. He asks this guy like what do you do? He's like oh well, you know I eat, I sleep, you know. He's like no, no, no. He's like what do you like? Like how do you live? And he's like well, I breathe, I drink water, and he just did not get the constant. But like what do you do for work? That is such an American thing. Yeah well, it meets a question of like what is this all in service to? Like why does your husband go to get a paycheck? Why do you do? You know what you do? All of it is in service. The same thing is to take care of each other, to take care of my family, to be able to eat, to be, and you got to do all those things to be able to do that right so now your question was evolving.
Speaker 2:That began to change in me when Scott would come home and he would ask me so what did you do today?
Speaker 2:mm-hmm and that was with one child underfoot and then two children underfoot, and then three children underfoot and then four children underfoot and somewhere along there I got really annoyed with that question and I I had to look at it as this is his way of trying to connect with me mm-hmm. But we need to have a different question, mm-hmm. We need to have a different conversation, instead of it being about what did you do today? Or wow, you had a really productive day, or whatever it's like. I crafted my time with our children in the development of their being. I did it through a wide array of ever-changing possibilities every day what's a good question to ask.
Speaker 1:Either, like, in that scenario, what's a good question? You would ask God, or you would want Scott to ask you to to kind of open up a different conversation, because I'm sure I'm listen if Scott told me what he did in a day. Like if I talk about my job, I'm like it's not fun. It's like yeah, I had this conversation and then we had to move. It's like that's so boring and doesn't tell me anything about you or what you were experiencing yeah, what are?
Speaker 2:what are better questions? Yeah, I think something having to do with what was a challenge the experience today and how did you overcome it. What was something that wowed you? You know, because what it does is it shifts how we see, mm-hmm, our day also. I, I, I saw something the other day somebody her dad did this thing with her where it was like so how did you fail today? What you fail at?
Speaker 2:mm-hmm we're not supposed to be allowed to fail. You come home with an F on a paper, on something you really messed up mm-hmm you know. But I loved that question because it's like failure was seen if you didn't try something that question makes space to have failure.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, it does a natural and very common thing. So, yes, in terms of you evolving, like, how does it? What does that look like? In terms of you know, I guess, like does that make you look back at you know, your life and think about maybe is there times of regret or feeling like years lost of which wishing like if I knew what I knew now, I mean, or is that just kind of a general human experience?
Speaker 2:I have to be really, really careful with that piece, because I think that I could go down a really dark in a dark place of way too much regret and I actually I have to decide to reframe that and say that, okay, let me analyze the things that I actually really do regret. That might be how I showed up in a specific space or how I treated somebody. Those are the missed opportunities. Those are the places of regret, because otherwise I think I'd be living with way too much regret. That regret that is not helpful. There's always going to be more opportunity for learning more about how today is different than 100 years ago or 50 years ago.
Speaker 2:I can't be responsible for what I didn't know, and I think it's Maya Angelou who says when you know better, do better. You know and it's like okay, today I know better, I'm going to do better. We can either let it work in us or against us, and I think I've just seen enough change. I've experienced enough change. I've felt enough change to see it as something I want to welcome instead of something that I need to fear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like what are we so afraid of? It is scary. I even find myself now where I'm starting to feel a new feeling of where, when I was younger, it felt like, yeah, I couldn't just kind of, yeah, it's a great adventure, we'll see what happens. We'll just kind of go for things and try things and even trying to move. This is like a new feeling for me of, oh, I don't know, it's afraid of what might go wrong. Is this the right move? And definitely much more reluctant than I was in the past and I was like, oh, this is so new. I haven't really felt this before. But I wonder if some of that is just tied with that mortality of wanting to. Even as you're getting older, there's definitely more of an awareness that time is finite, where that really wasn't the case when you're in high school, in your 20s, it's just not on your mind. And as I'm getting older, there's just more of awareness of how finite time is, how fast time goes.
Speaker 2:I know that that perspective is that time sort of seems to speed up when you're, the older you get, and I don't know if that has something to do with our body sort of slowing down, you know a little bit, or if we and so then we see the speed and feel the speed differently. My best friend when I was in high school was an 81 year old woman, so I guess to some extent and she lived across the street from me I've had a stronger perspective of time from a very young age. Maybe it's an awareness of our mortality that I have felt through the years. Maybe that was gifted to me through her. Maybe that was gifted to me through the quiet times that I spent with my maternal grandmother, who wasn't in a rush to do anything, but yet there was a specific time to make sure those dumplings got put into the broth at just the right time. There was a time for certain things to be spot on their time, and then the rest it's just a slower pace.
Speaker 1:I think my experience with that is more about it's more personal. Where I think it feels the awareness of more awareness of time is because part of it is where, for so long, when you're younger, you're always looking ahead of what my life is going to be.
Speaker 1:And it's always that possibility and that hope that's there of now it could be this. And as you get older, as I'm getting older, some things are now being written. It's written now this is my life, this is what's happened, this is what's happening. And I think it's that relationship with time, past and future that makes change a little bit scarier, maybe for me because now you want to control, or maybe there's more fear now of like, okay, well, I got to make sure I can try to make it what I want it to be, and this is already done now and you feel like you're kind of hanging by the thread a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that there is a different kind of race with the clock in the 20s and 30s than the race with the clock when we're older. How so? Maybe it goes back to productivity. It's this innate sense of my life has to produce, my life has to produce. One way or another I need to be producing something, and that race with the clock in regards to our productivity and our production level, that happens in our 20s and 30s, you know, I think then, the older we get, the race with the clock shifts away from productivity to it's like well, what does this all mean?
Speaker 2:I guess my race now is more like how can I make sense of everything that I've experienced so that I can share it in a way that it didn't get wasted on me? I guess the best way I can explain this is when we lived in Australia, people asked about other people's experiences from sheer interest of sharing that experience with them, so that person that I then shared my experience with. They could then benefit from the experience that I had, and it was a way of sharing, whether it was a holiday that's the word that they would use for vacation or a travel, you know, of just like doing something different, or the day. It was a way of sharing an experience so that they could vicariously live through that with you. And it wasn't just there's a selfishness to it If I keep this experience just for myself. There's a selfishness to it If I go on a holiday with my family and we are the ones, we are the only ones, who experience that trip, that holiday, that vacation. It stops with us. But if somebody asks us about it and we share what we did and what we learned and what we experienced and who we got to be with, that other person or people get to. It enriches their lives, they get to participate in it with us vicariously, and it's not just a selfish entity.
Speaker 2:And I had not really thought about things like that from that perspective before, and so I guess when I think about my life, it's like I've actually had a lot of experiences, a lot of things that I've learned along the way, and so my race with the clock is different. I want to share these things with others so that maybe they can see afresh, maybe they can evolve, maybe they can take part in these things in a unique and new way, maybe they can wrestle with some of these things themselves at a younger age than I did, so that it changes the trajectory of their lives. I think that that's one of the things that I've appreciated about you so much is just like you and your questions. You know you don't let things rest. It's, and that is so, so beautiful and so important and so powerful, because it makes space for more, not from a greedy perspective, but from a place of growth, a place of understanding, a place of giving space for wisdom to take root. Thank you, you know so.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to start wrapping up our conversation here. First question I will ask to wrap things up is what do you do for play or for fun?
Speaker 2:Oh well, you know, that seems to shift every time we move.
Speaker 2:So right now, what I'm doing for play or for fun. There's a botanical garden just on the other side of town called Red Butte Gardens, and I think it's connected to the University of Utah. I'm learning so many different things, but anyway I love going there, I love wandering around, I love sitting on the patio that's there. That's just so beautiful. Wandering through their gardens, whether it be the herb garden or the medicinal garden or the children's garden or the conservation garden, or wandering up into the foothills it's just been really nice and experimenting with new cocktails Ooh.
Speaker 1:That's kind of fun. Is there any particular cocktail you're making right now?
Speaker 2:My favorite cocktail is probably the last word.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:It's out of, from Detroit. It was first made there in the Detroit Athletic Club, and it's made with real Maraschino cherries, not the neon ones, but the real ones, the dark red, yeah, yes, and there's a story behind that that. It's like look it up, those Maraschino cherries that are the neon colors. That's food coloring right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely awful. They actually bleach these cherries oh my god and then inject the dye and this other crap into it and they're absolutely awful. And that Maraschino cherry was approved of by the FDA because it didn't have any alcohol in it. That's crazy, I know. So go back and look at the history of that. It's absolutely revolting. So, anyway, but yeah. So the last word is my favorite cocktail and that's a lot of fun, but I don't have them very often because anymore, because I don't know, alcohol and menopause probably don't go very well together. So it's like enjoy your cocktails when you're younger, because they wreak havoc on your system when you get older, and so it's like I have to just enjoy one every great once in a while and yeah, that's for fun.
Speaker 1:OK, last question what would you tell your younger self?
Speaker 2:Well, democracy is fragile, it's not a given thing. The way things are in this day and age and this very moment are not necessarily the way that they have always been, and they can shift in a heartbeat, be taken away in a heartbeat, and so understand the historical perspective of how something is the way it is, either before we cast too much judgment on the back end or before we make decisions moving ahead. That's something that's probably been with me here recently that I wish that I would have known earlier. Well, that's it.
Speaker 1:Well thank you for making the time, you know. As always, I appreciate it, my pleasure.
Speaker 2:You're one of my favorite people, Melissa. Oh right back at you. Seriously, I love our longevity too, me too. All right, love you, love you too, bye, bye.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening. Special thanks to my editor, christian Brown, for his incredible talent in leveling up this podcast and all things audio and editing. Remember there is no one way or one size fits all, so go for it. Join us next week as we continue to explore the stories of people making way. Ok,