Ask Altucher! EP06: The Legacy Dilemma - What We Leave Behind and Why It Matters (Or Doesn't)

[00:00:00] This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show. So the thing with legacy is interesting is that some people really like let's say Elon

[00:00:24] Musk, like his whole point of saving humanity and this and that or even Steve Jobs creating iPhone. I'm sure because he want to leave some sort of legacy. You look at Steve Jobs people will be like okay the guy's the Apple guy that created iPhones, iPad, Mac right?

[00:00:41] Elon Musk is like okay Tesla PayPal. It's like normal people like me if I don't have all those ambitious will I be able to leave a legacy and should I care about leaving a legacy?

[00:00:56] Here's the thing caring about your legacy is the exact opposite of being a happy person. How so? Because let's say I really want a legacy of being the most inspirational writer and podcaster

[00:01:12] ever or if I'm Elon Musk I really want a legacy of like we're going to humans are going to be a multi planetary species because of me that's going to be my legacy. Then you're going to work really really hard for something that may or may not happen

[00:01:27] and then you're dead and you're not going to think about it. You're going to be dead, you're alive for let's say 80 years and then you're going to be dead for the next trillion years after that.

[00:01:38] Okay, so and then you only care about legacy let's say for 30 of your 80 years if you live to 80 so 30 years out of trillions of years. You think your legacy is like really that important?

[00:01:51] What if someone built a statue for your legacy right like then your legacy then you will be who am I who do why do I care if like after I'm dead let's say there's we don't

[00:02:03] know if there's an afterlife or not but either way what do I care after I'm dead I only care about things when I'm alive. The only thing that would make me care about legacy like your true biological legacy is

[00:02:18] the DNA that you spread your DNA and so I do care about my children. So for instance, and the only thing I think about there is I don't want them to think I'm some sort of like hero in any way because that's not true.

[00:02:33] Nobody's really if when you really know the heart of the heart of everybody like nobody's a hero but I want I want my kids to not be sad if I die. So for instance, if I were to kill myself, my kids would be really really sad and it

[00:02:52] would maybe ruin their life like they would be affected by that forever. Maybe you know oftentimes when you kill yourself, people who know you or people who are related to you they kill themselves. There's like copycat suicides.

[00:03:05] Like I have 5000 Facebook friends and I would say once a month or once every two months I'm just trying to be as accurate as possible. One of my Facebook friends kills themselves right and probably because I'm friends with

[00:03:19] a lot of comedians and that team said so that's the only thing I care about with legacy. And I said, why would I why would I want to stress myself out by not only caring about

[00:03:31] my day-to-day life but also caring about what people think of me even after I'm not alive. Like it's already a burden trying not to care what people think of me when I'm alive.

[00:03:42] If I now have to think about what people think about me when I'm not alive that is a direct legacy is you just care about what people think about you right now. You might say oh I want to make the world a better place. That's my legacy.

[00:03:54] Well you know what no matter how hard you try you're not going to make that much of a difference on the world. If there was no and I'll you know if there was no Gandhi would India be free now like a indie free from British rule.

[00:04:10] A the answer is probably since since the United Kingdom has almost no colonies at this point so India you know all of their colonies would sooner or later be free with or without Gandhi.

[00:04:21] Enough I do think Gandhi was a great man and what he really taught was how to have peaceful resistance but two things one is many many people in India would claim that Gandhi held things back like technology and so because Gandhi existed. How so.

[00:04:38] Well the United Kingdom was more technologically sophisticated and always and just like the US was always focused on industrial revolution then technological revolution and so on. When India was no longer in the grips of the United Kingdom and I'm not saying the United

[00:04:55] Kingdom should be a colonizer or anybody should be but I'm just saying probably India would have moved into the first world faster if the United Kingdom if they were more associated with a first world country and instead after the UK left and I'm not saying one thing

[00:05:14] good or bad about the UK being there one way or the other but India was torn by religious strife you know Pakistan split off Bangladesh split off. There was just lots of horrific you know killings and wars and battles relating to religious

[00:05:31] fighting technology didn't advance as quickly as it could be. By the way I'm not saying this other people from India would say this to me I've been to India many times other people from India would say this to me that it's not black and

[00:05:45] white that it was the most amazing thing that Gandhi freed India. I would say the greatest thing Gandhi did was to show that peaceful resistance was possible and I love I have a chapter about Gandhi in my book choose yourself I admire him but

[00:05:59] also there's another side which is on the personal side. Gandhi is there's claims that he you know would always sleep in the same bed nude with his niece or whatever I don't I don't know all these stories I don't follow them but it's like

[00:06:12] what I was saying before like everybody if you know all if you know everybody's thoughts 100% their thoughts nobody is a hero. But because I said all this I will say my one favorite story about Gandhi is this

[00:06:25] one woman was very concerned about the health of her child she traveled across the country for two weeks walking to visit Gandhi and it was far away and she finally sees Gandhi

[00:06:38] says Gandhi can you tell my son to please stop eating sugar and Gandhi says okay come back in two weeks and so she has to go home and then she comes back in two weeks later and

[00:06:49] Gandhi says to her son you know kid don't eat any sugar and the woman's like what the heck like how come you just tell me that how come you sent me home for two weeks and Gandhi

[00:07:01] said well because first I had to stop eating sugar and I admire that because you unlike a lot of people like you go to this whole self-help industry and so many people write self-help books that they don't follow their advice themselves and I always know

[00:07:22] whenever I'm always very honest and upfront what I do and what I don't do so I never give advice I just say this is what happened to me you know pay attention to it or not and

[00:07:35] I'm usually I try to be as thoughtful as possible about the things that have happened to me so I can and I love writing so I could tell stories about what happened to me and then

[00:07:43] you could choose whether like if I say don't buy a home I'll write stories about my bad experience is buying a home and then I'll look up you know facts and statistics

[00:07:54] about the returns on investments I'm buying a home so I will do the research but I also will share what I'm doing so right now for instance I can't say don't buy a home I bought

[00:08:02] a home so I'm living in a home that I own I bought a home three times and so far two out of three times turned out miserable maybe this third time won't turn out miserable I

[00:08:11] don't know you know what they say right like two times the charm third time's charm but let me ask you this wouldn't a legacy sort of provide motivation so let's say

[00:08:19] I'm like I want to I want to leave a motivation that motivation I want to leave a legacy like for my children for my grandchildren I want my grandchildren to know me as well

[00:08:31] okay let me ask you what would you want your legacy to be what do you want to be known for after you die a great Asian okay yeah I was the greatest Asian ever and that's his legacy I think mine would be like

[00:08:46] the person that's sort of revolutionize the revolutionized but sort of make impact in the audio tech industry okay why because I just love audio tech that much I want to why not care about what you're doing today on it as opposed to what people are going to think

[00:09:06] about you a hundred years from now right but because of the legacy right because of the legacy 30 years on now that people will think about will hopefully know me know me as that sort of

[00:09:17] motivate me to do something about all the tech right now okay so it's not like you really care about your legacy it's like if you convince yourself to care about your legacy then that

[00:09:29] will help you move forward today right and if you accomplish something today on audio tech maybe you'll feel a little bit more contentment with your life I'm not talking about happiness I'm talking about content or well-being so well-being is a function of doing good things and getting

[00:09:47] along with your community having a sense of freedom and I don't know probably health so maybe you could say to yourself that if you advance things in audio tech a you might make some

[00:10:00] money so that helps your sense of freedom and it's good for your community so it gives you this feeling of well-being as opposed to just pure happiness right which is an I think there's no

[00:10:11] real definition of happiness we don't really know what that means right we all know happiness is fleeting but we don't really know what happiness is I think you do have a point in legacy in

[00:10:36] the sense that I was thinking just now is that what happened after I hit my legacy what if I I did change something on my legacy and then what's next and will I be happy

[00:10:47] Jay think about all of the many athletes so athletics is an interesting endeavor because you peak while you're still young and alive right so we've had on many many I don't want to say

[00:11:03] many we've had on several Olympic gold and silver medalists and and we've had on other heroes of their sports whether it's basketball baseball other sports yeah you even race car driving down

[00:11:14] to Patrick but and often they have to deal with depression right after they you know when you know become the greatest female car racer in the world become the silver medalist ice skater in the Olympics because when the gold medal in Olympics all these people have been

[00:11:32] were depressed afterwards and by the way there's nothing wrong with depression like I get depressed we all get depressed to some extent sometimes clinical depression sometimes situational depression but it doesn't it seems like when you have a great goal yes the pursuit of excellence

[00:11:49] is a worthy endeavor so you know anytime you have any kind of quest or pursuit in order to it if the pursuit is interesting enough if the quest is interesting enough then the journey and I'm

[00:12:03] not saying the journey is more important than the goal I don't believe that but the journey towards excellence is a worthwhile endeavor like you have to improve yourself you can't just be

[00:12:13] a great race car driver you have to be really healthy you have to have a lot of emotional health like good relationships good people supporting you that are around you you have to be physically healthy of course and being great shape you have to be psychologically

[00:12:27] healthy like to be able to handle loss to be able to handle frustration along the way and in order to have all these things you have to improve yourself in a variety of different levels physical

[00:12:37] emotional creative even spiritual in order to be the best at your sport in most cases some people are naturally gifted and can get away with it so the pursuit of being the greatest at audio tech

[00:12:51] is a worthwhile endeavor because it gives you internal satisfaction each day but I would also argue it doesn't matter like you can also find internal satisfaction not doing that but just making friends in your community feeling free regardless of what your job or money situation

[00:13:10] is and having good health like that could also make you have to be a lot happier than people who have a big goal and journey right you talk to uh what's his name Robert something

[00:13:21] about happiness didn't he didn't he say like all this thing as well uh I don't know Robert who Robert uh Wardinger or whatever his name is oh yeah he wrote about happiness yeah yeah he did

[00:13:34] mention like finding a bigger meaning in life like in terms of society or community helping community helping society I would argue you should endeavor to be happy almost in this spiritual way where the the lack of the more expectations you have on your life the less

[00:13:56] opportunity the higher the probability is that there are going to be periods where you're very very unhappy how so let's say you expect that you're only going to get married to a person who

[00:14:07] is you know a beauty contest winner so you constantly are asking out beauty contest winners and let's say most say no but some say yes and then you go out with them and you realize oh this is

[00:14:20] I hate this person's personality so you know so a good many years of your life might be spent wasted only asking out you know supermodels to go on dates and then many more years might be wasted

[00:14:35] dating supermodels and then you don't like any of them right so that's because you had expectations so expectations are always gonna when you have an expectation another way of saying expectation is you're putting conditions on your happiness it's like you're writing a contract with

[00:14:51] life like I'm only going to be happy if supermodels date me so better to have no conditions and no expectations no conditions on life let life do life and let you do you and just roll with

[00:15:04] the punches like imagine life is this big ocean that you're surfing you can't control the wave you just get on your surfboard and you and you try to surf as best you can and if you surf well

[00:15:17] you you know with no expectations on the ocean that's a that's you can't control anyway then you'll probably be happier I felt like there's a truth in there is that every time I expect something it's always come out bad it's always yeah like if you expect like a 50%

[00:15:34] financial raise from me tomorrow you're going to be extremely unhappy I yeah your your expectations are not going to be bad particularly if it's for tomorrow right like you know there's a formula for this like happiness is reality divided by expectations so the more expectations you have

[00:15:52] there's reality like let's say you expect to be 90 pounds but you're actually 500 pounds okay so 90 over 500 is a very small number whereas if you're if you're if reality is your 200 pounds and you only expected to be 200 pounds anyway then oh wait I think I got it

[00:16:15] reverse but in any case you know what I mean I got the older I get the worse at math I get but but okay okay I mean I'm Asian but I still bad at math anyway uh one you're stunning at math

[00:16:27] one thing to compare to your colleagues in Malaysia is that real is that like math Asia like our Malay I mean technically we are but I felt like the older I so like I felt like when

[00:16:43] I was 15 years old or like when I was 12 years so I can do math in my brain very quickly like one times a hundred I would like a hundred or two times a hundred 200 but now even the one

[00:16:53] that was really good right there yeah even now even one time zero I have to be like pull out my calculator well how old are you you're like 25 35 Jesus yeah I'm old when did you become 35 you were 28

[00:17:06] yesterday six six years after I worked with you so so so the the peak age for a mathematician is 25 years old meaning that's usually what the age when they do uh they're they're most amazing

[00:17:19] work that they win prizes for and so on and so math is one of those things some professions we've talked about this in the podcast uh some professions peak at a much older age and some professions

[00:17:31] peak at a younger age so you lose math ability after you reach a certain age okay I want to go back to the expedition a little bit you know you say like no expedition is better but I felt

[00:17:40] like you have to have some minimum low bar expectation so you can push yourself a little bit why do you need to push yourself I mean like to better myself to improve myself uh okay first off

[00:17:53] why can't you just improve yourself health just because you know that life will be better if you're healthier than if you're not healthier you know what I think because I value validations by other

[00:18:07] people than from myself again maybe that's an issue like maybe you should want to be healthy just for the sake of being healthy right so like like if you're sick all the time you're not going to be

[00:18:20] as happy as if you're healthy all the time you know I think because of my upbringing my whole life was to grow up pleasing other people so maybe that maybe that's a problem

[00:18:31] also I think I think you know that's not it's just a bad habit like okay I have a bad habit of eating donuts all the time because I grew up eating donuts well I shouldn't just stick with that

[00:18:43] because I did that when I was younger I should try to improve myself so I could be healthier yeah I think I think I should do that because every time I'm like I want to be healthy

[00:18:51] it's because I just broke up and then I will go to gym it's like okay so I can meet better girls or whatever after okay all right so yeah we you have some physical needs

[00:19:03] and they could be easier met if you're a healthy person yeah so like uh you know for instance somebody I know something I'm very close to was depressed for a long time and he started

[00:19:16] working out and lifting weights and doing cardio every day in the gym and through that time it took about six months or actually no and just I remember just two months later first off I could

[00:19:28] notice he was physically bigger because of the weightlifting and he was also not he wasn't saying to me that he was depressed he was like in you know working on his physical health had helped his

[00:19:43] emotional health or mental health so so again like you could want to be healthy just for health's sake you don't need to want to have a legacy of being healthy yeah or a legacy of you know

[00:19:55] being a great scientist so he needed to be healthy to be a great scientist right now admittedly I'm not saying you shouldn't try to be a great scientist like I think like I like the what I call the absurdist philosophy so you ask yourself does does life

[00:20:11] have meaning and so nihilists say uh life has no meaning and you shouldn't care about anything because nothing has meaning and just forget it and do whatever you want it doesn't matter

[00:20:25] you know and existentialists say life has no meaning and you know you can go for meaning if you want to but be aware that life has no meaning and absurdist is very similar absurdists are very similar to existentialists but they say it's a joke to even think life

[00:20:46] has a meaning it's absurd like you're just fooling yourself if you think life has meaning but you might as well have some meaning just for the fun of it like do you know stay within the boundaries

[00:20:58] of you know the law and ethics you know because that will allow you to do more things in life and uh just for the heck of it do things that are meaningful just because you can even though

[00:21:13] you're aware that they're absurd so an example might be admiral bird was going on to Antarctica was the first expedition to Antarctica and he had like 30 people with him they were all in a boat to Antarctica

[00:21:25] well their boat got stuck in frozen water and they were stuck and they were in the middle of nowhere no one was coming to save them so I think his name is Robert Bird I forget his name

[00:21:39] anyway he and another guy leave the crew of 30 and go in search of someone who could save him like maybe there would be an island like a research facility or something where you know hundreds of

[00:21:51] miles away and where they can get saved and the other people would have to stay with their frozen boat just because that's where all the food was all the supplies were and they knew that the

[00:22:03] chances were Admiral Bird was not going to come back and find them they knew it but what they did was they invented games they told jokes they they made the most of it that they can even though

[00:22:16] they knew their lives were probably over and that there was no point in doing anything they still did things to amuse themselves and to be happy and so on because why not right why

[00:22:28] choose to be in despair when you could also choose to be happy this is an example and by the way they were saved and rescued but this is an example of like absurdism it was absurd of them to even

[00:22:40] think they were going to be rescued it was absurd of them to try to find meaning every day in their lives but they did because even though they knew it was meaningless they found meaning in

[00:22:48] their lives every single day and so other than like hey we should try to be happy just because we should try to have fun like I like this idea of not goals or legacy but we've spoken

[00:23:04] about this before this idea of find yourself a quest like it could be a small quest something that you could accomplish in a day like one time I said to myself I'm going to try to find some way

[00:23:16] to play every day so I would work during the day but maybe in the evening I would go this was New York City so there's always something to do I would go to an archery range

[00:23:25] or I would go to the gym and play basketball or I would play tennis or I'd go to a back end club and play back end or chess or go or poker or whatever so I kind of said what would it be like

[00:23:35] to play every day and why did I do that for legacy no I did that because I love to play games and I never even wrote about this never really spoke about it I only did it for

[00:23:47] a couple of weeks actually because it was hard to find a new thing every day but it was fun that was my quest every day I had a little quest like what will I play today so do you have a

[00:23:56] quest right now other than just chess like do you have a little I know I have a bigger quest which is oh I want to achieve my you know same level of ability that I had in the 1990s and but with

[00:24:12] that is many mini quests and I'll give you an example you know Avertec has been on this podcast Avertec Gregorian and he's my chess coach he sent me a photo today that horrified me there was a photo

[00:24:26] of me playing chess in this most recent tournament I guess it might be on the tournament website and he said look at this this is horrible like I would love to play against an opponent

[00:24:39] like you like you look like you have no energy you're slouching you look like unhappy and by the way I was winning that game at the point when that photo was taken but he said you

[00:24:50] look like you have no energy you need he said look at photos of google image you know google photos of Gary Kasparov by the way who's also been on this podcast several times you'll never see him

[00:25:01] like slouching and looking all like zero energy like you he brings fire to the board like you need to be like that and focus on it so what does that mean it means I need to maybe exercise more

[00:25:15] or you know make sure I don't you know have proper pot maybe sure I have proper posture and not slouch as much maybe I need to eat better so I show show exhibit more energy and uh and you need to

[00:25:26] bring a lighter in your pocket what was a lighter lighter so you can live you can let the chess board on fire you need to bring fire oh yeah right um but yeah I need to so this is like a mini quest I

[00:25:37] need to somehow it's very important to my chess ranking that I exhibit more energy at the board and I I guess the way you to do that is I gotta have better posture I've got a breathe better I gotta

[00:25:50] eat better I've got to sleep better uh this was that picture was taken in the last round of a tournament so probably I hadn't been sleeping so well it's hard to sleep during tournaments

[00:25:58] I have to figure out a sleep better so I have all these mini quests on the way to this bigger quest now do I care if after I die people say oh you think you can't improve after the age of 50 well

[00:26:11] this guy James did it I don't care about that at all like zero this is just something I'm interested in for right now I might not even succeed in this quest but this journey you know towards this

[00:26:22] quest is making me do all sorts of things and you know some of them are difficult some of them are not related to happiness at all some of them make me miserable right but uh but I enjoy the process

[00:26:35] of a quest of having some some meaning but I has nothing to do with legacy like I do not care at all about my legacy so basically you will want to be anything but kill themself guy

[00:26:46] yeah like I would not want my kids to I would not I mean that's not of course the only reason why I wouldn't want to kill myself but right I would uh the only thing I could think of as a bad

[00:26:59] legacy well okay I know I'm not going to do any crimes or anything like that but I wouldn't I think the worst thing someone could do for their children is kill themselves because then

[00:27:11] you might really affect them now you might not maybe they'd be happy if you did it who knows I don't mind would be happy but uh I just don't think that's a good thing to do right I mean people

[00:27:21] close to you not just my kids but anybody close to me right biologically we often think about our offspring anyway so okay let me let me put it also also let me just have like I think I've

[00:27:32] I feel like I've spent a lot of time and effort on my books like let's say choose yourself is my most well-known book and I feel it would you know from people whose lives have been helped

[00:27:44] and I get emails every day from people whose lives have been helped by choose yourself and that always makes me happy oh yeah but but but I feel that if I were to kill myself people would say oh

[00:27:55] well he wrote that none nothing he said and choose yourself was worth anything god so again I probably don't care that much about that that's a little bit related to the legacy you're

[00:28:04] talking about but since during my life I've spent so much time on it I wouldn't really wouldn't want to right but you were practicing what you were preaching earlier is that you want to do what

[00:28:16] you have written you don't want to be like any self-help guru out there be like uh do go cold plunge every day but they only do cold plunge once a month right and I did that cold

[00:28:27] plunge I did a cold shower this morning just because so many people because again I wanted I want to be energetic for my quest but that is just so painful that cold shower are you energized

[00:28:38] right now like do you feel energized no because I'm getting it's only afternoon I'm a little bit tired god yeah okay so let's do a little bit of exercise uh you say you wouldn't kill yourself

[00:29:03] because of the legacy but what if tomorrow some sort of higher power come up and be like James that's two things you have two choices you either kill yourself right now or everyone else in the

[00:29:17] word die which one would you choose so say that again I'm more like oh so let's say satan comes to me and says James if you kill yourself right now I will not destroy the world in five years right

[00:29:32] but if you don't here's a gun if you don't kill yourself right now it doesn't even matter if you do it tomorrow right if you don't do it right now this second guaranteed I satan will destroy the

[00:29:44] entire world and everybody on it will die in five years from this moment right and also I just wanted to like put it out there this is just a thought process we are thought exercise we are not uh

[00:29:56] encouraging anything we are not you know uh you know wanting anyone to do anything to themself well satan doesn't actually exist so he's not actually saying this to anybody right so I would

[00:30:07] not kill myself why in the whole world would would blow up in five years why because this is going to sound selfish well but a if I die now I won't even know if the whole world dies in five

[00:30:21] years b for all I know the entire world is nobody exists anyway and I'm in some kind of virtual reality where I'm just like looking through my VR goggles at the entire world like I don't really

[00:30:34] know if the world exists I only know that I exist there's there's a lot of reasons to think that it would be selfish of me so some people could say it'd be selfish of you to not kill yourself

[00:30:44] because you're being told that right the whole world will blow up in five years if you don't do it but I don't even know if the world really exists and again I don't believe that there's any real

[00:30:53] meaning to the world so absurd I guess I would be selfish in that sense if though you were to say I'm either going to kill the whole world right now uh-huh if you don't kill yourself like today

[00:31:05] I'm going to kill the world or you have to kill yourself then I would probably do it then I'd probably kill myself because either way I'm dying today right but but but what if

[00:31:14] it's like you ought to kill yourself or you're going to be immortal but the whole world's going to be like not explode but the whole world's like people the whole world population just like

[00:31:25] dropped that but you'll be immortal so you will get to live and see the consequences okay but here's the thing about immortality like let's say the earth is gone 10 billion years from now the

[00:31:38] universe by the way even if it's we don't know the real theories about how the universe exists big bang expansion contraction but let's say it's the expansion contraction theory the universe is going to survive for another 100 trillion years 100 trillion years now put it in context the entire

[00:31:57] planet earth is only three billion years old and the universe is gonna last what something like 100 thousand times more than that so am I gonna be just floating in space for 100 trillion years yeah yeah you're just flowing in no way I wouldn't want to be immortal

[00:32:17] if I if someone said if if someone said to me James you could be immortal that's a trick question because if I'm truly immortal for the next few thousand years or whatever I'm gonna be with humans

[00:32:31] and then we'll figure out some way to blow ourselves up and then I'm just gonna be by myself for 100 trillion years and most of that 100 trillion years 99.999% of that I'm just gonna be floating in space doing nothing I don't want to do that but you you will still

[00:32:47] probably have a chance to land in other planet because like let's there's no probably yeah 99.1 trillionth of 1% of space has something in it like most of space is just totally empty so

[00:33:03] I'm probably not going to land on another planet and by the way most space is expanding so things are getting further away from each other like why do you think I'm probably gonna land on

[00:33:12] another planet not only that why am I gonna land on another planet with like other fun people on it like I'm gonna even if there's other life they're just gonna be like germs or whatever so

[00:33:23] and I'm wondering if I'm gonna land on Venus like some kind of gas planet I mean what if they're like planet out there it's just like a mirror of earth but it's just more peaceful you

[00:33:32] know the odds are I'm never gonna land on it right 100 trillion years so most of that 100 trillion years are just gonna be boredom and pain also what if I'm constantly suffocating

[00:33:43] because I need air like I'm still in a body like so what if 100 trillion years I'm just in this state of suffocation but I'm still alive so is that possible to I felt like I felt like but

[00:33:53] if you're making the rules here of immortality like here's why I'm not a god I I would say yes to immortality if I could never age from this day forward I don't mind being this age if I

[00:34:06] can be this age from this day forward and and I could choose at any given moment I could choose to just die without pain I thought that's not immortality and what I felt that's immortality with conditions

[00:34:22] yes that's what I would I would do god I would not choose immortality your scenario of immortality is like just and like that is the word that's hell that's just the worst thing ever

[00:34:37] that is not in that that's like I would I only want immortality on my terms you know what you know what if I immortality you know I was okay this is this is this is totally like out of out

[00:34:49] of the world right now I'm just gonna say whatever it is if I'm immortality I would practice necromancy so I can revive people and talk to people it doesn't matter the sun is going to swallow the earth in

[00:35:01] like 10 billion years yeah but I mean I do I am a little bit interested to see what happened at the end of the universe right like but you can only achieve that with immortality you know is

[00:35:14] actually big bang at the end of the the word it's the end of the word the beginning of the other universe you know what I mean we're still talking about 100 trillion years from now

[00:35:24] yeah 100 trillion years is not I don't know how that's more that's more than any number you've ever thought of in your life like just think humans as a species have only been around 250

[00:35:35] thousand years okay so multiply that by four that's a million okay multiply that by a thousand so four thousand that's a billion more multiply that by a thousand so that's four you have to multiply

[00:35:49] that by four million and now you get to a trillion and so so multiply that by another hundred I don't even know where I'm at now but yeah it's your whole life is like nothing compared to like most of the

[00:36:04] time you're just going to be a floating in space like yeah you're not even going to remember that you were alive on earth I think you're right I think there are challenges of being immortality

[00:36:17] because you do want people to questions you right like you have to constantly take on new identity for like a thousand couple couple thousands of years yeah so I mean well okay that's like just

[00:36:30] if you're in a science fiction movie right like if you're the age of Adeline she has to switch her her identity so the so the FBI doesn't find her so okay by the way so the moral of the story is

[00:36:42] immortality is bad no immortality with conditions is great okay immortality with condition is great and legacy you don't really have to care about it just focus on improving yourself yeah like like

[00:36:58] look I think you could do legacy in the absurdist way which is that if you realize that it's meaningless you might as well do fun things and have quests and things like that if that gives you

[00:37:08] joy in life if you're going to be miserable unless you achieve your legacy then I wouldn't focus on legacy at all so yeah tweet at us tweet at James and if you want you can tweet at me

[00:37:21] if you care about your legacy or would you want to be immortal just forget the immortality like immortal means I'm changing the definition of mortal means you're going to live for let's say a hundred thousand years okay you're not immortal you're just gonna live for a hundred thousand

[00:37:39] years and you could choose at any point if you want to die for instance jay what if someone says jay's immortal so we're going to put him in a box and we're going to bury it 50 feet

[00:37:51] underground and there's no way he can escape the box and no one will ever find that box and he's immortal that's what you want would you want immortality then no no no you'd want to be able

[00:38:01] to choose to die yeah by the way that that's a situation that happened in the tv show heroes where a guy was immortal and the guy who could teleport teleported that guy into a grave you

[00:38:14] know 50 feet underground that season one right when heroes is still good it might it might have been season one that was the only season that was good yes when siler wasn't like you know going crazy

[00:38:27] and everybody anyway yeah but yes two nurses if you care about your legacy or not or if you have any legacy yeah and by the way if you have any other insane questions like this feel free to ask anything

[00:38:39] relationships health legacy career advice investing advice tweet it out to me we'll do a podcast about it everybody have a good day jay if somebody comes down and offers your immortality

[00:38:52] make sure it's not a trick question so if if if devil make like if devil try to make a deal with me i better read all the contract and add some of my conditions yes exactly always negotiate your

[00:39:06] immortality and don't focus so much on legacy i'll leave you with that right thank you