537 | Jerome

The Minimalists discuss the passing of Joshua's brother, Jerome, and they talk about confronting loss, the difficult road to acceptance, the difference between processing and complaining, finding meaning in tragedy, and much, much more. Contribute to the GoFundMe for Jerome's family https://www.gofundme.com/f/supporting-jeromes-family-after-his-sudden-passing. Discussed in this episode: Is it better to confront loss with replacement or acceptance? (00:57) What's the difference between processing and complaining? (15:23) What would Jerome say? (53:27) How did Jerome view material things? (1:02:05) How can we find meaning in loss? (1:23:29) Added Value: One of Jerome's favorite songs. (1:29:08) Have a question for the show? Call 406-219-7839 or email a voice memo to [email protected]. Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcast

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. Oh, I bet that you'd be fine without it.

• 0:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, with minimal.

• 0:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Man, TK's been a difficult week. So I think we'll go, this will be a bit different than the normal. Where do you want to start?

• 0:58Speaker 02

  I think we start where we always have with the call from one of our listeners.

• 1:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, we had some people write in. Dustin wrote this in. He said, um, is it better to confront loss with replacement or acceptance? And TK, I got to be honest with you here. I, um, I'm still struggling with the, with the acceptance piece of it. Which is really strange for me, man.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I'm usually pretty good at accepting things. And so, um, I've sort of been going through the, the five stages of grief. I'm pretty good at cycling through those, those first four, right? I wrote this essay about it, but, um, it kind of starts with denial.

• 1:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I got the phone call the day that it happened.

• 1:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It was Ryan who called me, Nicodemus.

• 1:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And a friend had called him, another friend had called that friend. And then Jerome's wife had called that friend. And so it was like this game of, of tag. And a lot of people apparently were trying to get ahold of me and, um, they didn't have my new number and, uh, Sarah couldn't get in Jerome's phone. So she didn't have access to my phone number either. And, um,

• 2:21Speaker 02

  When you receive this call from Ryan, where are you?

• 2:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Sitting at my desk at home in Ohio. And

• 2:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Ryan calls me, I could just hear it in his voice immediately, like something was off.

• 2:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And he said, "Hey, man, I don't know how to tell you this."

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Pause right here.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  You heard it in his voice. This is a guy you've known your entire life. You know something's wrong. What do you think it is?

• 2:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I didn't know.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We, I didn't know if he was going through something. I didn't know if he was, you know, in jail. Maybe to bail him out or something.

• 3:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If you could have asked me, like, what are the 17 things you think are going on right now? This would not have been the answer.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  I asked that because we've done this exercise so many times. We've done that hypothetical, like if you have one call to make and you're in jail or something like that, who's that guy? And, you know, we talked about you being that dude. And I know you're that guy for Ryan. And so this might be the call.

• 3:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah, the Peruvian prison experiment, right? It's like if you are in a prison in another country

• 3:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  and you have one phone call, you can call one person and they'll do what, whatever's in their power to get you out. Who do you call? And strangely, I recognize that I'm that person for certain people. And even though I am that person, I don't want to necessarily be that person. I want to be the type of person. But when the rubber meets the road, it's a lot more difficult. So I get this call and Ryan's like, "I don't know how to tell you this.

• 4:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Your brother's dead."

• 4:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I didn't, it's not that I didn't believe it. I couldn't comprehend the words that he was speaking.

• 4:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I just, it's like it was a foreign language, even though I understood and he didn't even need to say the words, like I could hear it. I've known Ryan forever, like I've known Jerome forever. And me and him and, and, uh, Ryan, and we had a whole friend group that hung out. And this would be the last person I would think would go. And he just died in his sleep. Heart failure, no suspected health issues at all. And then he was just gone. And it's been really sad, obviously, right? But the thing I wrote in the essay, I wrote this essay called Jerome

• 5:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  was a simple man. And it made me reflect back on, this is a line that didn't make into the essay, but like, he never needed minimalism to be a minimalist, like he was just sort of by default, just simple. Didn't have, didn't pine for all of the, the more, the status. He looked at those things like they were silly pursuits. He was a real man and he was, ever, ever since we were little kids, I remember him being a man. It was, um, I'm, as a 10 year old, he seemed like a man. Now, we had been through a lot. And finally, I felt like at age 45, which is when he died,

• 5:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  he was at the other side of going through a lot. He had finally moved to this idyllic college town, Oxford, Ohio. And, um, he had three kids, one from a, a previous relationship. His oldest daughter's 25, her name's Keela, and she's amazing. And I got to spend some time with her and, uh, while I was back in Ohio. And then he has two young kids with his wife Sarah. He's been with Sarah for 20 years, but they have two kids, they're eight and one. His son just turned one. And so I think a lot of my tears over the last week or so have been for those kids.

• 6:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Because I know what it's like to grow up without a dad. And Jerome knows what it's like to grow up without a dad.

• 6:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And then you have these kids and it's like, it's that prison break experiment. It's like, oh, well. It's not as sexy as breaking someone out of prison, but it's making sure these kids are taken care of now that he's gone.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  At a certain level, it's kind of the same thing.

• 7:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. And so this question that Dustin asked, I thought was appropriate because I don't know the answer to it. How would you answer Dustin's question here? Is it better to confront loss with replacement or acceptance? And I don't know that it's either or either. Maybe it's a little bit of both or neither.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  I favor the latter more than the former, but I might use a different word. Just because sometimes acceptance can raise resistance for people. Acceptance can sound like endorsement, right? Accept it. Okay, I accept it. I'm happy with it. I endorse it. I celebrate it. And so I would maybe use a word like engagement. Sometimes replacement, I had a very good friend who whose cat died. And someone who tried to make her happy showed up with a new cat. You know, and I'm talking about the next day.

• 8:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Best of intention.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  Best of intentions, but it's not like that. You can't, you can't do that. You can't replace, you can't replace a soul. You can't replace a person, you know, can't replace a human being. And you can feel voids with new things. You can, you can deal with your emptiness in a lot of ways. You can process your loss in a lot of ways, but you can't replace it. And even if, even if a new friend comes along, you know, you can say, well, you know, God sent me this person, you know, because I lost that person, but that's still not a replacement. But what you can do is you can engage the emptiness. You can, you can take a look at the sorrow and the suffering and, and you can be present to it.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  And not necessarily for the purpose of philosophizing about it, but.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  You have to be present to that suffering in order, in order to, in order to move through it, you know?

• 9:18Speaker 02

  I think it's, it's, it's like in a, in a much less dramatic way. It's like if you go outside without an umbrella and you're not dressed for the rain because you have a good reason to think that this is gonna be a nice weather day. And then as you're out there and you're too far away from your car, too far away from shelter, and it just starts to rain. You know?

• 9:44Speaker 02

  You don't have to celebrate that. You don't have to be like, this is awesome and this is amazing. You know? This is tough. Like, oh, my gosh, I wish I were better prepared for this, or I wish this didn't happen. But it's also where you are. You know? And, and you've got to find the best way that you can to move through it. You know?

• 10:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. And I've figured out that it doesn't help to complain about the rain. Right?

• 10:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I wrote another essay about Jerome. It was about, it was called No Complaints because the very last text message I got from him, we were actually planning on meeting up. So here's the weird thing about, about what happened is he died on Friday, April 10th. And we're recording this maybe 10 days later or something. And it was my mom's birthday. She, she passed 17 years ago. And so the date already had a significance to it. Now it has a, a bookended significance to it. But we've been planning for the last few months because I haven't seen him in a couple of years. And I haven't met his one-year-old son yet. Well, I have now, but a, as of me communicating with him, I hadn't been back in Ohio. And it's impossible to get him on an airplane.

• 10:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He was the strongest, toughest person I knew, but he was afraid of two things, airplanes and dogs. And, and so they were planning a trip to come out to California, but they were gonna take Amtrak to get out here. And so I knew it was on me to, to get back there. And Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, reached out. And one of the reasons I said yes to go in and give a talk there. Is Jerome had moved to Oxford. He just bought a really modest house there, like an 800 square foot, really nice house in this idyllic college town. And, and he was working as a chef for the university. And so it was like, oh yeah, we get to reunite.

• 11:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He gets to come to our talk and then we're going to do the screening down in Dayton and he's going to come to that. We get to spend the day together. He had called off work or he had planned a day off work so we could spend some time together with his family. And we were all looking forward to that. And we were communicating back and forth on the phone and via text. And the very last text message I got from him was, everything going great here. No complaints. And the thing I wrote in this essay was about how Jerome had a life that most people would feel right about complaining about, feel totally fine. It would make sense to complain about the life that he lived, especially

• 12:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  the childhood that, that we had. And yet I never heard him complain. Not once in 45, like not a single time ever. He never, now, I can't say that for other people, but with my experience with him, I never saw him complain once. When we had, you know, childhood poverty made us sleep on the floor. He didn't express annoyance or dissatisfaction. It just, it is what it is, right? And our electricity got shut off quite a bit, you know, we'd get eviction notices and like, if the electricity would get turned off, we would just kind of light candles and laugh in the dark. He had no complaints about that either. And

• 13:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I remember during the pandemic, he was working in a factory at the time and building cabinets. And the factory shuttered because of the pandemic, the lockdowns, right? Yeah. And he didn't complain about that either. He just, he took a different job that paid less and the work was more grueling. It was third shift at a meatpacking plant and didn't complain about it. Just moved on because he had a A family to to take care of and a life to live. And he recognized that the complaints were gonna do much, weren't going to do much for him. And and I think some people might see that one way, but like,

• 13:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  he didn't avoid those grievances because he was weak. He was strong enough not to carry them. He didn't need them as a crutch. He just kind of recognized that they would get in the way. And I think that's why he seemed so contented. Not like over the top, happy and outgoing. If you got to know him really well, he was super silly and goofy beneath a really tough exterior. Like the goofiest person that that I know. And and I was just reminded of how much he didn't complain. But that last, that very last text message I got from him was just, hey, everything's going great here.

• 14:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Even though he had a bunch of things to complain about, for sure. And sometimes the bills were hard to pay, right? Inflation was was difficult, right? Or all my car is breaking down or my lawnmower is just, I need a new lawn. All of these things that we complain about every day. He never did. Everything's going great here. No complaints. And then I look at myself in the mirror and I'm like, oh, I find myself complaining all the time. Right? It's and not always aloud, but like, there's a voice in my head that's like, oh, like a perpetual sort of groan about things going on and stupid things, right? My coffee's too hot or, oh, my knee hurts, right?

• 15:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Or it's raining again. Damn it, I can't believe it's it's raining, right? And so there's an acceptance piece to all of this that has been difficult. And maybe it's difficult because those stages of grief that I wrote about in that simple man essay. If you want to read the whole thing, it's over at the minimalist dot com slash Jerome. I don't think I could get through reading the whole thing right now. But sort of vacillating or oscillating between the.

• 15:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The first four stages of grief, and they don't all happen in sequence necessarily. But denial, like when I got that call from Ryan, this can't be happening, right? And then anger, like, oh, he should have gone to the doctor. What? He should have not. No one knew. Every, the day before, he was totally fine. And then there's the bargaining, like, oh, you gotta take me instead, right? And then like, there's just this despair, like, what am I supposed to do? There's nothing to do. Why? Why? Why? Why? You could have told me, hey, Josh, I want you to make a list of 100 people

• 16:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  that might die this year, and he wouldn't have been on the list. It just didn't make any sense at all. And so I think I am finding it difficult to, to get to that acceptance that Dustin is talking about. But also, like, sometimes distraction helps for a period of time. It doesn't get you closer to acceptance, but if it's, if it's overwhelming, there's like, sitting with it might be too painful. And so I'm interested in that, that balance. I'm still trying to, to find it right now. It's like, I don't want to numb myself out completely and, you know, just watch television or whatever. But sometimes there's a place for that, like, oh, man, this feels like too much.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  I will say it is important to make a distinction between processing and complaining. You know, let's say I'm driving my car, I'm on a road trip, and my car starts to make a funny noise and then kaput, kaput, kaput, kaput, kaput. And it stops and I try to get it going and I do all the little things that a person who's not a mechanic knows how to do, you know? Hit the hood two times, turn it off, turn it on, you know, and can't get it going. And, you know, I look at my phone, I see there's a mechanic that's like, two mile walk and it's a really hot day, right? And I gotta walk to the, and I was like, oh, man. Can't believe this thing happened at this time. And I get to the, to the mechanic and I say, hey, look, I'm on this road trip, driving from here to there.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  My car just stopped. I don't really know what's going on. You know, but I, I need to get going and my car won't go. Is that complaining?

• 18:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It depends on your disposition, right?

• 18:04Speaker 02

  So let's say my disposition is such that I'm really frustrated that this has happened right now. I'm also truly worried that I might not make it on time because it is now probable that I won't make it on time. And I've got some concerns in my head about what am I going to say to those I'm going to see? And how will they respond to it? And there's a little fear and nervousness there. And when I tell the mechanic, even though I'm being respectful to him, I'm, I'm pretty worried and I'm pretty anxious. And he hasn't told me if he can help me yet. I don't know anything about cars. This might not be fixable. This might be easy. This might be difficult. I might have to leave this thing overnight. I might be out of here in two hours. Don't know. And I'm telling him, I'm not saying, hey, everything's going great. I'm good. It's good to see you.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  Thanks for the service you provide to the world. I'm saying, hey, man, like, I really need your help. Like, my car just broke down. I don't know what's going on.

• 18:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. I think I can, the way I can answer that is by saying how I would probably handle that and how Jerome would have handled it.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  Tell me both.

• 19:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So I probably would have complained like, ah, I can't believe that I gotta walk to the mechanic and it's two miles away. This is ridiculous. Like, that's a complaint. I mean, there's no, no question about it. I'm not saying it's wrong or bad.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 19:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think that's how most people react in that scenario. Even if they handle it really well, it's like, ah, this stupid car. Why would this happen now? Right?

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:26Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think Jerome would have said, okay, where's the closest mechanic?

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Okay. Y'all wait here with the kids. I'll, I'll go figure it out. And he would get there and I think he would have told him about this. How's it going? He said, oh, no complaints. My car's broken down a couple of miles down the road. You think you could help me out with that? And I bring that up because I aspire to be that.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  But I think you gotta be willing to do that. So this is the basis for my question. I get that on the way to the mechanic, you complain and Jerome wouldn't. But what both of you have in common is when you got to the mechanic, you would look the mechanic in the eye and you would honestly articulate, even if there's a smile on your face, even if you're doing it professionally, even if you're doing it with a faith-filled heart, my car is not working. You know, I'm, I'm in a, I'm in a tough spot. And I can't get through this on my own. I don't, I don't know what I'm doing. I, I, I don't know how to fix this.

• 20:26Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  Can, can you help me? Can you take a look at my situation? Can you, can you walk me through something? You know? And I think that is a part of how we move through things. And what we can say about the car can also be said about our complaining. Whatever it is that's not working, whatever it is that's creating some inconvenience for us, whatever it is that's a source of frustration for us, whether it's the car, my habits of complaining, or anything else, my knee that's hurting, the untimely weather. We can talk about it. And we can talk about it to someone who might be able to offer us something that can give us a little bit of perspective.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  And even if the news is disappointing, like, hey, unfortunately, this is a really expensive problem and I can't get you out on the road on the same day. And I know that's not what you want to hear right now. But even that is better know, it's better, you're better off knowing that. And, and, and even if we can give you a sense of direction and say, here's what you have to look forward to. Here's, here's how we're gonna begin to deal with this. That can be helpful. But you gotta be willing to talk about that and make a distinction between talking about that and complaining. And make sure you don't say. To talk about it is the same as complaining and I can't do it.

• 21:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, I would say often it's the opposite, right? Being able to show up and talk about the things that are worth complaining about without a complaint is one of the most difficult things. Because if you can divorce the complaint from the problem, the challenge, whatever's going on in front of you, it makes it appreciably easier to tackle. It may not be enjoyable to tackle, but like, we often think that like our complaints express our unhappiness, but I think they just prolong it in a way, or they amplify it.

• 22:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And they point toward our clinging, clinging toward expectations. Also, they point toward the things I'm unwilling to accept right now, or unable to accept. Usually it's the unwilling to accept. I'm unwilling to accept that my car broke down, I have to walk these two miles. Or my expectation is, you know what, I need to be there on time, right? My expectation is the car is going to work today. Sure, I get that. But now I have to have, I have to recalibrate my expectations. And if I'm being completely honest about this, often when I complain, it's looking for pity for my suffering.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  It's interesting that you described Jerome as a man very early on. And you say you've always remembered him as a man. Because when I think about like what's going on with complaining, where you say I'm looking for pity or something like that, think about humanity in our most native state. Think about before we learned to walk, before we learned to talk, before we have any autonomy to fix problems ourselves.

• 23:34Speaker 02

  We're babies, right?

• 23:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  And when something goes wrong, we're scared, we're hungry, we need something. What do we do? We cry. Right? That's our whole vocabulary. Whack could mean I'm hungry, it could mean I'm hurting, it could mean I'm lonely, it could mean I'm scared, it could be, I don't want this dude right here holding me anymore, it could mean a lot of things, right? And, and when we cry, it's, it's like a, there's a hope that someone will hear us and pity us. And, and that meets a fundamental need, right? We need to feel seen, we need to feel heard. To be pitied is a remarkable thing because it's another human being saying, I can hear the cry of your heart.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  I see you as you are, I hear you as you are, and I do not despise you, I do not condemn you. And so there's, there's a real need that's met there when we are pitied. And later on in life, we learn to be insulted by, by being pitied, right? I don't need your pity, you know, but we, we measure our autonomy by that. And, and then we hope for a second thing, that someone will do something. Someone will give us food, someone will pat us on the back, someone will pick us up out of that person's arms, someone will take us to the bathroom and clean us up, someone will lie us down and put us to sleep, sing us a song, rock us. And even though our body knows we need all those things, we don't know how to articulate it.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  Our, our, our mind doesn't understand the theory of it all, and so we cry. And that's the first skill we come into this world with, the ability to cry, to get someone's attention so they can look at me, so that they can hear me, and maybe do something about this thing that I don't know how to do. And I think as we get older, we learn very early on that we've got to develop the skill to be able to articulate, to be able to get specific about what we need. Because in the adult world, it, it happens to us very fast, you know? You can be nine, 10, and, and what would they say? Use your words, use your words, you can't go ad, you gotta say, okay, let me think, what am I feeling? What would I like? Mom, can I have a glass of water?

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Mom, can I go outside and play? You know, mom, can I watch a little TV? Can I go to bed right now? Can I use the bathroom? Can you hurry up in there, right? And we learn how to state what we need so that we can solicit human cooperation. But we still come across situations as adults where we don't know what to do. And we don't really know exactly what we're feeling. And we fall back into that native state. That first skill that we learn, we cry about it. And the adult form of crying about it is complaining. I'm not, I'm not doing anything that's gonna fix it, really. I'm not being, you know, I'm not putting it in the form of a request. I'm just crying about it. I'm complaining about it. And there's a hope there that maybe I will be seen.

• 26:26Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  Maybe I will be heard and there will be some healing in that. And perhaps someone will help me do something about it. But Jerome, you describe him as someone that's always been a man. He seems to have always been the kind of person who, when he has a problem, he can identify, this is what I need. And he can identify, this is what I need to say, or this is what I need to do in order to take care of it. And he just focuses on that. He's able to speak through his words and through his actions, what he needs. And we, we see the absence of complaining from him. I imagine not because he condemned it in others, not because he was some kind of self righteous guy that's like, how could people complain? But because he was just so tuned in and what he needed to do about it.

• 27:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It seemed unnecessary, the same way that violence seems unnecessary to a person who's trained in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu their whole lives. Like, they're ready for it if, if they need, but it's not a requirement. There are other people who will, you talked about the desire for pity is really a, I don't know if you said these words exactly, but it's a, it's expressing a need for connection with others.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 27:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I want to be seen, right? And it can feel like a shortcut to being seen. Violence, I think, can be similar. I don't think it's the best way to get connected to someone, but you're really connected really quickly if you start a fight on the street with someone. All of a sudden, you see me right now. Or if I get aggressive with someone on the street, they, they see me immediately. We're connected. Also, I'm really significant. I'm like the most important person in the world to them right now, right? And so it apes the form of connection, the way that pity apes the form of connection. And, and what I think is that there is. Likely much better ways to, I think is what Jerome understood.

• 28:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  There are better ways to achieve connection outside of the need for complaining. It's a way to connect. It's most likely not the best way to connect. And if we don't have the other tools to connect, then we might default to that. The same way a baby defaults to crying to get what they need because they don't have the vocabulary to ask for it.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. Speaking of asking, I love to ask you some questions about Jerome. Your relationship with him, your thoughts about him and so on. Is that cool?

• 28:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Sounds good.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm gonna start with the big one first. I'm gonna go back in time, but I want to start with a big one first. And that is, what if this was reversed? You are the one who's dead right now and I'm here with Jerome.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Do you think he complains? If yes, what is that? If not, what do you think he says?

• 29:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  No, I don't think he complains at all. I think he, I think he tries to figure out what do we need to do to get beyond this? Right? Who needs to be taken care of? I'll tell you, that's the one thing that the biggest surprise to me after going back to Ohio, because I was already going to be there for the talks we were doing. And I ended up spending the time there with a lot of people from his family and at his house in Oxford. And man, I got to see, because he would have never bragged about any of this stuff. He wouldn't even talk about this stuff. But the thing I wrote in the essay was about him being a good neighbor.

• 29:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He never asked for anything, but he was always there when someone needed him. If you needed a place to stay after being evicted, he had you covered. There were people in the neighborhood that just lived with him for a month. There were other family members who had, you know, strung out parents or whatever. And they would just come stay with Jerome and Sarah. And he would welcome them in. No fanfare. Let's take care of them while they need it. And so.

• 30:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The family sort of lost this, this hub, this strong person who was there to take care of all the people in the community. And this is what we look for when we talk about community. He would have never used that word, my community, right? He would maybe even scoffed at it. It would have felt like a buzzword to him, right? Because it wasn't about the, the language. It was about the actions. And so when his adult daughter needed somewhere to stay while she was trying to get through nursing school, she went up and lived with him for a while. And when his cousins or nephews needed a place to stay, he either helped them find a house locally. I couldn't tell how many people moved to Oxford, Ohio from Middletown and Lebanon and Cincinnati because

• 31:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  he was there. And he was the hub for all of it. And he took care of them, not necessarily monetarily, but in ways that mattered so much more than, than money, right? He was there to, to take care of them. And so I think that's where he would be right now. It's like, okay, who needs what? And how do we help them get that? Right? Just like practically? Where, how do we get from point A to point B? Let's figure this out together. And we got this. We'll carry it.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. It seems like he, he embodied a kind of generosity that, that didn't come from excess. You know how sometimes when, when people do big things like, hey, I'm gonna pay for this person's hospital bill. I'm gonna donate to this charity. We kind of dismiss that like, oh, well, anybody could do that if they just had an excess of money. But it seems like Jerome had every right to really guard his time and his resources and not share. And he just shared anyway.

• 31:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. Yeah. He, he was very generous with the most precious resources, his time and attention. And, you know, I remember him being present when we were kids, but I think as kids are often very present anyway, right? Like, kids are the most present. When you have little kids, you realize like, oh, I'm gonna learn more from, from this little two-year-old than, than he's gonna learn from me, right? I know that was true with Ella, you know, when Ella was two and three, I learned so much more from her than she learned from me. And so he was present as a kid, but then I'm hearing from his adult daughter, Kila. She's 25 and like her best memories, like he was just always, she told me, he was so,

• 32:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  he never took anything too seriously, which you wouldn't know from his demeanor because he seemed serious. But once you got past it, he was the silliest goofiest. He just, he, it was, he didn't require the, the sort of tough demeanor to show you that he was, you know, above anything. He, uh, he was silly and goofy, even if he didn't show that right away. But she talked about how present he was, even when, because he wasn't with her mother long-term. But, um, yeah, they would, just the weekends that they would spend together when he had her every other week. And it's like, I just remember like him always just being there with me, like actually being

• 33:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  there, not distracted. And he wasn't a phone guy. He wasn't a social media guy. He didn't care about any of that.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  He wasn't on social at all?

• 33:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  No, no. He had a Facebook account. I think last time he posted anything there was.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  20 years ago.

• 33:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Probably.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've got a few friends like that. It's like, what? They just forgot to delete their account.

• 33:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah. And, uh, it was amazing how many people reached out to me on Facebook. I didn't even know you could still do that. And so many people, when, when it happened, they were all like trying to figure, get ahold of me and they're calling me on Facebook Messenger and all of these things. And, um, and so I went back and I looked at his account that was there. I'm like, oh yeah, he, that picture on there is 20 years old and, and, uh, yeah, he just, he didn't care about those things.

• 34:17Speaker 02

  We talk about that all the time, you know, being in a culture of distraction, learning how to unplug, simplifying the, uh, the influx of stimuli. How did Jerome do it? What was he doing instead of scrolling?

• 34:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Maybe this is a disposition thing too, but it could just be that like the things in front of him seem so much more like infinitely more compelling than the distractions. And I think for most of us, myself included, the distractions often seem much more compelling than the important things.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  For you, that's true?

• 34:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think so. Yeah.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  What would be an example for each? Like, what does your version look like? And what does his look like?

• 35:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, I mean, it could be something as simple as like, I'm going to turn a podcast on instead of meditating for another 15 minutes.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You know, that's a, I don't think there's anything wrong with podcasts. Obviously, we're speaking on one right now, but um, I don't generally keep social media on my phone, but if I do, it's easy to scroll and ignore the people in front of me. The worst part of me is like hiding in the bathroom scrolling through Instagram while my wife and daughter in the kitchen preparing dinner, right?

• 35:32Speaker 02

  Checking NBA scores.

• 35:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right, right. Or worse, just checking videos that, yeah, they're not doing much for me. And for whatever reason, that was just never compelling to him. And that's laudable. So I don't think there's a how to behind this. Like, I don't know how he got there. I just see it and I say, wow, wow, that's the best version of me. It's not this erudite guy who has all the best words. No, it's Jerome who has the best moments.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  If, if we called Jerome and was like, hey, come on the podcast, do an episode with us, would he laugh?

• 36:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Not a chance.

• 36:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You couldn't get him to take a picture.

• 36:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He refused. All the pictures that Sarah sent me of him are generally pictures where she doesn't know he's taking a picture.

• 36:26Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You wouldn't get him to do a podcast with you. You wouldn't get him to do a photograph with you.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  Would he just laugh at you? Would he walk away? What would his reaction be?

• 36:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Like, ah, man, I ain't got nothing to say. Like, it was just, he would think it was silly. Like, he would think it was trivial.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  That's awesome, yeah.

• 36:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah. And so like, I tried so hard to get him to come out here to California and like, come stay with us for a while and bring the family out. But he was, as tough as he was, he had this irrational fear of flights, you know? So I remember we were little kids and like, he, the toughest kid I knew, the strongest kid I knew as well, the strongest man I knew. The thing I was telling his daughter is that like, I saw him get into a lot of fights where we grew up.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I never saw him once start a fight, ever. He never started a fight. He finished a lot of them. But he never, he wasn't interested in like, the ego and the status of it. It was like, he was a tough guy. He, he, but he downplayed all of it. I was talking to his daughter about this and she's like, yeah, he said he was like, wasn't very good at basketball. I'm like, Kilo, we played basketball every day. On our eighth grade team, I saw him drop 40 points. The first time I saw him dunk a basketball, we were in seventh grade. He's 12 years old dunking a basketball. He was so skilled.

• 37:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Not super disciplined around that. Like, didn't care about like, I need some achievement or status, but like, he was so, but he always downplayed it. Any, anything that he did well, it, he, he didn't like sweep it under the rug. It was just like, eh, whatever, I wasn't that good, you know?

• 38:10Speaker 02

  He wasn't impressed with them, so.

• 38:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  There you go.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  So something that some may not know is that Jerome wasn't your biological brother.

• 38:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's right.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  And that's, that's something you never qualify. We've talked about that. I have a brother who isn't a biological brother. And it's like, he is as real of a brother as. You know, people that have your own flesh and blood.

• 38:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  More so in my case.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Tell me about how Jerome came into your life and, and, and a little bit about that, that bond that you guys had over, from childhood on.

• 38:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So I have five biological siblings from my father's side. I don't know them very well. Two of them have passed away already and I just don't know the other ones. The last time I saw any of them except for one was at my father's funeral in 1991. So it's, it's been a long time, right? They, they grew up in Chicago and, and so I, I just didn't grow up around them and.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Bless you, Chicago.

• 39:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Not true, not true. Just the Bulls.

• 39:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Funny thing. So the reason I like the Utah Jazz so much was in the eighties and nineties when Jerome and I watched basketball and played basketball, we would pretend to be John Stockton and Karl Malone.

• 39:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so like it, it, it was just, you know, it was this, this moment. But I, I met Jerome in, I guess it was late eighties. We were both young in elementary school and my friend Jitan came, came through one day and he brought this other kid up who was there from Cincinnati. And I'm at my apartment, we were living in this little roach infested duplex, the one you see in Less Is Now, our last documentary, in the old neighborhood. And I'm there on my porch. I still remember the first time that we met. We were real little kids, but it was this, this quiet, confident kid. And it was Jerome. And we met and like immediately

• 40:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  became fast friends. And we grew up in unfortunate situations. The, this was the, during the, the crack epidemic in the 1980s and early nineties. And the neighborhood we grew up in was, had a lot of drug issues and crack houses and, and it wasn't a particularly violent place, but it was just impoverished. And the situation I was in, we escaped from my father when I was really young because he was abusive to my mother. And we, we moved away from Dayton down to this, we were in Middletown for a while, a town called Franklin. And we end up in Warren County, a place called Lebanon. And we were there and it was just.

• 40:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It was poverty. You don't really, it's like when you're a fish in water, you're what the hell is water sort of thing, right? Or you're breathing oxygen, you don't realize you're breathing oxygen, it's just all around you all the time. Poverty was kind of that way for us. In fact, I didn't realize it. I thought we were kind of well off because I was the only person in the neighborhood who had a mom. Now, my mom was a pretty bad alcoholic at the time and had a lot of bouts with that. But like, we had a roof over our head and even though we had government assistance and food stamps and WIC and, and all of these things, it felt like we had at least a relative stability. And then Jerome shows up and his dad was just sentenced

• 41:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  to prison for armed robbery. He was doing a 10-year bid and his mom was on drugs. And so Jerome and his slightly older sister were, were on the streets. They were homeless and they were living out of other people's houses, motels, whatever. And Jerome came to stay with us for a couple of days and a couple of days turned into a couple of weeks, which turned into a couple of months and a couple of decades eventually, right? And yeah, pretty soon my mom adopted him and so he officially became my brother, but we felt like brothers even

• 42:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  before that. And we were inseparable like our entire childhood. And I think we sort of bonded over the, we wouldn't have used any of the therapized words that we use now like trauma or whatever, but I think he was still dealing with a lot of that into his 30s and 40s, like not wanting help from anyone, the showing of autonomy, because he always had to be autonomous. Because growing up in a situation like that, it was, yeah, we were poor, but we weren't like third world poor. Yeah, we slept on the floor and we had roaches, but we always had food and

• 42:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  we had a place to go. We had basketball and we had a school to go to and free lunch and all of these things. Like we had our basic needs met, right? And, and I found that

• 43:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The more our lives sort of continued down the path, you know, we grew up in these unfortunate circumstances, but a lot of our adulthood, his and mine, even though we took radically different paths, our adulthood has been defined by trying to transcend the residue of the past, or maybe clean the residue of the past off of us, wash ourselves clean of the trauma of yesteryear.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  You've mentioned a few times that you've always been the complainer. He's always been the guy that felt no need to complain. When you're children, you go through a lot of stuff, especially the experience of not getting what you want and feeling very strongly about it is like at an all time high when you're a kid, right? You can be mommy, give me that toy. And your whole world comes crashing down if mommy says no. Were there moments like that as a child, where you were whiny, complaining, really disappointed? And you experienced those moments with Jerome, where we can see that contrast?

• 44:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah. In fact, I think that's why you rarely see me complain outwardly is because he would look at me like I was insane. If, you know, my video game stopped working, what's wrong? Like, why would that be a problem?

• 44:36Speaker 02

  But some of these moments, I'm sure he'd be right there with you, right? Playing the video game with you?

• 44:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  For sure, yeah, yeah. And if I had, you know, a complaint, I think he would just kind of look at me like it was foreign. And it made me, it at least gave me, I don't know, a different perspective.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Although like the last time I've spent around him as adults, you know, he has a family, I have a family. We live in different states. We lived in different states and.

• 45:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I found myself like, oh yeah, yeah. That strength that like I carried forward. Sometimes that's just a protection mechanism, right? I need to feign strength, but I don't think that's what he was doing. I think he had developed an inner strength really early on out of necessity. Being in those unfortunate circumstances. And so it's kind of like when I look at my daughter now and like she's freaking out because, you know, whatever, she gets a flat tire on her bike or she skins her knee or something. And of course, I'm not going to scorn her for it, but I also understand in the grand scheme of things like, your life's perfect.

• 45:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And that's kind of where Jerome was like, what's the, what's the big deal here?

• 45:53Speaker 02

  We have food, man. We have a place to stay.

• 45:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, that was his disposition. Like, what's the big deal here?

• 46:00Speaker 02

  One of my favorite stories for you is you mentioned the time where your mom brought you guys, bought you guys a piggy bank. You remember this?

• 46:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It was like an old school piggy bank, the ceramic one, pink. And we had it in our rooms. We shared a room together and we had a futon that we slept, we would take turns sleeping on. So I'd sleep on it one night, he'd sleep on it the next. And like, he would never complain. And he ended up sleeping on the floor more than me because I'd be the one who was like, oh yeah, okay. But he got us this piggy bank to teach us about saving. And I remember we, we put our first quarter in there. And it's one of the piggy banks. You can't, it doesn't have an opening at the bottom or anything. You can't get the quarter back. And that's the whole point of it forces you to save.

• 46:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  As soon as you put the quarter in, Jerome grabs a hammer and just smashes it. Takes the quarter out.

• 47:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I guess he had better things to do with that money.

• 47:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Probably now is a good time to to to mention this since we're talking about money and finances. One of the things that I'm I'm trying to figure out right now is, and he has three kids, two of them are really young. Elizabeth is eight years old and Sir is his son, he just turned one. And Jerome was so happy, finally got his son after, you know, two daughters and 20 something years. He finally got a son, he was so happy and the pictures of him with his kids are just priceless. In fact, if you're watching the video version, Sean, I'll send you one to put up right here. It's a picture of Jerome sleeping with Sir just a few months ago. And sleeping right next to him, like they're both like just passed out in the bed.

• 47:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so I'm at this point now where I'm just trying to figure out like he was the the sole earner for their household. Sarah, he worked extra, he would pick up, he was working at the as a chef at the university and but he'd pick up extra shifts. He even started a cleaning business.

• 48:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And he'd pick up extra shifts at a local factory and just to make sure that Sarah could stay home with the kids and take care of the kids. And she was homeschooling their daughter Elizabeth. And so I just started a GoFundMe if anyone's interested in helping out here.

• 48:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I know that would go a long way with the family, so we'll put a link to it below, but you can find over at the minimalists.com/Jerome. I wrote that essay there. And there's a link to the GoFundMe and I'm just trying to help out with their with their expenses because I recognize that this is going to be a lifelong burden that I'm willing to accept now, you know? And I can't imagine not doing it. It's not like a burden in the sense that like, oh, I don't want to do this. No, I absolutely want to do it. It's it's gonna be heavy. I don't know how I'm gonna navigate all of this, reconstitute my life to make sure. And his kids were taken care of, but I think a lot of the tears that I've cried over

• 49:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  the last 10 days, or whatever it's been, have been much more for the, the kids than Jerome. You know, like, yeah, I'd be sad that my brother died, but if he had no kids that he left behind and yeah, I'd have great memories and yeah, it happens. People die. We're all going to die, right? But what a, what a time when he's got these two kids to take care of. So if you want to help me take care of those kids, there's a GoFundMe that we set up and we'll put a link to that in the show notes.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Just to speak to that money piece, man, um, you know, growing up as a pastor's son and, and my dad was a pastor in the, the pre mega church era, uh, or at least his world was a pre mega church world where, you know, he had a full-time job and he's pastor of a church and the pastor did everything. You don't have a staff. You do everything. You're the maintenance man. You're the construction guy. You do hospital visits and all of that. And I just remember so many times growing up, well before my teens, just hopping in the car with dad and going to a hospital, going to a funeral home because you get that call. Somebody's always dying in church. There's just a cycle. Somebody's being born, somebody's getting married, somebody's dying and it's always happening, you know?

• 50:32Speaker 02

  And you, you see very quickly, one of the, the harshest realities of life is that it is incredibly expensive to die.

• 50:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  I never thought of that.

• 50:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  You know, and, and how people go from being informed that their dear loved one is gone and immediately you gotta be thinking about what funeral home you want to go with, how much coffins cost and what color of that you're gonna pick and whether you want flowers. And you're not even in a place where, where you can think clearly about these things and you have to think about them. It's not like, hey, just go grieve. We'll come back in a year. It's like, no, while you're grieving, I, I need you to sign this paper here while you're grieving. We need, I can maybe work out a payment plan, but we need to talk about this bill here. While you're grieving, can you look at these caskets here and tell me

• 51:24Speaker 02

  which one looks, while you're grieving, these are your three options and you're thinking about money and you're thinking about decisions and it is incredibly difficult, very overwhelming. And so I, I just have a lot of sympathy for.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  As odd as it is to say, the financial dimension to dying and to grieving, it really is a big part of it and it can be a very great weight. And I've seen it tear families apart.

• 51:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  Having to navigate their way through that, you know?

• 51:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And it's money gets to the heart of a lot of issues that we have, right? But then there's also the conflict of like, well, I want cremation or I want it at this cemetery or headstones and all of these things. And I've worked diligently to not have an opinion about any of that stuff because to me, it's mostly window dressing, whether it's this casket or this headstone or this cemetery, are we cremating? Are we spreading ashes? Are we burying the cremains? Like all of these, these are important questions you have to ask, right? But there's a lot of conflict around, around those things. But the thing I know most is Jerome wouldn't want to have injected additional conflict into the family.

• 52:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He didn't want chaos there either. Obviously, he had no idea. He just didn't wake up on April 10th. And so, yeah, helping the family out with the GoFundMe, with all of the death costs, but also the living costs. He has these really young kids that need food and shelter. And as we get a plan in place, I'm helping his wife through budgeting and all of those things. That's going to go a long way. So, big thanks to everyone who's already supported that. I really, really appreciate it. I know they appreciate it too. There's so much gratitude from the family. But this is for Jerome and his, his kids. And if you feel like you want to help, you have the means to do so, great.

• 53:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If not, and you just want to share it, that'd be really helpful for us as well.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  I like to do, if you're open to it, a little conversational role play with you. And it's inspired by two things. One here is in your no complaints, let's see, you mentioned what he would say to you. Let me see. Oh, why can't I find it now?

• 53:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Bottom of the first page, maybe?

• 53:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If he were still here, my brother would probably tell me.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  If he were still here, my brother would probably tell me, yeah. And then the a few episodes ago, you introduced the the what would Joshua do? So I like to do a little exercise and what would Jerome say? And I'm gonna be you.

• 54:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Okay.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  And I'm gonna say a few things to you. And you will be Jerome and and you will tell me what Jerome would say.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  Hey, brother, I am I'm thinking about how you never complained. And how you always just got to the heart of the problem and what you needed to do. Even your last text to me was. Everything's great, no complaints. I'm telling you right now, man, as much as I respect you for that, I can't do it. I I can't do it. I wish I was the the man that you've been since you were 10.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  Any recommendations for me, man? To to get through these moments where I feel like complaining all the time and I don't know how how not to?

• 54:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think he would say, even if he didn't say it with words, he'd say it with his actions somehow. He'd go back to like the Henry Ford quote about, you know, whether you say you can or you can't, you're right.

• 55:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, if you say you can't stop complaining, you're right. If you're saying you can stop complaining. Because for me, my complaints are rarely external. It's like it's it's within my mind. It's like it's a it's an emotional reaction to something. It's holding on to something that isn't even there. It's holding on. The car broke down, but I'm holding on to the trip being smooth. Well, the trip isn't smooth anymore. How can you keep holding on to that? It'd be like trying to hold on to Jerome right now, like.

• 55:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I guess we could have what embalmed his body and held on to it like Weekend at Bernie's or something. He was goofy enough that we could have done that. But, yeah, yeah, I think I think what he embodied is like, yeah, it's totally possible. Let me, you know, it's. It was much more showing than it was telling.

• 55:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, Jerome, I most of my complaints are internal. I complain a lot inside my head, even if I don't speak it. Did you ever have those?

• 56:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, probably.

• 56:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Probably.

• 56:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. Hey, man. I wanna, whether you let me or not, nobody's gonna stop me from this. I gotta help your family. I gotta make sure your family's cool. Your family's my family. But this is tough and I got a lot of stuff to figure out that's really layered and complex. Any advice?

• 56:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What he would show me is, "Don't overthink it."

• 56:46Speaker 02

  Hey, um.

• 56:48Speaker 02

  I know words have their limitations, but what do you want me to say to Keela?

• 57:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Tell her I love her. And...

• 57:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Tell her to get out of debt, stay out of debt.

• 57:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Finish school and travel the world.

• 57:55Speaker 02

  What do you want to say to Elizabeth?

• 58:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Be kind to your mom. She's doing the best she can do.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  What do you want to say to sir?

• 58:26Speaker 02

  When he's old enough to understand, of course. To sir with love.

• 58:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You're not gonna remember me, but you'll remember the essence

• 58:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  of me. You are that essence. Carry it forth.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  What about Sarah?

• 58:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Don't cling. It's okay to hold on for a while. Don't rush it.

• 59:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  My toothbrush is just a toothbrush. It's there's no magical powers to it. You can let that go when you're ready.

• 59:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  My clothes aren't gonna smell like me forever. You can let those go too. When you're ready. Don't rush into it, but

• 59:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  you're gonna have to let go if you want to move on.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  What would you say to all the people who who worked with you, whose names might not even get mentioned in the obituary, but they're sad that you're gone? And that they won't see you anymore and laugh at your jokes anymore?

• 59:47Speaker 02

  And, and, and the broader family? Who's gonna be sad to see you go? What would you say to them?

• 59:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It was a gift. It was a gift to know you.

• 1:00:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And all that time together wasn't for naught.

• 1:00:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It served a purpose.

• 1:00:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Let's be grateful for that gift. Let's not.

• 1:00:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Wish we had more gifts going forward.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  Lastly, what would you say to your brother Josh?

• 1:00:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Two things.

• 1:00:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  First off, thank you.

• 1:01:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Thank you for what we went through.

• 1:01:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But also. What you're about to go through.

• 1:01:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So the second thing is like.

• 1:01:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You got this. But I need you to carry it.

• 1:01:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:23Speaker 02

  Now Jerome.

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  I talked to your brother about this and he said that. You wouldn't come on this show in a million years.

• 1:01:34Speaker 02

  But I believe. He's saying that just because. He's scared you would kill it. That people will want to make you the host. So what I want to know Jerome. Is if you came on this show and you subbed for Joshua for a day. And it was just you and me doing an episode. We somehow got you to do it. Would you be a better host to him or a worse host?

• 1:01:59Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Jerome would tell you that he'd be a way worse host. And he's so good with that.

• 1:02:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He's so good with that.

• 1:02:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Cause he's so much better at me at all the things that you can't. You know, we've been, we've been so like, we've been talking a lot about this pleonaxia concept this year.

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's something I've been really obsessed with. So ancient Greek word that translates loosely to greed for the things that can be counted. So square footage, money, the markers of status, followers, et cetera. The material possessions that I can count.

• 1:02:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And throughout my twenties, I got really good at pleonaxia. I optimized my life for pleonaxia, the square footage and, and the cars and the money and the debt that came along with all of that, which could also be counted. And he always looked at it like, he didn't get, he didn't care, man. Like, oh, you have a Lexus? Cool. Like, fine.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  When you were the corporate king of Dayton, he didn't care at all?

• 1:03:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It was silly to him, I think.

• 1:03:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I, I think it was, it was like, oh, that's cool. I kind of saw it as the game that I think enlightened people would see it as, right? Like, oh, it's interesting that, oh, cool. You won that game. It's time to put the monopoly board away now and, you know, put the thimble down. It's, it's not.

• 1:03:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It matters in that narrow context of playing and winning the game for fun. But the game I was playing wasn't fun. It was kind of miserable, right? And he saw that and he was like, oh, you're not very happy.

• 1:03:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Why you keep playing that game? Why you keep doing it? And he asked me that, like, well, and I'm like, yeah, this is, you know, it's like, there's a point I'll get to where I'll be successful, right?

• 1:04:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And like, he just didn't understand it.

• 1:04:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But I didn't understand the other side of it. You know, it took walking away from all of that. And then I still pick it up all the time. Like, I'm not always the most present father or husband.

• 1:04:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I noticed that and I can set it down better than I could in my twenties. I was really bad at it then, but like,

• 1:04:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  he didn't have to get good at it. It was just his disposition, right? Like, he didn't need all the money. He had something that was, it couldn't be counted. There was not like, how many yards of attention did he give to his family this week? All of them. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:04:43Speaker 02

  You've, you've, you've mentioned a lot of his virtues. If there's one

• 1:04:48Speaker 02

  that you think is both possible and desirable to let live inside of you? Like this, like, I'll, I'll take Jerome with me in this way. I'll keep him alive in this way. Which one of those virtues you think you got the maybe best chance or strongest desire to keep?

• 1:05:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I'm gonna go back to that essay I wrote. So in the essay, I wrote a few different things here. This from Jerome was a simple man. And I wrote this in a hotel room in Dayton, Ohio. In the old Dayton Arcade, which is like this beautiful old abandoned mall essentially from,

• 1:05:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think it started in 1904 and then it was abandoned around 1990 when we were kids. And they re, we actually shot some of our last Netflix film there. Only a few frames made it into the actual film. But we were gonna shoot our talk there at the Dayton Arcade. And before they remodeled it, but they recently remodeled it. And it's this beautiful space. And so now, it was weird because I'm back in Ohio. I'm staying at the Dayton Arcade, but it's this new version of it. And it's not something I'm, I'm in a familiar place, but I'm also an unfamiliar place. And I'm there in the hotel room. And it's night, it's late at night around nine o'clock. I usually don't write things this fast. It takes me a week or two weeks or a month to write something like this.

• 1:06:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I stayed up really late throughout the night and just.

• 1:06:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I couldn't stop writing it, basically. And some of the things I wrote in here was about how I will remember him. And so I guess you would call these his virtues. The first thing I said Jerome is a strong man, or was a strong man to this day. And I promise this is not hyperbole. He is the strongest person I've ever known. And he was physically tough, but I'm not talking about his muscles. He was only a year older than me, but he always seemed like a man. He was stoic and nonreactive. Even when we were kids, he was stoic and nonreactive.

• 1:06:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And he refused to let that impoverished dysfunctional childhood that we had define who he was. And so to me, maybe that stoic bit is something I aspired toward. If I could download that into my persona, like I have bits of that for sure. But if I could somehow, you know, give it some human growth hormone and make it much stronger in me to be less reactive. Because I'm, I think, relative to the populace. Yeah, or relative to my former self. I'm way less reactive and, and, but there's levels to this and it was natural for him. So that for sure.

• 1:07:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I also wrote that Jerome was content. Last time I saw him, he looked healthy, glowing even. He had recently moved his family to Oxford. I talked about that in the essay. He purchased this modest home, had a steady job. Very last time I talked to him, he said, I love it here. He told me that on the phone and he sounded genuinely happy. Especially like, it felt like these years of financial turmoil were, were kind of in the rearview. It's not like they were wealthy. They were still living paycheck to paycheck and he was working hard to get more paychecks so that they could have a savings and, and take care of the kids.

• 1:08:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And, and yet amid all the turmoil, he was still content. I was talking to our friend Brian about this. He, he was, he came to the event we did in Dayton. And yeah, he was like, yeah, that's how I would describe Jerome. Like the whole time we've known him, the 40 plus years, he was just content. And there's something like, Maybe he might not had an inner monologue. There are a few of my favorite people. Sabodakis is one of them. My wife doesn't have an inner monologue. They're some of the most contented people that I know. I was talking to Brian about that and he was like, yeah, I feel like mine's too loud.

• 1:09:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, I think a lot of us kind of feel that way, right? And I don't know if he did or didn't. I never talked to him about it, but I suspect that might be, might be true. Jerome was a considerate provider. His concerns were not self-centered. He spent most of his free time with his kids or picking up shifts at a local factory so that Sarah could be a stay-at-home mom. Yeah, that, I think I do a good job of being a provider, so like, but you know, there are levels to it. Like, he, he wasn't self-centered at all.

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  But by the way, that's, that's an underestimated level of dedication, generosity and self-sacrifice. It's one thing to say, hey, in some general sense of the word, I accept the role and responsibilities of provider. And so I'll orient my life around getting a good career, paying the bills, la di da di da. But sometimes providing means foregoing your own dreams.

• 1:10:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yep.

• 1:10:01Speaker 02

  It means letting go of conveniences and amenities that you would really enjoy and doing what you think is best for your family, even though you might have to take some hits personally and have more difficult days. You know, it was, it wasn't until I was a man that I realized all the dreams my father sacrificed to be the provider that he was, that he had a lot of things that he wanted to be, wanted to do, and he didn't sell out, but he had to do some things that were a lot more boring than some of the exciting things that he would have rather been doing because he loved his children and he loved his wife. And so I think that's an underestimated thing, you know, that.

• 1:10:43Speaker 02

  Sometimes if people were just living alone, living for themselves and by themselves, they would have a much easier life and they they choose to carry crosses because of who they love and they don't complain about it and and and they don't see themselves as victims for it. They say, yeah, this is harder, but but us is better.

• 1:11:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Maybe that's a way to the no complaints thing is to to frame it as well. He never saw himself as a victim of the circumstances and maybe even to a fault, like carrying forward the the trauma. Like I saw him cry once ever. At the same time, I cried as an adult. So like, we got it from the same place. It was when my mom died, like, he cried, I cried. It was like the first time I cried in my adult life. And it was the first time I ever saw it. It's the only time I ever saw him cry. And he didn't ever play the victim. Maybe that's what I mean by the the no complaints thing. It's at least a reframe of that. But

• 1:11:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  also, in addition to being a considerate provider, he was a great dad. He wasn't preoccupied or distracted. You would never catch him scrolling on a phone. He had no use for a phone. He didn't care. His number would change. I'd have to call people. Oh, yeah, I just, I wasn't really using it. Like, he just didn't. He didn't care about that, man.

• 1:12:08Speaker 02

  I hear a buddy over there laughing. You have no idea of that life, huh?

• 1:12:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Bonnie from Fresno is here in the studio. It's her it's her birthday today. Happy birthday, Bonnie. Yeah, so he was a great dad, but it's because he wasn't distracted. The thing I wrote in the essay is like, he was the embodiment of right here, right now. Like, we do a right here, right now segment on this podcast. We usually wrap up the the minimal episodes and before we go over to Patreon and and with, hey, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist. But Jerome's life was a right here, right now segment. It was just, here's what's going on in my life right now. I'm taking my kids to Disney on Ice. And I saved up for two months to make that happen, you know? And

• 1:13:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He was just present. And that was the thing when I, when I saw his daughter, Kila, we actually met in our old neighborhood and it's so fascinating seeing this old neighborhood that we grew up in because in the eighties, it was just, it was impoverished and still like, it's not like a upscale neighborhood, but it's being strangely gentrified in ways that, there's a street there called Mechanic Street, they're building all these like condos, beautiful brick condos, they tore down all of these like abandoned, it's just bandos, you know, crack houses or there are other houses that burned down, there was a slumlord that lived in the neighborhood and mysteriously, there was a whole block of houses that burned down

• 1:13:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  in a five year, five year span, half a block of houses that burned down in a five year span. And, you know, I'm sure he just got the insurance money, I don't know, allegedly. But they're building a community center there now, right?

• 1:13:56Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:13:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so like you see this neighborhood that is transforming and I would not have in the eighties felt good about bringing Kila there at all, but we met in the park so I could tell her some stories and like, I felt good, I'd bring my wife and daughter there, I'd bring his kids there, like it's a totally fine neighborhood now.

• 1:14:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And that was strange to me because it wasn't what I, like the streets were still there and everything was the same, but everything was different. It's hard to explain, but like the essence of it was, was hollowed out. And you're like, see, oh yeah, there's actually potential here. Look at this. There's something promising on the other side of all that pain and, and suffering. And the thing she told me, we were sitting in that park, by the way, it's called Pleasant Park, which was always, we always thought was ironic as, as kids, like what's pleasant about this neighborhood? They even called the neighborhood Pleasant Park. And now it's called Pleasant Square Park, I guess if you, you know, you

• 1:14:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  put square there, it changes things. And I talked to her and she said that like, he just never took things too seriously. And to me, that, that, that displayed a-

• 1:15:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  A desire to not cling.

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He didn't cling to any, uh, but it should be this way. There were no shoulds. It was just, here's how it is.

• 1:15:18Speaker 02

  That's huge coming from your daughter, by the way.

• 1:15:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:21Speaker 02

  How many parents can get their kids to say that about them? I mean, in some ways, being a parent is by definition, it's your job to take everything a little too seriously, right? That's hard to pull off. Your daughter's like, he never took anything too seriously.

• 1:15:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, he, this is a verbatim quote. She said, "He was fun and goofy and always present."

• 1:15:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Thank God, if I could have that.

• 1:15:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, I mean, again, that's, these are all things that are aspirational. Jerome was humble was the next thing that I wrote, that he hated being the center of attention. You couldn't get him to take a picture. You definitely would have got him on this podcast. You would have got him to brag about any accomplishment he ever had.

• 1:16:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He wouldn't tell you about all the people he was caring for because they needed help. If anything, he would dismiss and say, "Yeah, of course, that's what anyone would do." But you know, that's not what anyone would do. That's what he did.

• 1:16:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He was a good neighbor. Like, that was the thing. So many people moved up to Oxford that were extended family members, cousins, nephews, nieces, his sister. And they moved there because like, he was the center of gravity for this community. And so like, when we look for like, "Oh, what is a good neighbor?" Like, it would be this person. It wouldn't, it wouldn't be like, the portrait of like, the guy on the porch waving, right? It was, no, the guy who participated in the community without needing to tell you that he was participating in the community. And the thing I wrote in here is like, if you were in danger, he would protect you.

• 1:17:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And this was true when we were kids, like, growing up in the situation we grew up in, I never felt. Unsafe because I had a bodyguard with me all the time. Like at 14 Jerome looked like a 30 year old. And so I never felt unsafe ever. Like he was this protector. And we had a, there was a local kid who I talked to when I was back in Ohio, who has a disability and like people would pick on him until Jerome befriended him. Just like he saw something was wrong there, right? And this kid is a super sweet kid and loving, but like because he had, you know, he was disabled, he had, he was different from everyone else.

• 1:17:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And people would pick on him because he had a, you know, an arm that didn't work very well. And like he had a sty on his eye all the time and like, but he was the sweetest kid. And, and then Jerome like took him under his wing. And I saw Jerome get into a few fights over, over this kid. Because never to start a fight, but like, hey, you can't pick on someone like that, man.

• 1:18:14Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:18:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Why don't you pick on me and see what happens? And that was the definition of, of a good neighbor.

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  That's the definition of strength too.

• 1:18:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah. Strength for others. And the thing I wrote in here is if you neglected him, he would still love you. That was true with his parents. His dad, after he got out of prison, died a year or two after getting out of prison. His mom died a few years ago, but even with all the trauma and like he still loved them. And with me, I would, I would tell you that I, I feel at this point, like I neglected him on some level. I don't know exactly where, but like, that's the, the emotion that rises up in me. It was like, you know, of course, what could I have done different? What should I have done to change the past?

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  Also, we'd all be there for each other a little bit more if we knew that this was the last time. You know, that, that there's this, there's something about the indefinite nature of the future that feels infinite. It feels like abundance, right? Our future together is indefinite. We don't, we don't have a death date that we know of. We have a death date, but we don't know what it is. And so it feels like we have thousands of opportunities to get together and finally watch an NBA game together. That's a goal of ours and it just feels like we have. An innumerable amount of opportunities. What if we only got 10? You know what I mean? And something like that is true. It's actually a finite number. If we knew what that was, we'd behave differently.

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  And so it's natural when people leave to say, man, I should have loved them harder.

• 1:19:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. Or differently, or better, or whatever that looks like. And you're right. Sam Harris will sometimes talk about how there will be a last time that you pick up your daughter and carry her, right? And that's true for me. Like, there's no way. My daughter's five foot, she's 12, but she's five foot eight. She's larger than most grown women at this point. And so like, there's, I didn't know when it was. Like, I have pictures of her on my shoulders just a couple of years ago. But there was a last time. And it's funny you mention that, TK, because I had, I don't know what you would call it, a premonition? Because we were planning this trip out to Ohio and like, I'm looking forward to it.

• 1:20:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And Jerome's gonna spend the day with me and Ryan. And I had this premonition. I said, this might be the last time I ever see him. And it ended up not being true. The last time I saw him was the last time I saw him. Which is, that's a Donovan Woods line, I think. Yeah, the last time I saw you was the last time I saw you.

• 1:21:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But I didn't, because I knew like, it was difficult to get him out to California. And it's like, okay, how often am I going back to Dayton these days? I guess I can keep going back. But we talk all the time, but we weren't seeing each other in person as much. And it made me like, oh, man, should I have reconstituted my whole life? Should I have moved back to Dayton? And yeah, I don't know. And I think it's probably not that helpful to to work through all of the shoulds. It's instructive in a sense that like, okay, those regrets, what they might indicate future regrets, some behaviors I need to change going forward. And so can I be more present? Can I be more humble? Can I be a better neighbor? Can I be?

• 1:21:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Stronger, more content. Can I be a provider? Can I be a better dad? All of these things are true, right? And by the way, if he was standing here, he would tell you, yeah, I could be more content. I could be a better provider and I could be a better dad. There are a lot of things that I would do differently. He would tell you all of these things too. I'm not trying to make him a saint in any of this. I just, I see some traits in him that I think were super aspirational. And that's what really breaks my heart about the kids is like, yeah, he was a great dad because he was there, right? Yeah. And ultimately, the last thing I wrote here was that he was a simple man.

• 1:22:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He didn't pine for material possessions or money or status. And he opted for life's simple pleasures. He liked fishing and cooking and listening to music and rocking in his favorite chair on the porch with one of his kids on his lap. There's a great photo of him. In fact, Sean, if we could put it here just on the video, there's a great photo of him just sitting on the porch in the rocking chair. Like, that's, that's how he was. He would just hang out there and sometimes he'd be there by himself and just sort of looking at the trees, gazing out, or he'd be with his son on his lap.

• 1:23:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And yeah, it was simple. He didn't need more than that. And so, yeah, I'm still working through the denial and the bargaining and the anger and the despair and, you know, the thing I wrote in here that I'm probably still struggling with, man, is that I'm struggling to find meaning or goodness in any of this.

• 1:23:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The world feels really cruel and broken right now.

• 1:23:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I don't know what to make of that. I'm still searching, but I don't know what to make of it.

• 1:23:52Speaker 02

  You know, I was talking with Professor Sean about this the other day. You know, a thinker that we both love is Byung Chul Han. And he doesn't do podcasts because he doesn't believe that podcasts are the best format for doing good philosophy. And there are a lot of philosophers who do podcasts that I enjoy, but I've become increasingly more sympathetic to his conviction because there's a sense in which podcasting culture and social media culture, which is a relatively new phenomenon, there's a sense in which

• 1:24:33Speaker 02

  it's compromised our capacity to wrestle with thoughts and feelings for a prolonged period of time before we have anything substantial to say about them, before we have an interpretation of them. For most of human history, most people didn't ask you what you thought. You didn't have a chance to get or give updates on a weekly basis. And even if you had something you were eager to share, it might be like years before the world sees it, you know? Like writing a book 100 years ago is very different than writing a book today where, you know, you're putting up each chapter on Substack and you're getting immediate feedback. Whereas before, you could work on that book for five, six years.

• 1:25:15Speaker 02

  And then there'd be another two-year process after you finished writing the book. And then finally, the world gets to engage ideas and thoughts that you had in your mind seven years ago. I say all of that just because if I could say anything to you, man, about that struggling to find meaning in it, I would say.

• 1:25:36Speaker 02

  Whatever meaning there is to be found, it is to be found in the willingness to wrestle with your suffering. And you don't have to have in the next month,

• 1:25:51Speaker 02

  a philosophical message from it, an interpretation to it, a connection to what this all means.

• 1:25:59Speaker 02

  You might get that 20 years from now. You might never get that. And more importantly, the real meaning might be something to be embodied rather than to be philosophized. There's a, there's a quote, I wish I could remember the dancer's name, but she performed this, this beautiful dance at an event. And someone says, what was the, the meaning of that dance? And she says, if I could tell you its meaning, I would not have danced it.

• 1:26:26Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes.

• 1:26:27Speaker 02

  And everything you said about Jerome,

• 1:26:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes.

• 1:26:29Speaker 02

  as you were talking about him, I was thinking, man, this guy was the embodiment of all the theory you talk about every week. He embodied it. You know, he, he didn't have a philosophy about the cellphone. He just was above it.

• 1:26:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:41Speaker 02

  You know, he didn't have a philosophy about the culture of distraction and how to stay mindful and simple. And he didn't have any rules for living, but the brother just was present.

• 1:26:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  You know? And just internalizing a little bit of that and being present to things and embodying the meanings, living out the meanings, rather than it being a puzzle for your mind to solve. You know? I think there's some, there's some health in that.

• 1:27:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Agreed. And, and, and so when we talk about these things, it's always like, it's the, the philosophy behind it. For me is trying to understand it, but it's getting to a point where you don't, where the philosophy is just a scaffolding you can sort of take away, right? And to be present doesn't require meditation, right? It requires being meditative. But maybe it's the meditation that gets you to, you know, that, that state. Or maybe you have a disposition like Jerome that is, I don't know, naturally meditative. Or maybe it's nurture as well. It's just the, the experiences that, you know, his first few years in this world were different from my first few years. And I think that was the biggest difference between the two of us is I grew up in a relatively steady home

• 1:27:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  that devolved really quickly. You know, the first five years of my life, my father was a doctor that ended up going crazy. Like, he worked at the Air Force Base in Dayton. That's why I was born in Dayton, at the Air Force Base, because he was schizophrenic and he had to close his practice in Chicago. And the only place that would hire him was the government. And so he became a doctor at the Air Force Base. And it was that for a few years. And then, and so we lived in, you know, a nice house.

• 1:28:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But pretty soon, we had to escape and we escaped with, with nothing. And we moved to this neighborhood where I eventually moved there, to this neighborhood where I met Jerome. And yeah, we, we bonded, even though like we came from these strangely different backgrounds our first few years. But then our paths intersected for a couple of decades before they bifurcated again. And so, yeah, I, I find that now's the time for me to, because this is what Jerome would do too. It's time for me to, to step up and figure out, what does that mean for his kids at this point?

• 1:29:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so I think it's probably a, a good place to wrap this up. You know, I'd love to play one of his favorite songs to wrap up this episode. This is the very first cassette I remember him owning. We were listening to it together. He would share the headphones with me. And the song you hear playing in the background right now is from the eighties, which is when we listened to this. This is Houdini's Friends. How many of us have them, you know? And he was that, not just to me, but to the people who knew him most. To all of his family members, acquaintances, coworkers. He was a friend and a lot of people are broken up by this right now.

• 1:29:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I thought this would be the perfect way to honor him with this episode. We'll come back next week with a more traditional minimalist episode. But TK, thanks for taking this time with me to sort out some of this. I really appreciate it.

• 1:30:02Speaker 02

  Oh man, appreciate you, brother.

• 1:30:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, y'all. If you leave here with one message, let it be this. Love people and use things. Because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. And we'll see you next time.

• 1:30:19Speaker 02

  Peace.

• 1:30:22Speaker 03

  How many of us have them friends? Ones we can depend on friends? How many of us have them friends? Before we go any further, let's be friends!

• 1:30:40Speaker 04

  The word we use every day, Most of the time we use it in the wrong way. Now you can look the word up again and again, But the dictionary doesn't know the meaning of friends. And if you ask me, you know I couldn't be much help, Because a friend's somebody you judge for yourself. Some are okay and they treat you real cool, And some mistake your kindness for being a fool. We like to be with some, because they're funny. Others come around when they need some money. Some you grew up with around the way, And you're still real close to this very day. Whole boys through the summer, winter, spring and fall, And then there's some we wish we never knew at all. And this list goes on, again and again, But these are the people that we call friends.

• 1:31:49Speaker 04

  When we first met out together, we barely knew each other. We had no intentions on becoming lovers, But in no time at all, you became my girl. Me and you, one on one, against the world. Talking on the telephone for hours at a time, And else I was at your house, or you was at mine. And then came the arguments and all kinds of problems. Besides making love, we had nothing in common. It couldn't last long, because it started out strong, But I guess we went about the whole thing wrong. Because out of nowhere, it just came to an end, Because we became lovers before we were friends.

• 1:32:19Speaker 03

  Friends!

• 1:32:22Speaker 03

  How many of us have them friends?

• 1:32:27Speaker 03

  Ones we can depend on friends?

• 1:32:32Speaker 03

  How many of us have them friends?

• 1:32:37Speaker 03

  Before we go any further, let's be friends!

• 1:32:49Speaker 04

  You say you and the girlfriend were so tight, You took her out with you and your guy one night. She even had a set of keys to your home And you shared mostly everything you own. But then she shook your hand, she stole your man And it was done so sweet, it had to be a plan. Couldn't trust her with cheese, let alone your keys. With friends like that, you don't need enemies. You wonder how long it was all going on And you're still not sure if your gladdy is gone. You say, "Well, if she took him, he was never mine." But deep inside, you know that's just another lie. And now you're kinda cold towards people you meet 'Cause of something that was done till you buy some creep. But nevertheless, I'll say it again That these are the people that we call friends.

• 1:33:29Speaker 03

  Friends. How many of us have them? Friends. Before we go any further, let's be friends.

• 1:33:49Speaker 03

  Friends. How many of us have them? Friends. Once we can depend on. Friends. How many of us have them? Friends. Before we go any further, let's be friends.

• 1:34:19Speaker 03

  Friends. How many of us have them? Friends. Once we can depend on. Friends. How many of us have them? Friends.