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Before anything else. Before the music. Before thewelcome. Before any of it.
I know what you are going to ask.
Did he answer?
He answered.
When?
Six days later.
Six days.
Six days during which I checked my phoneapproximately 400 times
and told myself that the silence was the answer.
And what did he say?
He did not say it is so good to hear from you.
He did not say I have missed you.
What did he say?
He said I thought you had forgotten about me.
Eleven years. And that was the sentence waiting atthe other end.
That was the sentence waiting at the other end.
So he had been thinking about you too.
The whole time apparently.
Each of us sitting in a different country,
certain that the other one had moved on.
And you are seeing him?
Sunday evening. He is going to cook. Badly.
And I am going to pretend it is fine.
Six days. And you were completely sure it was toolate.
And that is the trap.
That is the whole conversation today.
Because the thing we call too late is almost nevera fact.
It is a feeling. Wearing the clothes of a fact.
Welcome to your English Toolbox.
The podcast that trains your English while youlive your real life.
I am Martin.
And I am Julia.
And this is the fourth and final conversation inour series about how to live a good life.
Four conversations about happiness, relationships,purpose, and the small choices that improve our
quality of life.
We began with an 80-year study and what itdiscovered.
Then how to start a relationship with a strangerin 30 seconds.
Then how to keep the people you already have.
And today, the question underneath all of them.
How much of a good life can you still build whenthis life you planned has already changed?
I want to start with a fantasy because I thinkmost of us carry it.
Go on.
The fantasy is that a good life belongs to acertain kind of person.
Somebody who chose the right career at 22.
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Who kept all their childhood friends.
Who met the right person early.
Who never had to move country.
Who had a stable job for 30 years.
Who avoided the big losses.
And how many people actually lived that life?
Almost nobody.
Almost nobody.
And yet we measure ourselves against it every day.
Because if that is the recipe and you did notfollow it...
Then you are behind.
And if you are behind, you start to write yourselfoff.
To write somebody off.
To decide that a person or a situation has nofuture.
And the strangest thing is how early we do it toourselves.
I have had listeners tell me they are too old tolearn English properly.
How old?
34.
Right! I want to do something painful.
I love painful.
Ask me why I nearly did not write to Tomas.
Why did you nearly not write to Tomas?
Because it had been too long.
Too long for what?
Is there an expiry date on friendship that nobodytold me about?
Next reason.
He has moved on.
He has a whole life now and I am not in it.
You had a whole life too.
And he was not in it.
And he wrote back in 6 days.
Next reason.
I would have to explain 11 years.
You would have to explain nothing.
Nobody wants a report.
They want a Sunday evening.
Next reason.
What if he has changed?
Then you meet a new person with old stories.
That is not a tragedy.
That is a bonus.
Last reason and this is the real one.
What if I have changed?
What if the person he liked does not existanymore?
I am not going to answer that one.
No?
Because I think you already know.
I do.
What if he is the one who has been waiting?
There it is.
Every single reason I had was a story about him.
And every single one of them was actually aboutme.
And the 6th day proved all 5 of them wrong atonce.
Now, we have to be careful in this episode.
We do.
Because there is a version of this conversationthat is dishonest.
And it goes like this.
Everything happens for a reason.
What does not kill you makes you stronger.
Your crisis was a gift.
We are not going to say any of that.
Good.
The study we have been following watched people gothrough the worst things that happen to human
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beings.
Losing a job at 55.
Losing a husband, a wife, a child.
Divorce. Illness.
Leaving a country and starting again from zero.
And what they found was not that sufferingimproves people.
No.
Some experiences do not make us stronger.
Sometimes they simply hurt.
And resilience is not pretending otherwise.
Resilience is finding a way to continue withoutdenying what happened.
But they did find something.
And it is one of the most practical findings inthe whole study.
Tell them.
When researchers compared how people adapted tomajor crises,
one of the clearest differences was the supportthey had around them.
Who was standing next to them?
Relationships do not remove the pain.
They do four things.
They can help calm your stress response so you arenot carrying it alone all night.
They solve practical problems.
Somebody drives you to the hospital.
Somebody lends you money.
They help you make sense of what happened
by listening while you say it out loud for thefifth time.
And they remind you who you are.
When a big part of your identity has justdisappeared.
That last one is the one nobody expects.
Because when you lose a job, you do not only losemoney.
You lose the answer to what do you do.
Let me tell you about Miriam.
Real or invented?
Invented from several real people, as always.
Miriam is from Bogota in Colombia.
She worked for the same company for 21 years.
And?
And at 52 the company closed.
Not a bad year, not a difficult month.
Closed.
52 is a terrible age for that.
It is the worst age for that.
Too old to be a junior.
Too young to stop.
Support comes from WISE.
The smart way to send money around the world.
Your life is global.
Your money should be too.
Some providers promise no fees on overseastransfers.
But extra costs often hide in bloated exchangerates.
Choose WISE.
You can send money overseas for education.
Or spend in over 40 currencies while traveling.
Get the exchange rate that you'd usually see onGoogle.
Plus count on 24-7 customer support.
Be smart, get WISE.
Visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply.
Her daughter was already living in Lisbon inPortugal and said,
Come.
And she went?
She went with two suitcases and a certainty.
What certainty?
That she was too late for everything.
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Too late to learn the language properly.
Too late to make real friends.
Too late to be hired by anybody.
Too late to belong to a place.
So what actually happened?
Four things over five years and none of them isdramatic.
Tell me the first.
The Portuguese class.
She was the oldest person in the room by 19 years.
Oh no.
And she hated it for about a month.
And then she noticed that she was the first toarrive every week.
Because she liked the ten minutes before the classstarted.
When people talked about their week.
So she was not there for the grammar.
She was there for the ten minutes.
And so was everybody else.
They just did not know it.
Second thing.
The Saturday market.
Same stall every Saturday for eight months buyingfruit from the same man.
A third place.
A third place.
And she counted the moment it changed.
In month nine he stopped calling her Senhora andstarted calling her Miriam.
That is it?
That is the whole event?
That is the whole event.
She told her daughter she felt like she had beengiven a passport.
Third thing.
A job.
Administrative work.
Part time.
And she got it because a woman from the Portugueseclass knew somebody.
Of course she did.
Not because Miriam was the best candidate.
Because she was in the room where somebody heardabout it.
And the fourth?
The fourth is my favorite.
Donna Alice, the neighbor on the floor below whois eighty-one,
and who could not carry her shopping up thestairs.
So Miriam started carrying it.
Every week.
And then two winters later at eleven o'clock atnight,
Donna Alice fell in her kitchen.
And who did she call?
She did not call her son in Porto.
She called the woman upstairs.
I want to point at something in that story becauseit is easy to miss.
Point at it.
Miriam did not build a new life.
She built a Tuesday and a Saturday and a neighbor.
And five years of Tuesdays is a life.
There was no moment where it changed.
There was no moment.
That is exactly why people give up at month three.
They are waiting for a moment,
and what actually arrives is a man at a fruitstall learning your name.
And if you think Miriam was simply lucky,
this is where the research becomes surprising.
Now, the age question properly.
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Yes, because there is real research here,
and it is genuinely surprising.
Surprise me.
In many large international studies,
average life satisfaction does not follow astraight line down as people age.
What does it do?
It often shows a U-shaped pattern.
Ah, whoa.
Life satisfaction tends to fall towards midlife.
In some major studies,
the average low point appears somewhere in thelate 40s.
And then?
On average, it gradually rises again.
So 47 is the worst year.
No, that is an average pattern in some largestudies,
not a prediction for every person or everycountry.
So the important point is not a birthday.
Exactly.
The important point is that a low point in midlife
does not mean the rest of the line keeps goingdown.
Why does it go up?
There is a good explanation from a researchercalled Laura Karstensen.
When we are young, time feels unlimited, so wecollect.
We collect people, contacts, options, experiences.
Everything might be useful one day.
And when time starts to feel limited?
We stop collecting and we start choosing.
Not necessarily better people.
More emotionally meaningful relationships.
Fewer plans, better plans.
Less time with people who drain you.
So the good news is not that you get wiser.
No, I want to be careful here.
Age does not automatically give you wisdom,
and it certainly does not guarantee happiness.
Plenty of people get older and more bitter.
Plenty.
What age can do is change what you think deservesyour attention.
And that is available at 52, in a Portugueseclass,
at the front, 10 minutes early.
There is one more thing I want to give ourlistener,
and it is about work.
Go on.
Because in Episode 1 we said the job is not theenemy.
It is not.
For a lot of people, work is where therelationships are,
the colleague you eat lunch with, the person whotrains you.
And then it stops.
Retirement, redundancy, illness,
a move to another country where yourqualifications mean nothing.
And people describe that as losing their purpose.
But purpose is not only a job title.
There is a word psychologists use, generativity.
Explain it.
It is the desire to guide, support,
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or create something useful for the people who comeafter you.
A form of purpose often studied in midlife andlater life.
Teaching somebody.
Mentoring somebody at work.
Volunteering, looking after grandchildren,
running the football team on a Sunday.
And the important part is this.
Your legacy is not what you leave when you die.
It is what you are leaving inside other people,right now, this week.
And Miriam?
Miriam teaches Spanish to Donna Alice's two great-grandchildren
on Wednesday afternoons.
Badly?
Extremely badly.
She says they correct her Portuguese and shecorrects their Spanish,
and everybody shouts.
Write three sentences for starting again.
And these are the bravest sentences in the wholeseries.
Listen and repeat in the pause.
Sentence one.
For a person you let go.
It has been a long time and I would still like tohear from you.
Sentence two.
For a room where you know nobody.
I am new here.
Do you mind if I join you?
Sentence three.
For anything you think you are too old for.
I have never done this before.
Where do I start?
All three again.
It has been a long time and I would still like tohear from you.
I am new here.
Do you mind if I join you?
I have never done this before.
Where do I start?
Notice that the third one is not an apology.
It is not.
I have never done this before is a fact.
Where do I start is a request.
And between them there is no sorry.
And no, I am probably too old for this.
Because you are not applying for permission.
And our sentence of the day.
Ready?
It is late.
It is not too late.
It is late.
It is not too late.
One more time with us.
It is late.
It is not too late.
So we come to the photograph.
We do.
We have carried it through four conversations.
In the first, a photograph of your life twentyyears from now and who is standing in it.
In the second, the people at the edges of theframe who already like you more than you think.
In the third, an old photo of two friends at awedding in Valencia.
And today?
Today the one that matters.
Imagine a photograph of your life ten years fromnow.
Not the house.
Not the job title.
Not the money.
Who do you hope is standing beside you?
And now the real question.
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What do you need to begin doing this week so thatthey are still there?
Because that photograph is not going to arrive byitself.
It is being taken now.
Every Sunday call.
Every coffee with a date on it.
Every message you nearly did not send.
So here is your task.
And it is the last one of the series.
One step this week towards a relationship, acommunity, or a purpose you want to still have in
ten years.
Not a plan.
A step.
Send the message.
Walk into the room.
Ask, where do I start?
And if a voice in your head says it is too late.
Ask it a question.
Too late compared to what?
That is the end of the series.
Four conversations about how to live a good life.
And the answer, after 80 years of research andfour episodes, is almost embarrassing.
It is people.
It was always people.
But there is one more thing, and we have beenhonest with you all the way through.
So we will be honest now.
For four episodes, we have told you thatrelationships are the foundation of a good life.
And that is true, but you also live in a body.
So next time, a bonus conversation.
Ten habits associated with a longer, healthierlife.
Movement.
Food.
Sleep.
Rest.
Purpose.
And the relationships that connect all fourconversations in this series.
Everything from today, the transcript, thevocabulary, and the three sentences,
is waiting for you at YourEnglishToolbox.com.
You can listen and read without registering.
And a free student account gives you thedownloadable study PDFs and progress tools.
Thank you for spending this time with us.
And whoever you are thinking about right now.
Write to them.
See you in the next one!
