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- [00:04]
A
How often do you think about your future self? It's something my friend psychologist Hal Hirschfeld thinks about all the time.
- [00:11]
B
So I'm Hal Hirschfeld, and I primarily study how people make decisions, especially ones that have consequences over long periods of time.
- [00:20]
A
And so how did you first start thinking about this idea of a future self?
- [00:27]
B
So much of it started, honestly, in the space of financial decisions. You know, so this started almost 20 years ago, looking at what economists have called the retirement crisis.
- [00:39]
A
Hal was in graduate school, a year away from receiving his PhD in psychology. It was 2008, during what's become known as the Great Recession. The stock market crashed, wiping out trillions of dollars in retirement savings.
- [00:52]
C
And.
- [00:52]
A
And Hal began wondering why people were so eager to take risks with their financial future.
- [00:57]
B
My advisor had said to me, you know, psychologists should have something to say about these very important financial decisions. And that really pulled a thread for me on what do people think about when they think about the long run? And then I quickly realized that sort of question doesn't just apply to retirement. It applies to health, and it applies to ethics and environmental decisions and death and dying. All of these things are under the same umbrella.
- [01:27]
A
Hal was trying to figure out why so many of us make decisions that won't serve us in the long run. And he came to a rather surprising conclusion.
- [01:35]
B
Maybe we just don't think of our future selves as if they're really a connection of who we are now. Maybe they're almost like another person.
- [01:42]
A
Yeah.
- [01:43]
B
And if that's the case, then what should matter for decisions is the relationships that we have with our future selves. In the same way that what matters for how, how I treat other people is the type of relationship I have with them. If I'm close to them, I'll do things for them, and if I'm not, if they're a stranger to me, then I'll go about my business and not really take care of them. And I had come across some neuroscience research that suggested that the brain basically can tell what's me and what's not me. There's a different signature pattern for when I think about you or when I think about a friend compared to when I think about myself.
- [02:25]
A
Hal designed a study to try to evaluate this. He used FMRI functional magnetic resonance imaging, a type of brain imaging study, to look at how blood flow in the brain shifted when people thought about themselves today and as their future selves.
- [02:40]
B
What we found is that, sure enough, when people think about their future selves, the pattern of activity that arises is Very similar to what arises when people think about another person. And I should say, you know, we did it again. We, like, ran the study again and the same thing came up and other labs have done it too. So it's a strange but real finding.
- [03:01]
A
Yeah, it's such a striking idea that we treat our future selves kind of like strangers. Once you landed on that insight, and I imagine it really opened up new ways of understanding why we struggle with long term decision making. So why is it so difficult for us to make decisions that will improve the lives of our future selves?
- [03:23]
B
Well, yeah, no, exactly. You hit the nail on the head, which is to say that if my future self is functionally like another person, then in some ways it starts making a lot more sense why we almost mistreat them. If my doctor tells me to cut back on certain things, foods and habits, because, oh, this is going to have a negative impact on your heart, health, et cetera. Well, the one problem with those sorts of statements is that I might not think about it as my cholesterol or my potential for cardiac events.
- [03:58]
A
Hal, are you telling me you don't listen to your doctor's advice?
- [04:02]
B
Come on, let's not go there. Let's not go there. But, yeah, all of a sudden it's like, well, who cares? That's not me, that's some other guy. And I'm obviously making this an extreme. But if that is the way on some deeper level that I think of my future self, then, yeah, it's like saving for retirement. It's like giving money to a stranger. Right. Needing to sit down and make a living will so that things could be better. If X, Y and Z happens, well, it's not me, it's somebody else.
- [04:36]
A
I'm having this conversation with Hal because I recently met a woman named Kirsty Parsons, a Kiwi and the cousin of a deer friend of mine. Kirsty was born with cystic fibrosis, or CF. And back in the early 90s, when Kirsty was born, her parents were told that she was unlikely to live into adulthood. But recently, a new medication has changed everything. She now has a full life ahead of her, one she really hadn't planned for. I'm Dr. Shoshana Ungerleiter, and this is before we go. This season, we're in conversation with people from all walks of life, exploring how we live alongside mortality. Today's episode, Kirsty Parsons meets her future self. As the weather cools down, I find myself reaching for layers that are timeless, comfortable and easy. And Quince has become my go to their pieces feel elevated. Their they last and they don't come with the big price tag that you'd expect. We're talking $50 Mongolian cashmere denim that actually fits and outerwear that looks designer but costs a fraction of the price. The quality really is that good. What I love is how Quint works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen so you get that same luxury feel and craftsmanship at about half the price. It makes upgrading your wardrobe feel both practical and stylish. One piece I've been living in is their organic cotton blazer with a sleek lapel, patch pockets and cropped sleeves. It's modern, effortless and instantly pulls an outfit together. It's professional but not too serious. Quince has become my one stop shop for timeless pieces that I'll wear again and again. Find your fall staples at quince. Go to quince.combeforewego for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com beforewego to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com beforewego. You know how the holidays sneak up every year. Suddenly it's mid December and you're panic shopping. This year I'm determined to do things differently and actually enjoy finding gifts that feel personal and thoughtful. Uncommon Goods makes holiday shopping stress free and joyful with thousands of one of a kind gifts that you can't find anywhere else. One of my recent favorites from Uncommon Goods is a super cute water bottle bag. I love going on long walks to get my workout in, but I'm always juggling my phone, my keys and a water bottle and this bag solves that. It holds my giant 32 ounce bottle securely. Plus there's room for essentials and you can get it monogrammed. It's stylish, waterproof and really a perfect gift for anyone who's constantly on the move. Uncommon Goods is full of gifts like that. They're unique, high quality and often handmade by independent artists. And when you shop there, you're supporting small businesses and giving back. They donate $1 from every purchase to a non profit of your choice, which I love. So shop early, have fun and cross some names off your list today. To get 15% off your next gift, go to uncommongoods.com beforewego that's uncommongoods.com BeforeWeGo for 15% off. Don't miss out on this limited time offer Uncommon goods. We're all out of the ordinary. Kirsty Parsons has been sick since the day she was born.
- [08:13]
D
I had my coleumitis, so that was when I didn't pass my first, like, bowel movements. So I was a. About, I think, 12 hours old and the doctors realised something was not quite right. So I got flown up in a helicopter to the National Hospital in New Zealand and underwent huge surgery straight away to take out about 10 centimeters of my intestine. So, yeah, very, very early on.
- [08:40]
A
So you were diagnosed with cystic fibrosis and this was in 1993. What were your parents told about what your life would be like and maybe how long you would.
- [08:52]
D
I mean, the medical world back then was completely different to what it's like now. There were people, you know, living in their 20s, 30s, but, yeah, it wasn't a great outlook.
- [09:07]
A
Kirsty says her parents were strict, but they had to be. As a kid with cf, she needed daily treatments in order to stay healthy.
- [09:15]
D
So for people with cystic fibrosis, we have a lot of lung infections, so that's like most of our daily care is related to our lungs. I would wake up in the morning and kind of roll out of bed and the first thing would be an hour of physio, so chest physio and nebulising medicines. So that would be about an hour in the morning. It would make you cough a lot. The aim was to bring up as much phlegm as possible. We had old school, like a tipping table, so I would lie on a table that was kind of tilted down my head and my chest was lower than my feet. And we had a physio that would come in every morning before school for half an hour and do percussion. So, like, clapping her hands all over my chest and my back to loosen up all the phlegm. And then I would do breathing exercises to bring it up and to be able to cough it out.
- [10:06]
A
That sounds like a lot. Every day, yeah. Oh, my goodness.
- [10:10]
D
So that was in the morning and then we would repeat it at night before I went to bed as well.
- [10:15]
A
Wow.
- [10:16]
D
Yeah.
- [10:16]
A
Twice a day as a child, as a young person, that's just so much, you know, I guess it was your life, so it was totally normal for you, but it's a lot to do to stay healthy. What was it like for you to know that you were not likely to live anywhere near as long as your friends and your classmates? Like, did it change anything for you?
- [10:40]
D
I don't know. That's something I've never really been able to wrap my head around. I think because I was born with cystic fibrosis. It's all I've ever known. It was in my subconscious. There was always kind of this, like, dark cloud. If I thought too much about it, it was obviously just like, not a nice feeling. So my mentality was very much, you know, live in the present. I just packed as much as I could into life, you know, what people might want to do in seven years. I was, you know, said to myself, I've got one year to achieve all these things. The life expectancy thing, it was kind of like the elephant in the room, I suppose.
- [11:14]
A
Yeah. I've heard that a lot of children, young adults with cf, don't even consider going to college because they're like, what for? Was that something that factored into your decision making?
- [11:28]
D
For sure it did. Like, especially days where I felt sick, you know, lacking energy, and there was definitely moments. But yeah, there's. There's a lot of stories in the CF community worldwide of even people not wanting to wear sunblock because they think, you know, like, I've got C. If my life expectancy isn't great, I don't need to worry about wrinkles or skin cancer, you know.
- [11:53]
A
But Kirsty's parents encouraged her to go to college and build a career. They wanted her to have dreams and to think about her future, even if her life wasn't going to be as long as they would have wanted.
- [12:03]
D
I think Mum and Dad have both been incredibly practical people and, you know, they brought us kids up to be very independent and to never. There was never any limitations. It was very much like, you know, we can do anything we really want to.
- [12:20]
A
Most of us grow up with an understanding that we're likely to outlive our parents. But for Kirsty, that never felt like a possibility. Not even when her mother was diagnosed with cancer in 2012.
- [12:32]
D
She didn't make a big deal of things. So I think in her. True to her style, I think she told us, but very much in a way like, you know, I've been diagnosed with cancer. It was bowel cancer. They did catch it a little later on, but, you know, she kind of said straight away, we're going to get on top of it. You know, I'm doing lots of research. There's nothing for you to worry about. That was the way she approached everything.
- [12:58]
A
Kirsty's mom underwent three straight years of chemotherapy. She even participated in a drug trial. Meanwhile, Kirsty finished her undergraduate degree and moved To Scotland, where her mom had grown up to get her master's.
- [13:10]
D
I was coming up to my holidays, so I had already booked a trip home. I was going to come home with Granny, who lived in Scotland as well, so Mum's mum. I knew Mum was getting ill, quite ill, but I didn't quite realize the severity of it. And then about a week before I was due to fly, I got a phone call from my sister, my younger sister, Sophie, and she was in tears and she said, you know, Mum's only hanging on to see you. You. You need to come home straight away. And so, yeah, that was a pretty difficult conversation to have. And I realised I, you know, changed my flights and flew home the next day. She was obviously very, very ill. She. She didn't look like herself either. Those were hard days at home, I think, seeing her in her home and struggling big time. And then she did move into the hospice, and I think she was in the hospice for around 10 days before she passed away. And actually, I look back on those days in the hospice and they were really special. You know, there was definitely some uncomfortable moments, and seeing your mum, who's always been the source of strength, and to see her becoming so weak and dying is really difficult. But also those were some really, really special moments we had together. And my sister and I spent all day in the hospice with her and it was just so peaceful. The nurses there are amazing friends would come in and visit. And I think, looking back on it, you know, that was when we started to grieve and we were able to say goodbye to her. We have some very special memories, or I think back on that time, which, you know, was not an easy time, but I actually think back on that with some, you know, really special happy memories.
- [15:06]
A
Oh, well, that's. Yeah, that's wonderful. I certainly share, you know, the same bittersweet feelings when my dad was dying, so it's such a gift. Despite how hard it is to be saying goodbye, it is.
- [15:22]
D
We were fortunate we could spend that time with her and she lost her ability to communicate, but I think, you know, she really cherished those times as well. You know, we could. We could tell that. And that was what was most important to us, I suppose.
- [15:35]
A
Yeah. And after a really big loss like that, you know, most people, I'd imagine, would take some time or drop out of uni for a while, put their life on hold so that they can grieve and get things in order. Is that something that you felt you had time to do?
- [15:54]
D
Not really, no. I don't know if this is not a fault but this is a characteristic of me is that I don't really slow down or I don't, yeah, stop. And I had my, my degree to go back to and all of the exams. So actually while, you know, we were spending time with mum in the hospice during the day, I was often, you know, in the corner studying for my exams or finishing my final assignments. I for sure I could, you know, postpone my degree and assignments and exams but there was a knock on effect that it would have in terms of internships and jobs. And then, you know, true to my mentality, I thought, you know, there's all these things I want to achieve this year and next year and the following year because I don't know what time I have left. I flew back to England pretty soon after and then just got straight into exams which was me kind of pushing everything to the side, which I've become very good at. Yeah, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but.
- [16:53]
A
Yeah, I share some of those traits myself so I get it. So at this point you're in your early 20s, you've described yourself as being really stubborn. How so?
- [17:06]
D
I think like with growing up with a serious health condition, each day you're kind of getting up and you've got to be stubborn because you're fighting, you know, you're fighting a long battle and there are some really tough days where I had to really be very stubborn. I don't want to say no to anything. You know, I'm someone who says yes to everything even if it's not a good idea. Friends were, you know, in their 20s, traveling Europe and going to all these cool places and these amazing weekend adventures and obviously I wasn't going to miss out on that. So I would say yes and you know, I'd fly from the UK to somewhere, Europe for a weekend, take all my medicine with me. I would be sick anyway going into the weekend and I thought, well, I'm going to be more sick after the weekend but I'm not going to say no.
- [17:52]
A
Kirsty kept saying yes to everything, determined not to miss out. But over time the constant travel work and pushing through illness began to take a toll.
- [18:01]
D
I was kind of burning the candle at both ends really in terms of I had this really cool job opportunity which was one of my big goals when I moved to the uk. So I was working really hard and like loving, you know, having a career and then obviously my health. At that point I thought, you know, that can take a backseat. I was doing, you know, all my medicines and going to all my hospital appointments. But, you know, your body just gets really run down. Yeah, that's when I started to get quite sick. I was in hospital being admitted probably three or four times a year for IV antibiotics. At that point, just constantly had a cough, always had chest infections. My energy levels were really, really low. I was struggling to, you know, like, walk. I remember one test that we did in the hospital and I had to walk down the hospital corridor and even just walking that length and talking was really difficult. I would just run out of breath straight away. Everything was becoming, yeah, really difficult. And some things were wee bit demoralising, I suppose, because I just wasn't getting better. Looking back on those days, I kind of think, what was I doing?
- [19:14]
A
You were living.
- [19:15]
D
I was living here.
- [19:16]
A
Yeah.
- [19:17]
D
Living here, exactly.
- [19:23]
A
Kirsty was in her 20s and she'd been told not to expect to live past 30. She wasn't making decisions that would benefit her future self because she didn't expect to have one. And then In May of 2018, her doctor from the CF Clinic in Manchester called her with an offer that would change her life.
- [19:40]
D
He said, look, there's this new medicine coming out. The lab results are looking really promising, really good and I would love to get you on the trial. The medicine didn't even have a name at all. There had been a few trials, but this was early on and I think there was 500 spots worldwide at this point in the trial. And he had two to give away within his clinic or within the Manchester clinic, there was hundreds of patients. I was just very, very lucky.
- [20:08]
A
Kirsty showed up at the hospital where, under the watchful eye of a few nurses and her doctor, she took two pills.
- [20:14]
D
Obviously, I couldn't be told too much about this medicine because of placebo effects and all of that, but there was, I suppose there was like a lot of excitement in the room. So I had my first two tablets and then, you know, stayed the morning in the hospital just to make sure there were no side effects. At this point in the trial, it was a double blind placebo. I didn't know if these two tablets were placebo or the real thing, but my doctor said, you know, if it is the real thing, you're gonna notice within the next couple of days and I'll just be coughing up lots and lots of phlegm. They call it the Purge, which is not the most glamorous, exciting name.
- [20:56]
A
How long did it take to realize that the medication Wasn't working.
- [21:04]
D
For me. It was probably about three months into the trial.
- [21:08]
A
Kirsty's doctor had told her to expect to feel better in a few days. But Kirsty had no frame of reference for what better would feel like. And it took her a while to realize that nothing was happening.
- [21:20]
D
And I thought, well, yeah, I'm not really, I'm not noticing anything. I was still getting progressively sicker and needing other medicines. So I think that was our indication that it either wasn't working or I was on the placebo.
- [21:31]
A
But Kirsty's care team told her not to give up hope.
- [21:34]
D
My doctors and the nurses said, you know, please just stick through this six month trial because the end goal is everyone rolls over onto the open label and that's where everyone gets the medicine.
- [21:47]
A
You're listening to before we go. We'll be right back. After spending six months on the placebo, Kirsty rolled over to the open label trial of the new drug for cystic fibrosis. The blinded part of the study was over and now everyone in the trial would definitely be given the real drug and not a placebo. And there was a lot of excitement about the drug in the CF community.
- [22:20]
D
There was obviously a lot of research papers coming out about the medicine. There was really, really clear evidence that it worked amazingly well. There was a lot of excitement that this could be the medicine that really everyone had been waiting for for generations and lifetimes. And if this was gonna work, it was gonna be like a, a huge, huge moment in the CF community.
- [22:44]
A
A huge moment for the CF community, but an even bigger one for Kirsty. Over the past few months, she'd been getting sicker and sicker waiting for her turn to take the new drug.
- [22:53]
D
At that point, I would have been needing a double lung transplant and I would have been, you know, my quality of life would have been awful. Everyone could just like breathe a sigh of relief knowing, right, we've got this far, like, it's all going to be good now. And also, I mean, there's, I suppose, this slight thought. You're like, maybe it won't work for me. We're still in a drug trial.
- [23:14]
A
Kirsty had been through the ups and downs of cystic fibrosis for her whole life. It was all she knew.
- [23:19]
D
Years of being on strong steroids, years of going in and out of hospital on strong, like intravenous antibiotics and all of those medicines, they would, you know, within 10 days they would make me feel better. But they would never cure anything. They would never get me back to where I should be. And then, you know, within a few weeks later, I'd be sliding back down into poor house.
- [23:42]
A
But this time it was different.
- [23:44]
D
It was within the first few days, which is mind blowing. I was just sitting there and I had always struggled to bring up phlegm and to clear my lungs. My phlegm was just always very thick and just like concrete in my lungs. So my lungs were just filled with concrete and I just could never move it, no matter how much physio I did or anything. And then, yeah, I remember sitting there a couple of days after starting the open label trial and I hadn't even moved and all of a sudden I just coughed and this plug of phlegm just came up and I was like, where has this come from? I don't know. This sounds like a very sci fi esque kind of thing, but this monster that had always been in my lungs and holding me back and just being able to cough it all up after years and years of trying and fighting it and just being able to get rid of it all and just saying goodbye to it was really cool. I could just feel my whole body changing really. Within the first few days of the first week, I would wake up and I had more energy than when I went to bed. And that had never happened in years. You know, I would wake up every morning more tired than the previous day and coughing more. And then all of a sudden, within this first week, my cough was disappearing, which was almost a sad thing, you know, it was like it was synonymous with me. It was part of my identity was just this constant cough and that was leaving. I describe it as being picked up and put in a brand new shiny body where everything was squeaky clean, everything worked. It was like a well oiled machine and I just felt, you know, unrecognisable in a way.
- [25:28]
A
Then in 2020, Covid hit. As long as Kirsty stayed on the trial, she would have free access to the drug. But that meant she needed to go back to the clinic in Manchester every three months for tests. But Covid was really hard for Kirsty. She was stuck inside, thousands of miles away from family and friends. Meanwhile, New Zealand had strict borders, but was virtually Covid free. Kirsty decided to move back home.
- [25:53]
D
The consequence of that was that I had to fly back to the UK every three months during COVID and like the global pandemic in order to go to Manchester for this four hour, five hour hospital appointment, get my next set of medicines for three months and then Fly back to New Zealand, go through two weeks of quarantine. So that was two weeks in a hotel room. You could go out for 20 minutes a day for some exercise or walking, but otherwise it was like staying in a hotel room by yourself for two weeks. So that was seven trips I did back to the UK during COVID seven round trips and then also seven stints in New Zealand's like, managed quarantine.
- [26:32]
A
The drug wasn't yet available through New Zealand's managed healthcare system. And so it was either fly back and forth to the UK or pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to privately fund her treatments.
- [26:43]
D
There was also a black market version being made in, I think, South America that some people were accessing. I don't know much about it, but yeah, you can kind of get an idea of some of the lengths that people were going to, to access it because it was life saving and you don't have years to wait.
- [27:04]
A
However, CF patients are able to access the medicine, it doesn't work for all of them. Some patients have side effects that force them to go off the drug. And there's a list of reasons why a patient might not be eligible. But Kirsty says there are some people who are eligible for the drug who choose not to take it.
- [27:21]
D
So there's definitely some people in the CF community around the world who have struggled. I think, especially teenagers who have grown up with CF and thought, you know, this is their life and they are going to pass away young. And I don't know if they've come to terms with it. Their mentality is that, yeah, I don't want to take this medicine or I don't need it.
- [27:44]
A
But through all of it, the flights back and forth to the uk, the tests, the expense, Kirsty never wavered in her decision to take the drug.
- [27:53]
D
As time went on, knowing that this was the new normal, that I was actually stable and consistent and my lungs weren't going to fill back up or I knew infection wasn't going to come in and start breeding and damaging my lungs or anything. It was the fact I could just stay so stable. Stable was a huge relief. And that was what I completely underestimated in the whole thing was, you know, there was all this physical change, but the mental change was really big as well.
- [28:23]
A
Well, so I want to talk a little bit more about that. What was it like emotionally, to be facing a life that was so different from the life that you'd expected?
- [28:32]
D
I'm still, you know, it's been seven years that I've been on this medicine now, and I'm still getting my head around it. You know, especially the first year on the medicine, it was like, euphoric. It was great. And everyone around me who, you know, would see me and old friends who would catch up, they. Everyone was blown away. Like, my family was blown away. They were also very relieved, you know, because they had started to see me get really, really ill. And so to see the impact it had on my whole community and the CF community as well, was. Was so exciting that first year. And then I think I kind of got back to, okay, this is now normal. Like, this is what life is going to look like. I've now got to start planning for a long life, which I never did.
- [29:20]
A
Kirsty's parents had always encouraged her to go to college and pursue a career, and Kirsty had done those things, but she'd never thought about saving money for retirement or having kids or doing the other things that people with an average life expectancy think about.
- [29:33]
D
I had achieved all of my goals and now I had, you know, nothing to kind of aim for nothing to. I don't know how to explain it, but just replanning life from the beginning again. I was, yeah, in my late twenties at that point. A lot of friends were getting married. They were very settled, like they were buying houses. They were already kind of five steps ahead of me. And I kind of had to readjust all of these expectations, and it was a bit confusing some of it.
- [30:00]
A
You mentioned your friends in their late 20s and early 30s, getting married, having children. What do you imagine for yourself? What does living well mean to you today? And what do you want for your future.
- [30:19]
D
To be like? I don't know. I think that's something that I'm really puzzling over at the moment. And I'm also, I think, most importantly, I've learned that, you know, happiness is really important and that no matter where you are in the world or what's happening, it's all about being grateful and happy with what you have and where you are and enjoying the little things. So that's what I'm really focusing on kind of right now. As cliche as it sounds, it is a bit of a roller coaster. And. And I'm kind of just regrouping a lot. I kind of mentally said to myself, I'm going to give myself a few years of just enjoy life and regrouping. It's been more difficult than what I thought. And also, no one prepares you for it. People get diagnosed with a terminal illness very Often the reverse barely ever happens. You know, where you're given a whole life to live, there's not people that you can really go to to talk about who have been in a similar situation. So it's very much like figuring out as you go along. A few years ago, I went in and saw a therapist, which was amazing. That was hugely beneficial. And we just unpacked a lot of stuff. And I remember her kind of saying, you know, a lot of what you're talking about is trauma. You've gone through a lot of trauma. And I kind of thought, no, I haven't been through trauma. Like, trauma is when, you know, you've been abused or you've lived and, you know, like, really, really tough conditions or you've been treated poorly or, you know, I've been surrounded by amazing people who have wanted to do everything to get me good. But actually, once we kind of talked about it all, I realized, no, there has been a lot of big things that have impacted the way I look at life and the way I treat things. So, yeah, now I'm learning to just pace life, like, go slower, and I don't need to achieve everything tomorrow.
- [32:14]
A
I told all of this to my friend Hal Hirschfeld, who studies how people think about their future selves. What would he say to someone who never thought that they would have a future self and therefore never planned for what that future self might need?
- [32:27]
B
I think having some compassion for herself and her past self is important. You know, we've spent this whole conversation talking about future selves, but to some extent, our past selves are also different people. And you can get stuck in the regret, or you can also try to step in the shoes of your past self and recognize that the decision that she made then was a very rational one.
- [32:50]
A
Kirsty's situation is unusual, but we all deal with decisions that our past selves have made that make our current life a bit more difficult. Maybe we left a job or relationship that we should have held onto. Maybe we pass on the opportunity to travel, or maybe we traveled too much and now are saddled with debt.
- [33:07]
B
And it's hard sometimes to remember the emotions and the fear and also the rational perspective that our past lives may have had. But if we do that, I think we can start forgiving them and then we can also, you know, move on. There is research that suggests that real, genuine self compassion that is, you know, like forgiving a past version of ourselves from making some decision or not doing something real, genuine self forgiveness in that regard is a key component to Moving forward.
- [33:44]
A
Kirsty doesn't seem to have a lot of regrets, but she does sound a little wistful when she talks about friends who've bought houses and started having children. I asked Hal what he would say to that.
- [33:54]
B
You know, there are some things where doors have closed and there are other things where it may not be too late. And, you know, I mean, there's some cheesiness in this phrase, but I really like it. You know, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. And the second best time is today. You know, for right now. It may have been better to start those decisions earlier, but there's nothing to stop that from happening now.
- [34:16]
A
I asked Hal if he had any advice for the millions of people who might be thinking about their future selves for the first time.
- [34:24]
B
Hmm, what a gift. In a way.
- [34:28]
A
Yeah.
- [34:29]
B
I think it's probably an opportunity to start thinking about what she and others, you know, what they want, A five years out future self, a ten years out future self to look like. How are they spending their time? Who are they with? What are they doing? Are they working, not working, what's that? You know, what do each of those periods look like? Also recognize that that future self is not static, that it may change, it may look very different than the way they think it will be. And that's also an opportunity to continually reinvent and revisit their future self. And. And that's also a gift. That's also an amazing opportunity.
- [35:16]
A
For the most part, Kirstie is adjusted to her new normal, and she doesn't spend a lot of time regretting the decisions she made when she thought she'd never have the chance to grow old.
- [35:26]
D
I keep having to pinch myself and that's what these kind of conversations are. So nice to have every now and then because I never forget I have cf, but my day to day is just never, ever limited by it. You know, it's something that's still there, but I never, ever have to make decisions in my life factoring in cystic fibrosis anymore, which is such a great thing to be able to do. Life is great. I'm able to, you know, go for runs and for bike rides and do I love the outdoors. I do lots in the outdoors. And each time I push myself and it's exciting because my body can do it and my body's getting fitter and stronger and it's just, it feels quite limitless. So it's. Yeah, no, life is very exciting, very busy and very good.
- [36:12]
A
What would your mom think? If she could see your life now.
- [36:17]
D
She would be so happy. She's a very strong woman. Kind of could be a bit stiff upper lip, and I think it would just, it would make her very emotional. Yeah, it kind of makes me a bit emotional. And I'm, I'm not an overly emotional person, but, yeah, thinking of her knowing.
- [36:34]
A
Yeah, yeah. Before We Go is a production of Podcast Nation and Me. Our production team includes Karen Given, James Brown, and Madison Brown.
- [36:52]
D
Brit.
- [36:52]
A
Original music by Edward Ayton. I'm Dr. Shoshana Ungerliter, and if you like what you've heard, I'd be so grateful if you tell a friend about us. And please leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. It helps other people who need us find us a little easier. And if you'd like to see photos and videos of these conversations and connect with other Before We Go listeners, visit us on Instagram Before We Go podcast next time on the show. When Fumico Chino's husband Andrew was dying of cancer, the cost of his treatment added more stress to an already unimaginably difficult time.
- [37:31]
C
The bills that would come in the mail would be 10,000, 20,000, $50,000, ultimately over $100,000, $200,000. Right. But it's like the bills that come in the mail are like imaginary money. And the money you have to take out of your wallet to get the medication to stop your husband from vomiting, that needs to be paid now.
- [37:51]
A
Fumiko is now a radiation oncologist working to address the toxic cost of healthcare. And she has an unlikely ally, Dallas Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban. What's the fire underneath all of this? What drives you to keep pushing when it would be easier not to and just go sit and watch basketball games and hang out with your family?
- [38:11]
D
I can't think of anything more fun than fucking up healthcare. That, to me, is like winning a championship.
- [38:18]
A
That's next time on Before We Go.