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0:48
- This is Undaunted Life Man's Podcast.
0:51
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:52
Let's get into it.
0:54
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened,
0:57
and I will give you rest.
0:58
That's Matthew 11, 28.
1:00
So this is gonna be a tough one today,
1:04
just right from the get-go.
1:06
If we go back to episode 173 of this podcast,
1:10
it was called "Foxhole Funeral," okay?
1:12
And that was an episode where we discussed
1:13
one of my foxhole guys, J.C.,
1:15
otherwise known as J.C., the Consistent,
1:17
losing his father to COVID-19.
1:19
And we kind of talked about that whole scenario
1:22
and how that was super unfortunate for one of our brothers,
1:24
one of the guys in our foxhole
1:25
that that's something that befell his family.
1:28
But we talked about how impressed we were
1:30
with how he handled himself,
1:31
with how he was the support system for his family,
1:33
and tried to glean some wisdom from that.
1:35
But now we have lost a member of our foxhole.
1:41
So.
1:59
On August the 23rd, 2021,
2:02
that was the day that Landon the Quiet
2:07
decided to take his own life.
2:09
Now, if that name sounds familiar,
2:23
it's because you've been a listener to this show
2:25
for some time, because Landon the Quiet
2:28
was one of the men that was featured prominently
2:30
in episode 104 of this podcast called Your Foxhole.
2:33
So one of our best episodes
2:36
and something that is brought up a lot.
2:38
And that's an episode where I listed the men
2:41
that were in my personal foxhole at that time.
2:43
So in fact, I'm gonna go ahead and play a clip
2:46
from that show here to kind of give you an idea
2:49
of what I thought about Landon
2:51
and what I thought his, I guess,
2:54
his contribution to the group was.
2:55
So here we go into the clip.
2:57
Then we've got Landon the Quiet, okay?
3:00
Landon the Quiet.
3:01
Now, this is a guy that has a background
3:03
in the military, he was a Marine,
3:06
but this is a guy that comes very, very often.
3:09
He's a physically large guy,
3:12
but the thing that is, whenever I was thinking about Landon,
3:14
like what would I say would be kind of the first thing
3:17
is he's just quiet.
3:18
And I mean that in a lot of different ways, okay?
3:20
So when we're doing our discussion as a group,
3:23
he might throw his two cents in once a month, right?
3:28
So we're meeting four different times
3:30
and he might get into the discussion one time.
3:33
Now, if you were just an outside observer,
3:36
you might think, oh, that guy's quiet
3:38
or he has nothing to add or something like that.
3:40
But when you've been around him for a long time,
3:42
he speaks up when he knows it's necessary.
3:45
So he's not one of those guys
3:47
that just talks to hear himself talker.
3:49
Oh, well, I was quiet for about half a second.
3:51
I better like jump in.
3:52
That's kind of like what I do, right?
3:53
It's like, I'm a hate silent.
3:54
So it's like, all right, we need to fill the silence
3:56
with something, somebody talk for the love of God.
3:58
If it has to be me, I'll do it.
3:59
But Landon just he'll pipe up when he needs to.
4:03
But here's the other thing,
4:04
whether he's struggling during the workout, which he does,
4:07
sometimes when he's struggling,
4:09
when we're doing the jujitsu, which he does,
4:10
sometimes which we all struggle, right?
4:13
He's not talking about it.
4:14
He's not going out of his way to, you know,
4:17
tell everybody on the planet,
4:18
hey, I'm having some trouble right now.
4:20
Hey, I need to take a little bit of a break.
4:22
Like he's just not that type of guy.
4:23
But the other thing that's important
4:25
is when he's the type of guy that asks for your help,
4:27
you know that he means it.
4:28
And it's because he's not just constantly asking for help.
4:31
And so he had some stuff that came up in his personal life
4:34
in the last year or so, and he came to the group.
4:37
He came to a couple of guys in the group to discuss it with
4:40
and you knew you needed to pipe up and pay attention
4:42
'cause he doesn't ask for much.
4:43
He almost asks for nothing.
4:45
He doesn't talk very much either.
4:47
And so when he talks, you listen.
4:49
And so those are important people to have in the group
4:51
because if you've got somebody that is not constantly talking,
4:54
constantly asking for things,
4:55
constantly complaining, constantly, whatever,
4:58
you know, it's easy to kind of drown that person out.
5:00
But on the other side, when someone doesn't talk very much
5:02
at all, you might ignore that person.
5:05
And you don't want to make sure that you don't do that.
5:07
- So that's actually the first time that I've listened to that.
5:10
I just kind of threw it into the show here.
5:12
And so I was just listening back to that,
5:14
just getting prepared for this next section.
5:16
And it's odd, you know, how I described him
5:21
as being a guy that doesn't ask for help,
5:23
that doesn't want to show emotion,
5:25
especially in light of what he decided to do
5:28
by taking his own life.
5:30
And by the way, you know, some people are like,
5:33
why don't you use these guys' last names?
5:34
But, you know, for most guys, I don't want,
5:37
you know, if I ever do something crazy,
5:38
I don't want them to be connected to me.
5:40
And if I've done something egregious
5:42
and I don't want it to reflect on them personally,
5:43
but you know, this is public record.
5:45
His name is Landon Willis, passed away,
5:48
obviously not that long ago, a few days ago
5:50
or about a week ago.
5:52
But I guess as a quick aside,
5:54
I didn't want to make sure
5:55
that I threw this in there in case those of you
5:57
that aren't going to listen to this all the way through.
5:59
To any of you that are considering suicide,
6:03
there's a lot of ways that you can get help, okay?
6:05
There's the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
6:07
Their number is 1-800-273-8255.
6:11
Again, that's 1-800-273-8255.
6:15
I'm not licensed to deal in any way
6:18
in some sort of a clinical setting
6:19
with this type of a happening.
6:22
But you can email me info@ndontodilife.
6:25
Shoot me an email, info@ndontodilife.
6:27
I'll hop on the phone with you
6:29
and we'll call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline together, right?
6:31
But just reach out to someone,
6:33
reach out to someone that can help you, right?
6:36
But to give you a little bit of an idea
6:38
on Landon the Quiet or Landon Willis,
6:40
he joined the Marine Corps at a very young age.
6:43
He served two tours in Afghanistan.
6:45
He also joined the Oklahoma City Police Department
6:47
in December of 2020.
6:49
That's whenever he got out of academy.
6:51
So this is a guy whose life was spent serving others, right?
6:55
So if that's all you knew about him,
6:56
if that was the back of the baseball card,
6:57
you'd be like, okay, Marine, you know,
6:59
wanted to be a cop, like all those things.
7:00
But, you know, in the interim,
7:02
he had some other jobs and did some things.
7:03
But everything he did was in support of his family, four kids, okay?
7:07
And that's the thing about Landon that is so striking,
7:12
that he spent that amount of time
7:15
not thinking about himself, because again,
7:19
when I'm going back in my memory to a time
7:20
whenever he came to me, this was a couple of years ago
7:22
when he was going through a very, very rough personal time,
7:24
you could tell it was everything he could muster
7:28
to ask for me to go and chat with him.
7:30
But he did, okay?
7:33
But that was one of my best memories of Landon,
7:36
'cause I got to see some emotion from him.
7:38
I got to hear from him.
7:40
Whereas, you know, when we're training on Sunday nights,
7:41
there's not a whole lot of that going on
7:43
because we're, you know, we're training, we're drilling,
7:44
we're working out, we're doing a lot of those things.
7:47
But for a guy like that to have his entire life defined
7:50
by the fact that he wanted to serve others
7:53
and would exhaust himself to an extreme degree.
7:57
I mean, towards the end of his life, you know, as a cop,
8:00
he took the overnight shift
8:01
so that he could spend more time with his kids.
8:03
But if you think about that, you work all night
8:05
doing difficult work, you know,
8:07
especially in Oklahoma City Pete being a police officer,
8:09
but then you're there for your kids, you know,
8:11
take them to school or pick them up from school
8:13
or do activities, he did everything he could for his kids.
8:15
The funeral was Monday of this week.
8:19
You know, it's kind of your normal funeral stuff.
8:21
You had, you know, some singing and a video.
8:23
The pastor said some words and, you know,
8:25
we'll talk more about that here in a second.
8:26
There was 21 gun salute.
8:27
But there were two truly heartbreaking moments.
8:32
So one of his best friends, eulogized him.
8:35
So he got up there and this is a guy that he's known
8:37
since he was very young and they actually,
8:39
I don't know if they went through Academy together,
8:41
but his best friend was a cop
8:42
and then Landon became a cop.
8:44
And so he spent some time just kind of giving people
8:46
a little bit more context around some of the things
8:48
that I've already shared with you.
8:49
This is a guy that wanted to serve.
8:50
This is a guy that would yak your ear off
8:53
if you got to know him and if you got into a subject matter
8:55
that he was passionate about and how his countenance
8:57
and everything about him would change
8:58
when he would start talking about his children.
9:01
The other really gut-riching heartbreaking moment
9:04
was when the color guard, you know, folded up the flag,
9:08
that was on his casket and gave it to their father.
9:13
To Landon's father.
9:14
I don't know if you've ever been to a military
9:19
or a police funeral, this was both.
9:21
That's a very powerful moment.
9:22
You know, you could hear a pin drop
9:24
and just the thought of being a dad
9:26
and what that flag symbolizes
9:31
because it's an honorable thing,
9:34
but it also symbolizes that your kids not here anymore.
9:38
They're not coming back.
9:43
One thing that I did find odd with the funeral
9:46
and some other guys pointed this out
9:48
is the use of Matthew 1128.
9:50
So again, it's come to me all who are weary and burdened
9:53
and I will give you rest.
9:55
To be honest, and I don't want to be too hyper critical here,
9:59
when you say scriptures like that
10:02
at a funeral for someone who committed suicide
10:06
and you talk about now he's at peace, now he can rest.
10:09
I don't really like that very much
10:10
because you don't know who's in the crowd.
10:12
You don't know what they're struggling with
10:15
and you're almost inadvertently giving them
10:17
a pathway to fix that issue.
10:19
And again, I want to be very, very humble
10:21
in my criticism of that use
10:23
because that pastor was doing everything he could
10:24
to comfort a family and a community
10:26
that was absolutely torn to shreds.
10:29
But any pastors listening to this
10:30
or anyone that does funerals or eulogizes,
10:33
I would caution you to perhaps not do that.
10:36
You know, that you don't have to get into this big diatribe
10:38
about suicide and, you know, all the things therein,
10:41
but, you know, I maybe wouldn't use that scripture in that way.
10:44
But Landon's suicide brought up a lot of different thoughts.
10:50
And I'll get to them here because, you know,
10:52
some of you might even be weird like,
10:53
hey, why are you, why are you doing this?
10:54
You know, you seem to be airing out dirty laundry of people,
10:57
but again, this is public record.
10:59
What happened?
11:00
It was a public funeral, so anyone could have came to it.
11:03
But guys, there's someone listening to this
11:06
that needs to hear some of the things that I'm about to say.
11:09
Okay?
11:09
And that doesn't mean I'm special.
11:11
It means I'm the one that's bringing you this information
11:13
at this current moment because you're, you know,
11:15
playing my podcast, you know, in your car
11:17
and your headphones are the gym, okay?
11:19
So this isn't about getting into one's personal life
11:22
'cause I'm gonna leave a lot of the stuff that I know out,
11:24
obviously out of respect for Landon's memory
11:26
and his family, but there are a lot of you
11:27
that need to hear some of these things.
11:28
So the first thing that the first thought I had
11:31
when thinking about this whole situation
11:33
is that we as a people, we forget about suicide
11:36
if we're not struggling with it personally.
11:38
And if no one around us is committing it, okay?
11:41
So if you go back to episode 167 of this podcast,
11:43
it was called Suicide and Thanksgiving.
11:45
I released it on Thanksgiving.
11:47
Talked about suicide in general
11:48
when we talked about stats about suicide.
11:51
So we talked about how the CDC has reported
11:53
via the National Institute of Mental Health
11:55
as suicide is the second leading cause of death
11:57
and people aged 10 to 35.
12:00
Landon was 37 when he took his own life.
12:02
It's the fourth leading cause of death
12:04
and people aged 35 to 54, which would have been his bracket.
12:07
Suicide's increased by 35% from 1999 to 2018.
12:12
Suicide rates among males is about three and a half times
12:15
higher than that of females.
12:16
Among males, the suicide rate was highest
12:18
for those aged 75 and older.
12:20
So that's about 40 per 100,000.
12:23
And over half of the suicides in the United States
12:26
with those, a firearm is used, right?
12:29
But then specifically veteran suicide.
12:31
You've heard a lot about veteran suicide,
12:33
but it's around 17 a day.
12:34
I think some people think it's 22 or 23,
12:35
but it's around 17 vets a day.
12:37
Now that's that can be a little bit deceiving
12:39
because again, like I said, just a second ago,
12:41
the majority of suicides that occur in males
12:45
are those that are 75 and older.
12:46
So you could have somebody that,
12:48
maybe a Korean war veteran or a veteran of Vietnam
12:53
or something like that, that takes their life
12:55
and it doesn't really have anything to do specifically
12:57
or directly with their service.
12:58
So it can be a little bit, but regardless,
13:00
17 a day are taking their lives.
13:03
But military veterans have doubled a suicide rate
13:06
of non-veterans.
13:07
That's not insignificant, okay?
13:09
And even still with some of the things we've seen
13:12
with the drawdown within Afghanistan,
13:14
more active duty soldiers have died from suicide
13:17
than in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
13:20
Think about that.
13:21
More active duty soldiers have died from suicide
13:24
than those that have died in warfare
13:26
against a Taliban or al-Qaeda or ISIS, right?
13:29
That's crazy.
13:31
But one thing that I think is very clear here
13:35
is that we will likely see veteran suicide go up.
13:38
I mean, despite the best efforts of the government
13:40
and suicide prevention organizations,
13:42
it's been turning that way for the entirety of the US
13:44
so it wouldn't make any sense to not include
13:46
that group of people, that's not gonna affect them.
13:48
But this debacle in Afghanistan,
13:50
which we're not really gonna talk about
13:51
'cause we've talked about it a lot in the last couple of weeks,
13:53
that's caused hundreds of thousands of veterans
13:56
in the United States to call into question their service
13:58
and what they did overseas.
13:59
'Cause they saw things, perhaps they did things
14:01
that they never thought that they would do
14:03
or never thought that they would see
14:04
some diabolically evil things, right?
14:07
But now they're calling into question
14:08
whether their sacrifice was worth it.
14:09
You have people that lost limbs,
14:10
you have people that lost brothers
14:11
and now they're calling that into question.
14:14
The second thing that I wanna talk about
14:15
that I thought about throughout this entire situation
14:17
is that men don't ask for help.
14:20
And I kind of talked about that
14:21
whenever I was doing that episode 104
14:23
when I was talking about land
14:24
and that men just don't ask for help.
14:27
And it's for a myriad of reasons.
14:28
It's pride.
14:30
It's, you don't wanna be seen differently by your brothers.
14:33
You wanna be seen as strong.
14:35
All this is kind of coming off of pride.
14:37
But you wanna be a leader for others.
14:40
You wanna be stoic,
14:42
which I think there's some value in that
14:43
in controlling your emotions and controlling yourself.
14:47
But what happens is you're not training yourself
14:49
and you're not training your brain
14:50
to ask people for help.
14:51
And yeah, you can ask help but hey,
14:54
I need to move this couch.
14:55
Can you help me out or hey,
14:56
I don't know how to fix this thing.
14:58
Can you come help me out over here or hey,
14:59
I'm having some trouble with my kids.
15:00
Like do you have any advice?
15:01
Like those are all things that are important
15:03
but they're very, very small.
15:04
But if you're not asking for help in the small things,
15:06
when the big things come up,
15:08
it seems astronomically difficult to do.
15:10
Seems like something that you couldn't possibly pull off,
15:13
right?
15:14
And I think that that's very detrimental,
15:15
especially in this space of suicide.
15:17
And I was talking to a buddy of mine named Donnie.
15:21
He's a family counselor and has been a counselor
15:22
for a long time and I was talking to him last night
15:25
and he said, he was basically talking about,
15:27
people shouldn't assume that they can never get to that place.
15:31
You know, that place being where they are actually considering
15:34
taking their own life and considering it
15:36
not from an emotional standpoint
15:37
but just from a pragmatic standpoint.
15:39
Because if you've never experienced that,
15:42
you may look at situations like what we've got with landing
15:45
or with other people in your life and think to yourself,
15:47
man, I'm just, maybe you're thankful.
15:49
Like thank you God that, you know, that's not me,
15:51
that's not something that has affected me directly.
15:55
But you could get there because things fall apart
15:59
for a myriad of different reasons.
16:01
So people commit suicide, you know,
16:03
after losing a family member,
16:05
after losing, you know, a business,
16:08
after going bankrupt, after, you know,
16:10
having a physical ailment,
16:12
there are people that never had any issues
16:13
and then they get some sort of a chronic pain
16:16
and they just try to get rid of it.
16:17
You have people that have tinnitus,
16:18
you know, this constant ringing in the ears
16:20
that they just can't stand anymore.
16:22
And part of what we're trying to help people do, you know,
16:25
in building spiritual mental and physical resilience
16:27
is when those times come up that you can overcome,
16:30
not just with your own white knuckle grit,
16:33
which is important, but also using the power of God.
16:36
I mean, again, we have the Apostle Paul prayed
16:37
with three times for some ailment to be taken from him
16:41
and it wasn't taken from him, right?
16:43
But God saw him through it.
16:44
And I guess that really leads into the next thing
16:47
I thought about is that all of us
16:51
have a point of no return or so we think, okay?
16:56
Because in this situation with my brother, landed,
17:00
he got to a point and we see the evidence afterwards,
17:05
which is, frankly, none of your business
17:06
of kind of how this went down,
17:08
that he reached a point of no return
17:10
and he acted on the thought
17:14
that it would never be different.
17:16
That what was going on right in that moment
17:20
was going to define everything about him forever.
17:23
So recently, it wasn't, you know, the podcast,
17:26
the Jaco podcast episode that was released this week,
17:28
it was the one that was released last week.
17:30
It was with Sarah Wilkinson,
17:31
she's the widow of Chad Wilkinson, who's a seal.
17:33
He was also in the development group,
17:34
Still Team Six.
17:35
And in that episode, you know, Sarah just kind of details
17:39
this slow, gradual decline of her husband, Chad,
17:44
you know, while he's in the military
17:46
and even looking at pictures,
17:48
because Chad did kill himself,
17:50
looking at pictures of him leading up to a suicide
17:53
and seeing him change like the life draining from his face
17:56
and the life draining from his eyes
17:59
and how he had just gotten to a point
18:01
where there was nothing that anyone could do
18:03
that he was going to take his life and that was it
18:05
and they had kids and then the whole nine, right?
18:07
I even had another friend tell me a story recently
18:09
about his brother who passed away and his wife,
18:12
his brother's wife knew that he didn't just pass away,
18:17
he committed suicide, but his brother's wife knew
18:19
that he was thinking about committing suicide.
18:21
So she takes him to the hospital and the thing is,
18:23
is if you're at a hospital and someone suicidal,
18:25
but they won't admit it, they can't keep you there, right?
18:28
Unless there's some sort of determination that they're not,
18:30
you know, they don't have their mental faculties in order,
18:33
but he goes to the hospital.
18:34
Dr. Asim, are you feeling suicidal?
18:35
He's like, no, sir, I don't.
18:36
I'd actually frankly like to leave.
18:38
They go home, he goes and gets the gun,
18:40
walks around the side of the house.
18:41
His wife follows them out there trying to stop him.
18:43
He looks right in the eye and says, you know, I'm sorry.
18:47
You know, goodbye, puts a shotgun to his head
18:49
and blows his face off, right?
18:51
Some people, I mean, they get to that point,
18:55
but there's some pretty good evidence to suggest
18:58
that that's a super temporary feeling for a lot of people
19:02
and that there is a way to get past it, okay?
19:04
So there is a phenomenon of people that commit suicide
19:08
by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, okay?
19:10
And there was a study done of some of the people
19:13
that actually survived the fall from the Golden Gate Bridge
19:16
because here's the thing, the bridge is 225 feet high, okay?
19:19
It's about four seconds of free falling
19:21
before you hit the water and you're hitting the water
19:22
at about 75 miles an hour.
19:24
So that pretty much makes the water you're hitting
19:26
essentially concrete and 98% of the people
19:29
that jumped from the bridge die, right?
19:30
It's technically a higher, you know, chance of dying
19:33
than people that try to hang themselves
19:35
or shoot themselves, you know, surprisingly enough.
19:37
But Ed Newman, he's the writer of an article
19:39
called a lesson from 29 Golden Gate suicide attempts
19:42
and I just wanna read to you a couple of quotes here.
19:43
So here's one quote, all 29 people who survived
19:47
their suicide attempts of off the San Francisco's
19:49
Golden Gate Bridge have said they regretted their decision
19:53
as soon as they jumped, okay?
19:56
And then here's another quote
19:57
that's citing a different study.
19:59
What Dr. Friedenthal found was that 515 persons
20:02
who intended to jump from the bridge and were stopped,
20:06
only 7% went on to actually kill themselves
20:09
as at some point later in life.
20:11
What Dr. Seton found is a remarkable testament
20:14
to the fact that a suicidal crisis is often,
20:17
very often temporary.
20:19
So again, Landon got to a point where he felt like
20:24
there was no way out and there was no logical conclusion
20:28
except for his own death.
20:29
And as I discussed on that, you know,
20:32
suicide Thanksgiving episode, I have fundamentally
20:35
and not emotionally thought about that myself
20:37
at different points.
20:38
You know, when you're having career struggles
20:40
or you don't feel like you're producing what you should
20:42
and you're not supporting the people in your life
20:43
and the way that you should.
20:44
And you start looking at your life insurance
20:47
and you're like, oh, this is how much I'm more dead
20:48
and I don't think I'm worth that much alive.
20:50
And you just start thinking through these things, right?
20:54
And you're not thinking about all the things
20:56
that you do have, you're thinking about the things
20:57
that you don't.
20:58
But again, I think that's so profound.
21:01
Like of the 515 people that intended to jump off the bridge
21:06
but were stopped, this is another study.
21:08
Only 7% less than 10% of them actually went on
21:10
to kill themselves later.
21:12
They got to this point where there was this overwhelming
21:17
sense of emotion and the only way out was death.
21:20
But it wasn't.
21:22
And maybe that's worth you listening this far
21:26
into the podcast is hearing that.
21:28
That again, those people that jumped off the bridge
21:32
that survived in those four seconds of free fall,
21:36
the only place in the world they wanted to be,
21:38
they would have rather been, is back up on that ledge.
21:40
But they got to survive to tell you that, right?
21:44
So the next thing I thought through here is,
21:48
the importance for men to have an active eyes open foxhole.
21:53
Again, I did an entire series on how to build
21:55
a godly, manly foxhole.
21:57
It's on our website.
21:58
It's on this podcast feed.
21:59
It's on you version.
22:00
Go check it out everywhere.
22:01
Like I'm not going to re rehash those points here.
22:03
But the situation that happened with land
22:06
has really made me rethink how I personally act at my foxhole
22:11
because again, we get together every Sunday night
22:14
to do jiu-jitsu.
22:15
We're reading the same book.
22:16
We work out, we do jiu-jitsu or striking, right?
22:19
But whenever I'm there, I'm kind of in business mode, right?
22:23
You know, I don't get a lot of extra time to work out.
22:25
So I go a little bit early, I'll do some heavy bag stuff
22:27
for four or five rounds, you know, we'll read the book
22:29
and then we'll do the workout.
22:30
And then, you know, as soon as we're done with jiu-jitsu
22:32
or whatever, it's like, all right, I'm getting changed.
22:33
I'm getting home so I can get showered,
22:35
so I can get ready for Monday, right?
22:36
You know, it's that type of a mindset.
22:38
So I don't stop long enough to even notice if someone's off.
22:43
Now, there have been times where I've noticed someone's off
22:45
and I talk to him afterwards.
22:47
You know, I'm there 10, 15 minutes later
22:49
than I normally would be, but I'm talking to one
22:51
of my brothers about something that's going on
22:52
and it's been good.
22:53
So the people have done the same thing with me.
22:55
That's the whole point of having a foxhole, right?
22:57
And I'm not putting the onus on our foxhole
23:00
for the decision that land in May.
23:03
But all of us, I think at some point in the last week,
23:08
have questioned what we could have done.
23:10
Is there something we could have done?
23:13
Is there something we could notice?
23:14
'Cause here's the deal.
23:15
He trained with us two weeks before he killed himself.
23:18
Two weeks, because I gave him crap
23:20
'cause he ordered one of our on-daunted live t-shirts.
23:22
And I was like, hey man, I'm not gonna mail this to you.
23:24
We live in the same city.
23:25
You get your butt to the forge, right?
23:27
You know, it was, 'cause, you know,
23:28
I was kind of giving him crap
23:29
because he hadn't been coming a lot lately
23:30
because he was busy with overnight shifts
23:32
and all that and the timing didn't work out.
23:34
And he just like, yeah, okay, whatever.
23:35
And he came to the forge,
23:36
trained at his normal thing, worked out hard,
23:39
got his t-shirt and took off.
23:41
And that was the last time I saw him.
23:42
But I'm questioning and I'm trying to look back
23:46
at that night and be like,
23:48
aside from making eye contact with him
23:50
when I shook his hand and gave him his t-shirt,
23:51
like did I stop to look at him any more than that?
23:56
Was he just normal at that moment
23:59
and things devolved thereafter?
24:02
And that's the thing that's so important
24:03
is if something is going wrong with you,
24:05
you should have been in your life that will notice.
24:08
If there's something going wrong with another man
24:10
in your life, you should be there and available to notice.
24:13
And if you're not, like, that's a struggle
24:18
that you have to get through.
24:20
So I think that's an important thing specifically for me
24:22
is to make sure I'm paying attention
24:23
and that's a call to action for you as well.
24:26
But the last thing I really thought about
24:28
and I'll be very careful with this section
24:30
because there's people that, frankly,
24:32
it's none of your business to know what's going on.
24:34
But the overall point is toxic people
24:39
can poison you to death, okay?
24:43
Landed had some very toxic people in his life.
24:48
And I don't mean toxic like,
24:50
oh, they post weird things online
24:52
and oh, they're not always very nice in conversations.
24:54
I mean, diabolically evil, toxic people in his life.
25:01
Some of the most horrific stories that I've heard
25:04
from people with their relationships to people,
25:07
I heard because of his life, right?
25:10
And some of the situations they're in, okay?
25:13
So it's almost like really, really toxic people.
25:16
It's like they're not tightening the noose
25:20
and taking the chair out from under your feet,
25:22
but they're helping you make it, you know?
25:24
You know, they're not pulling the trigger on the gun,
25:28
but they're helping you load the magazine
25:30
is kind of kind of how it feels.
25:32
And so you have to be very, very careful
25:36
with the toxic people in your life
25:37
because they can poison you,
25:39
that they can just drip and drip and drip and drip,
25:42
Chinese water torture on you.
25:44
Until one day, it goes from this drip, drip, drip
25:47
to a deluge and you can't fight back against the current.
25:51
And so I caution all of you guys
25:55
to make sure that you have the toxic people in your life
25:58
and check or out of your lives entirely.
26:00
So again, the call to action here,
26:03
I'm just gonna repeat it from earlier,
26:05
'cause I think it's very, very important.
26:07
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline,
26:09
1-800-273-8255.
26:12
Again, that's 1-800-273-8255.
26:16
Email me.
26:17
If you don't wanna do this suicide hotline,
26:19
email me, info @ undaunted.life.
26:21
Info @ undaunted.life, we will get you help.
26:24
Reach out to someone, okay?
26:26
Now guys, we're not gonna do our normal outro
26:29
with the quick resilience boost in the music and all that.
26:31
But as I've done with previous podcasts,
26:33
I were honoring people that lost their lives,
26:36
military members.
26:38
We're gonna play taps.
26:39
And so that is something that a bugler played
26:42
at his funeral.
26:43
It was incredibly emotional.
26:45
It's a brutal song to listen to,
26:46
especially considering the circumstances.
26:48
But I think that's the only appropriate way
26:49
to put a bow on this episode.
26:51
So here you go.
26:52
(upbeat music)
26:56
(drumming)
27:26
(drumming)
27:56
(drumming)
27:59
(drumming)
28:01
(drumming)
28:04
(drumming)
28:26
(drumming)