 be so professional. Okay, ten o'clock rock, here we are, ten o'clock. Woo, that's early. Yes. That's Mary Ann Sasaki, she's an attorney with the clay firm and she's our host on life in the law and she's a Renaissance woman, may I say that? Yeah, I got it. Yeah, welcome to the show Mary Ann. I like a lot of stuff. Thank you. Yeah, I'm interested in things. So he said, she said, that's our thing. Right. But today we're gonna focus on one little area, not so little actually, and we've decided to call it aging, the next frontier. And I think he said, she said it's a perfect way to express aging, because I think men and women experience aging very differently, frankly. And I tell you the truth, I think women experience aging in a more pleasant way than men, and that's because they have had, they haven't had any period of their life where they were the king of the castle, or the head of the firm, or adored, you know, typically they haven't. And so there's no disappointment as they held. It's kind of a steady, you know what I'm saying? It goes into the chapter thing now. There's the whole thing about aging and mortality and how you deal with mortality and the decline of health. It's complicated, especially if, you know, people around you are living longer and maybe, just maybe you can live longer too with a little effort. So what do you do in the years, those extra years that you found? I think you should just keep doing what you're doing. You know, I never really understood the concept of retiring. I just thought, well, if you, you should be doing something you like every day, and if you're not doing something you like every day, you should find something to do you like every day. Sometimes that's hard financially, isn't it? I know that's hard financially. That's a pretty entitled thing to say. Isn't that terrible? That entitled thing to say? Well, you know, entitled only lasts so long. I mean, you can be entitled one day and not so entitled the next day. That's true. Because we were talking about homelessness. And you know, I mean, I know lots of middle class and upper middle class people who are terrified that by the end of their lives, their resources are not going to last them and they're going to end up homeless. So it's like, it's a real, it's a real issue. And an advanced age, homeless means dead. Pretty much. I mean, if you can't live on the street and you don't have adequate resources to get the health care you need. And you know, it's, you know, and you know, aging is a very big issue actually. You're really hot on this stuff. I am because I'm aging. Right as we speak at this very moment. I am hot on this stuff because well, I came to Hawaii at not such a young age and started over. And it made me think a lot about how people were going to view me and can you make big life changes at times that people are not making big life changes? And I think, yes, you can, you know, but you just have to think about it. I mean, people don't think about it. They just sort of, it happens to them. But what I was going to say about aging in a certain community, in the LGBT community, it's a very interesting dynamic with respect to aging because many people are living, have lived for 20 years or more with HIV and they are often ostracized from their families and there are few services for them. So there has to be now senior citizens homes for LGBT, you know, seniors because we're coming into that. And HIV seniors. Yeah, right. And we're coming into that, they're coming into that age group that 60s and 70s. All the people protesting in the 60s now need services, need health services, you know, senior health services. Well, it can never be all that pretty, Mary Ann, I'm sorry. You know, you get older and the first thing you realize is, God, where did all those 50, 60 years go? I can't account for them. What happened? I have memories, was that really me? Was that somebody else? I mean, is this fiction or fact or what? Well, memory isn't what, yeah, it's not as ironclad as we think it is. No, it's not. It's very fungible, fungible or flexible. And then you get to a certain age and you realize you're declining. You're declining physically and you're declining mentally and you're declining in terms of your influence on the people around you and the community or your role in the community. But not you. No, no, no, not me. The prison company excluded from all of this. And you know, the thing is that, you know, in the old days, caveman days, you know, when you feel, when you have this decline, you went off into the bushes and willed yourself to die. You died. That was the community's way of getting rid of you and that was your way of making peace with it and going, going, what's softly into the night. But that's not what's expected these days. We're talking about additional chapters that are made possible. I think so. So you have this crisis of, you know, shall I continue to do my employment that I've been doing for whenever in my occupational thing? Or should I take advantage of the new way of thinking? Should I go into another, should I fashion another chapter? And some people say, you know, I have loved practicing law all my life. I love it. I love it. So I'm going to continue to do that. Other people say, you know, it's been a charade. I really would have preferred to do something else. I've envied the people who do something else. So I'm going to do something. But they go and do it. And they go and do it, assuming they, assuming they can, you know, and that's a big question too. So, you know, at the end of the day, there are very difficult decisions and there are very difficult processes come down the pike. And it's, it's crisis in many ways from people who recognize, you know, those turning points. And gee, I mean, I don't think it's easy dealing with decline, dealing with what do you do with your time, dealing with making yourself relevant when maybe you're not so relevant as you used to be. Right. And dealing with mortality, which ain't easy. But I agree with all those points, right? But I think that women, it's like a little harder for women because it's, you basically, well, maybe it's not harder. Maybe it's easier because women are older for longer. You know, after a certain age, women don't even exist in the world anymore, almost. Over, over like the age of 45 or 50, they disappear, you know. And I think that men sort of start to experience- Well, everybody will agree with you on this. It's true. Okay. It's true. Okay. All right. Okay. I'll get it. It's, it's, well, anyway. But men, it doesn't happen until a little later, maybe 60, 65. But you have to, you have to face those things of, I think, yeah, lack of power in society, right? That's the, that's, that's the real kicker, I think. Isn't that the worst thing? I mean, all right, so make some pains. That's a role. You know, life, we're social animals. Life isn't worth living unless you have a role of people who say, good for you, Marion. You're doing good things. Right. You really have to have that. Right. I mean, or with few exceptions. But what, you know, what I've been thinking about lately, and it all springs off a conversation I had a few days ago. It's about the way people see money, death, and family. It's kind of a triangular affair when they get older. I would imagine. Their metric is so much money, which is bad metric, terrible metric. And we really should be more enlightened than that. Then secondly is family. Family gets more conscious and maybe more, especially when you die or you are about to die. And everybody looking over your shoulder for your will and your trust and all that. Right. Which you should have. And the benefits. Which as the, yeah, yeah, yeah. You should have that. Early on in your life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As you do other things, you should take every will and trust. But what people don't realize is that, is that your relatives, even your close relatives, you know, they change as you approach the end. It's shocking what happens at the end of life. And it's so great, it's so interesting. Where's the love, man? Where's the love? You know, it's so funny because, you know, it packs a little in the area of trust and mistakes. And we had a client and he died in test date. And his three boys came in and they were all on the same page, lovely boys. And boys, I say, they're about 17 to 25. So we discussed what the next steps would be, that it was in test date and a personal representative would have to be appointed. And we quoted them, like, not a great figure. And they were like, wow, we thought it would be so much more expensive. So we said, yeah, you're not fighting. I said, when you're fighting, that's when it gets, that's when- Fighting is expensive for everybody. Exactly, whether it's a divorce or over a will or whatever. Fighting is not productive. It's not income-wasting, or money-wasting, not money-producing. And yet, when you see these families converge around somebody they think has money, even if he doesn't, then you see this raw greed come out sometimes. It's really horrible. I've seen this personally. I've seen this in my family. Lawyers see this, and you're very practice. Well, you have to see it. That's your practice, you know, typically. Well, even in part of your practice, and you know, it's like lawyers, we see maybe sometimes the worst part of humanity, really, when all of those civilized baneers, you know, get stripped off. And now you say, how much is in it from me? I want that money. I'm entitled. I want that money. I own that money. You have to leave me money. Right. But you know, the thing is, the person who's dying to dusk, sometimes they do kind of silly things, whether they have dementia or whether they're just spiteful. Another problem. And they break up families. I mean, they disparately distribute assets. And no one, there's always some person in the family who thinks they did the most for mom, so they deserve a lion's share. Sure, sure. Happens all the time. And my favorite one is when the dear departed has left different amounts to different kids on the basis that he perceives they need, or he likes them, this one better than that one, or he hates this one better than that one. And then, you know, it's a recipe for complete fragmentation of the family. Absolutely. I mean, you can wreck your family by how you divide things up for that. Absolutely. I know many instances where that's occurred. And you know I'm Italian, so in an Italian family. Italian. Italians who get, they never forget, revenge is a dish best served cold. So, you know, I've had relatives who've done what you say and left different amounts of money to different kids, and just, they never spoke again. Brothers and sisters never spoke again. What a great gift is that. I know. I know. And it was really negligible money. It burns a hole in the family right away. We're not talking millions of dollars here. We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. Right. But that distinction, you know, is like you branding that kid as better or worse than the other kid. You're creating a rivalry for the rest of their lives, and they hate it, and they hate you for it, and they hate each other for it. You know, parents, the big dirty secret though is parents do have favorites. They always have favorites. They hate to admit it, but they really do. That's what happened. They do. So, you know. But I mean, it's an unusual parent who deals with this in a reasonable and loving way. But why do they have favorites? Like why do parents have favorites? Because a child is more like themselves. They see themselves more in that child, and they treat them. You think so? Or how they resonate with the child, I guess. You know, but you find it all. You're right. You find it all the time. It's one of those truths. We're going to find out more truths right after this break. Oh, I love that. We're going to find out truths about how Hawaii deals with Kupuna. Okay. We're going to find that out right after this break. Okay. I need to know. Hi. I'm Steven Phillip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist here in Hawaii, and I'm the host of Shrink Rap, Hawaii, which is on Tuesdays at three o'clock. Have a great summit. Take care of your mental health. Hello. I'm Crystal from Quok Talk. I've got a new show here. You've got to tune in. Check out my topics on sensitive, provocative, female issues. So Tuesday mornings, 10 o'clock. Don't miss it. It's going to be fun and dangerous. I pity the fool who ain't watching this show at 12 o'clock on Friday afternoon. Stan, the energy man. Watch it. Aloha. My name is Danelia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. Welcome. We are co-hosts of a show called Keys to Success, which is live on the Think Tech Live Network series, weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. We're looking forward to seeing you then. Aloha. Where's the sherry whizz? Bingo. Bingo. We're back. Now we're going to talk about how this stuff all unfolds in Hawai'ine. And the secrets of happiness. Is there a secret? Is there happiness? So, you know, now Mary Ann Sasaki is telling us about how she moved here to what? To have a new chapter. Right. To have a new life. Right. But she moved here, you know, with the notion she would stay here, I assume. Oh, absolutely. So you have to be facing the issue of what happens as you age in Hawai'ine. Now, back when, I'll never forget this, my wife and my fiance, I guess you could say, took me to her home in Kauai. You had a wife and a fiance at the same time? No. Oh, I thought you had some friends. No, it was a, yeah. Oh, it was a continuum. It was a continuum. I see, I see. She was first my fiance, my wife. That's good. I thought there was something I didn't know about. Yeah. How much time we got? All right. So she takes me to her home in Kaloa, Kauai. She takes me to the Kapuna town, which at the time was below the highway in a little, you know, recessed area there. And then all the Kapuna lived in these little old plantation houses, green with this, you know, corrugated roofs and all that, little wee rooms. And they were all lined up along this recess under the highway, near the highway. And that's where they lived. And the community built the houses for them. Right, that doesn't sound like a place. And nobody, nobody said boo about it. Just, they lived there. That's what happened. And their families would bring them food and take care of them. And they were, you know, in the lap of the community there in Kaloa. And I was impressed because it was so nice to see people taking care of the Kapuna. And we had, we, Hawaii, had this great tradition of taking care of the Kapuna. You do. You definitely do. We had, I think it's dramatically changed now. You know, circumstances have changed, economics have changed, medical issues and technology and medical care and general medical insurance, all that. It's all changed. And so now I don't think it's anybody living, you know, next to the highway. It was a small highway. I don't think it's anybody living in these kind of Kapuna houses. I think it's much more complicated and much more risky for them. And people, including their kids, are not going to spend as much time and attention helping them out. So they have to find other ways. And you and me, we have to find other ways. Right. And so, you know, social security, is that really all that helpful? Only if you've worked a long, hard life, you know, and if you haven't, it's not going to be that much money. And query, is it going to be something you can count on going forward? Right. And, you know, money goes so fast and there's a possibility of inflation. And there's a fact that Hawaii has an undersupply of not only affordable housing, but senior affordable housing. Oh, absolutely. You know, and there's the risk that you could get to be, after a long, hard, middle-class working life, you could actually, in your older years, get to be homeless. I think that that's, I don't think it's an unrealistic care. Oh, it happens all the time. You know, I mean, I think that it's one big illness or, I mean, if you're living a middle-class life and maybe your kids are on the mainland or something, and one big illness or some kind of, something, some devastation of some kind, and all of a sudden you slip from the middle-class life into poverty. And, you know, you just, how did I get here? And all you feel is a sense of tragedy. Right. Is a sense that, gee, I didn't, I don't deserve this kind of treatment. And then you look at- They're homeless vets. Look at homeless vets. How many homeless vets there are. And they serve the country. Again, very tragic. I mean, it's tragic. They're not even, you know, they're not even seniors. They're juniors. No, right, right, right. So in other countries, you know, where things are more socialistic, in Europe, for example, there are ways that the government, the community takes care of people in their old age. I think the family stay at home a lot longer, perhaps. But the family stay at home long in Hawaii. I mean, especially among Asian families, I don't see that people don't get packed off and sent off to- I think there's still a certain cultural thing there. But I think it's diminishing. I think in Hawaii, it's very hard to find an assisted living facility that works for you. It might be too expensive. It might not be your community, your group of friends. And friends are very important when you get old. Very important. Although I want to make this point, because this is a very important point to me. You know, I'm quite a bit older than my husband. So I assume that I will die before my husband. And he is not, and I repeat this, not free to remarry. Everybody says, I want him to be happy. I don't want him to be happy. I want him to be sent for every day after that. She's Italian. No, I'm only kidding. I always tell them that, because everybody's always like, oh, if I go, I want my husband to have a rich and fruitful life, or my wife to have a rich and fruitful life, or even with the end of life decisions, people say, if I'm a vegetable, I don't want to burden my family. I want to burden my family. I'm like, I don't care what if there's like a breath coming out. All measures. Take all measures. Every measure. That's terrible. But these are questions that we face. You know, these are questions that we face. Well, I know one professional, there are probably others, but I know one professional who deals with this. You know, when you're dying, this professional, she's trained in psychology, she'll come around and talk to you, and talk to your family, and try to make peace with things, and, you know, keep you away from having dark thoughts, and having all kinds of stress and strain about it, you know, teach you that, you know, death is part of life, and you just have to have a good attitude about it. Right. And that's a whole other show, a whole other time. Right. What I focus, though, is, you know, economically, is this community providing a soft landing for people who have spent their lives working middle class, and whose kids, they don't have kids, or the kids have left, or the kids are unable to help them, and they have run out of money. And, you know, is the government really doing the right thing here? Other countries, maybe other states, too, provide more luxuriously for Kapuna. I'm not sure that we do. I don't think we do. There are people out there working on the problem, but there are union problems, and permanent and planning problems. I mean, there's such a miasma, a thicket of bureaucracy to get through. There are ways you can build affordable housing for anybody who needs it, but particularly, you know, for old people who need it. But to get through the bureaucracy, to get to do it is just a nightmare. I mean, I know somebody that's trying to build storage containers, you know, like these shipping storage containers, into gorgeous little houses. I mean, they're gorgeous. For homeless. Yeah. And the question is, how do you do it? Who's going to okay it? What permits do you need? Nobody knows. Nobody wants to make a commitment. I mean, it's a great idea. But you can't spend, you know, $50,000, $100,000. I mean, either the developer or, for that matter, people who would live there investing in such a thing if you don't have whatever permits are necessary. Right, right. You can't go forward. You're not going to take the risk. But these are very inextricably turned into housing that I would adore. You really have to fix this. You know, it's so perverse and that, you know, the problem with the political cycle, and actually Colin Moore, our favorite political guy, you know, Polly Sy, Professor at UH, came to speak at the Clean Energy Day program last week. And what he said, which I think is really important, is that people in government, political officials, they think in short term. They think for the election cycle, two years, four years, six years. They do not think in 50-year bites. And so the result is we have no one plans about this. And we don't do long-plan things. But, you know, taking care of the kupuna is a long plan. The population is aging rapidly, and it's not a problem that's going to go away. So, I mean, well, but people go away. I mean, people will go when the time comes. They will go to places that are more comfortable. You think so, then leave Hawaii? Well, short story, short story. I had a client who was running out of money. And she did a lot of research. And she found it was a place in Pennsylvania, really good place, run by a retirement home company that was national with a good reputation. And this place, pictures and charts and graphs and all this and contracts, really good. I reviewed it for her. I really liked it. And I said, this is good thing. You could do this. It's within your means. You know, you'll have a good time here. And she said, yes, but what about my friends? I would be leaving all my friends. I would be investing my remaining years in this place. I don't know. I can't do that. So even though Hawaii is not nearly as friendly to Kupuna, Hawaii has friends from my friends. I'm connected. Yeah, as community. Yeah, absolutely does. So, I mean, Hawaii has, and she didn't go, by the way. She preferred to stay here. And even though, you know, it costs more and it was more difficult for her. But I think we have half the problem. You know, I don't include weather in that. I guess I do. Weather is important. Weather is important. And friends are important, assuming you have, you've achieved some friends. But the problem, we don't have housing and we don't have programs to take care of the Kupuna. And a lot of them wind up really on the street, terrible. The government has got to get involved. And the proposition I told Zuri Bender when we started the show was, don't worry, because the bell curve is going to put more people into that age. The pressure will be there. The pressure will be there politically. And these legislators who turn over, to turn over every two years, they're going to be under a lot of pressure, increasing pressure as time goes by, that the government should incentivize real affordable housing for homeless, yes, but also seniors. Right. And unless they do that, they're going to have people voting against them. Right. And somebody hopefully soon is going to make it a campaign issue. You know, that's, this, I want to explore this more. I'm going to see if I can find somebody for life in the law. I see what groups are doing what to increase housing for seniors. Because it's at a critical, it's a critical point. You know, baby boomers are aging. They're this huge, you know, bulge in the population. So I don't think it's, it's not an issue that's going away anytime soon. And I wonder what the brightest minds, the creative minds are thinking about doing about it. I'm going to look for it on life in the law in the next couple of months, Wednesdays one to one-thirty. But I, yeah, I think that I'll make it a special, a special attempt to find some people who are doing some work. And as you drive around and you look at the homeless and, you know, feel sad about that look to see the capuna among them. And you'll feel sadder still, because they don't have the options that the younger people have. And think to yourself, there, but for the grace of God, go I. I do all the time. I do all the time too. I do all the time. It's a, you know, it's a thin membrane we walk in. It's a very, it is a very thin, it's, like I said, it's one, it's one, you know, one emergency away for some people, one emergency, emergency situation, emergency medical problem or housing problem. And then whoop. But can I say one thing before we go? Are we almost ready to go? Almost ready to go. Okay, but I want to say something. I want to congratulate you on the Mahalo Award for OC-16. I thought that was so great. It was, it was really a surprise. Was it really? We had no idea. I had no idea that was going to happen. It was terrific. Walked in there and we see our own footage on the screen as a nominee. As my God, how did that happen? And then, you know, we're like half a dozen nominees, all of whom had really good shows. Right, right. And my goodness, we actually won the thing. OC-16, what, Sunday night? Sunday night. Ten-third? Every Sunday our premiere for the show. The one that's playing this week is the premiere of our coverage of the Hawaii Clean Energy Day. Okay. Well, you know, so we, award-winning, award-winning cover. Always nice to spend the time. He said, she said, she said. She said, she said, yes. Thank you, Maria.