Ric Elias

And the fact that you're in the cover of a magazine tells you something.

Vanity is life's greatest sin.

A little bit of this, you got to decide what it is, but it can't become you.

You can't put that inside of you.

And I think we're all in some struggle and some journey to find our connection to ourselves.

And crisis usually reveals that.

And that was, to me, the big transition for me is this crisis has given me a perspective of like true appreciation of the really nice things you and I get to do every day.

The rest will come and go.

You were in a very high profile crisis once in the plane that Sully landed on the Hudson River, I think in the front row seat.

Can you describe the last five minutes of that experience?

The experience, I think, was three and a half minutes.

So I think you're like, look, it's the greatest gift one can get.

It's the greatest gift to know that you're going to die.

Were you certain of that?

A hundred percent certain.

It was either I'm going to blow up and that will be a lot better than breaking into pieces in January 15th in the Hudson River in New York and freezing in 40 seconds.

If you were given those two options, I think blowing up is better.

And then you have 90 seconds to say goodbye to your life with no suffering, zero suffering.

And then on the other side of this, no one dies.

So you can talk about it and celebrate it and understand it at a time where our country was in incredible crisis.