JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Each week, a guest draws a card from NPR's Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. After 24 years in the WWE ring, John Cena retired from professional wrestling last year, but he's not slowing down. His latest movie is a Netflix comedy about family bonds called "Little Brother."
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JOHN CENA: This story for me, looking through my lens, is, I'm a big believer in you choose your family. And love isn't just simply granted because you have the same last name.
SUMMERS: Cena spoke with host Rachel Martin about the things that have given him perspective in life.
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RACHEL MARTIN: Have your feelings about death changed over time?
CENA: Yes, I will die. And I think about that often. And I never - you know what? I always used to say it out loud. Like, as a young person, it's like, oh, I'm not very - going to make it until I'm 40. Or if I make it till I'm 40, I've overstayed my welcome. That was just cannon fodder to do things that were like dopamine hits.
MARTIN: Yeah.
CENA: Now my perspective has changed that we all die. We are all going to die, and it gives me gratitude towards the now. It makes me excited for things down the road. It allows me to reflect with great feelings. I think about my mortality often, and I encourage folks to do more of that and not from a morbid sense, from a factual sense.
SUMMERS: Yeah.
CENA: We all think...
MARTIN: Yeah.
CENA: ...We got all the time in the world. And I think when you realize you don't, it helps you appreciate the time you have, at least from my perspective.
MARTIN: Yeah, for sure. Same. I also wonder - I wanted to ask you about your involvement with the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
CENA: Sure.
MARTIN: First of all, you have, like, the Guinness World Record or something of most Make-A-Wish visits. I mean, it's really incredible, John, the amount of time that you've given to kids who are having a hard struggle. And I imagine some of those kids who you have spent time with have died, and I wonder how that has impacted your view of living and your thoughts about dying.
CENA: There is not a better chin check on, like - how bad are my problems? - than to go into someone really fighting a - climbing a steep hill. And when that person is, like, a young person, to see them so full of joy and excitement and hope, even with that steep climb, it has made a world of difference in my life, even when I didn't understand why it was making a world of difference.
MARTIN: What do you mean?
CENA: I think at a younger age, I very much appreciated always being involved with Make-A-Wish. It was only as I began to truly lean into mortality, I would say the last decade, that it really had a profound impact on - we do have a select amount of time, and that's beyond our control, period. And you can still have joy, and you can still have excitement. And you can still be curious, and you can still have an imagination. And you can be grateful for all those things.
SUMMERS: You can watch the full conversation with John Cena on YouTube or the NPR app by searching for NPR Wild Card. His new film "Little Brother" is streaming on Netflix.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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