If I were to give advice to young people, high-achieving young people for example, I'd have to say, don't neglect your family. Politics is important, sitting at the head table is glamorous. Traveling around the world, trying to do something for world peace was wonderful. But family and friends and faith are what really matter in life. And I know that. I see it so clearly now.

But it happened and it was only after I retired tired and looked back on my career that I realized the strong connection between what I did and my success. And I know that I would not be in as good a place as I am today had I not done that.

There are things that I really am interested in doing that I can't do if I continue to do what I'm doing. And I - teaching would be a big thing for me. I'm an adjunct instructor at Johns Hopkins and teach business communications and ethics, so very different from what I do on a daily basis.

I retired sort of willy-nilly and only after I started writing the column did I suddenly discover there were all these things out there that I hadn't learned about. And so my mission became to try to educate future retirees about what they were going to face and what they needed to know.

I thought often during my years in the White House of an admonition that we received in our small school in Plains, Georgia, from a beloved teacher, Miss Julia Coleman. She often said: "We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles."

Well, the best thing I ever did was marrying Rosalynn. That's the pinnacle of my life. And we've had 69 years together. Still together. And so that's the best thing that happened to me. But I think getting involved in politics and going up, you know, as a state senator, then governor, and then president of the United States is, obviously a glorious event. So - and we have a growing family. We have 22 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, 12 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren now and they're coming every year. So - so we have a good, harmonious family.

My mother in that way I've described. My daddy taught me how much a man could do in dealing directly with a multiplicity of responsibilities. Outside my family, the main person, outside of my father, the main man who has had an influence on my life is Admiral Hyman Rickover. I was one of the two young officers in the program to build atomic submarines. There were two built: the Nautilus and the Sea Wolf. I was in charge of the crew that was helping to build the Sea Wolf and building the nuclear power plant that later became a prototype. Rickover was a man who demanded absolute excellence and total dedication from all those who worked under him. He demanded as much from himself. And so he set a standard of commitment and perfection in life that I had never experienced before. He really had a great impact on my life.

I wish I sent one more helicopter to get the hostages and we would have rescued then and I - I would have been re-elected, but that may have - and that may have interfered with the foundation of the Carter Center. And if I had to choose between four more years and the Carter Center, I think I would choose the Carter Center.

And my sister, whose name is Ruth Stapleton, was a famous evangelist. She wrote four or five books, and she would give lectures to 50,000 people at a time. She and I had a long walk in the woods on my farm, and she said, "Jimmy, quite often, when you have a blow to your pride and a horrible defeat, you can either give up, or you can look on it as a way that God opens to you to do different and even better things."

As far as the Carter Center's concerned, I would like to see guinea worm completely eradicated before -- before I die. I'd like for the last guinea worm to die before I do. ... I think right now, we have 11 cases. We started out with 3.6 million cases. And I think we have two cases in South Sudan and one case in Ethiopia and one case in Mali and seven cases in Chad. That's all the guinea worms in the world, and we know where all of them are. So obviously, that would be my top priority.