Half a century reflections
What I would tell my younger self as I celebrate my 50th birthday
The week I was born, Bad Blood was the top song in the charts… but the fact that it was the one by Neil Sedaka and not Taylor Swift clearly dates me.
Today is indeed my 50th birthday and given the number of people that keep asking me how I feel about it, I guess it’s a milestones that needs to be celebrated. The honest truth is that I am not that concerned about the number today. If anything, it has made me reflective on what I need to do or change to be the man I want to be at 60, and as I have learnt, a decade goes by fast.
Instead, I had been thinking about the past decades and what I wish I could have told my younger self 30 years ago. I guess this is the obligatory “reflections from an old man” post…
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To my younger self:
- Be patient: That promotion, that acceptance, that next new, new thing will come. I wish I had told myself to learn to be more patient and enjoy the moment rather than seeking what came next.
- Be present: There are certainly moments in my life that I wish I could relive. Either to experience them again or to perhaps have taken a different course of action. But of course that is not possible. So I wish I had told my younger self to learn to live in the moment, to take it all in (the good, the bad and the ugly) to have lived the moment truly
- Be thankful: So many people throughout the years have gone out of their way for me. From friends making an effort to join me for birthdays, to long talks on a Salvadoran beach, to random acts of kindness (like proof reading my MBA application essay 20 times). What I am today was enabled by their actions. Be mindful and be thankful of those that care about you
- Be still: Certainly a work in progress for me at 50, but there is a certain grace that comes from men of a certain age who seem to glide at a different speed to the chaotic world around them. A few that I have met over the years provide an aspirational role model to seek to emulate (one of them would literally wear a suit to work every day… at Facebook…in the early crazy years). Learn to be still.
- Be intentional while allowing for luck: Someone recently asked me how I had been able to be so “succesful” profesionally. I raised an eyebrow as I had never thought of myself that way. I was lucky, and open enough to take advantage when that luck presented itself. Had it not been for a classmate who told me about the job Google was hiring for, had I not had coffee with the former colleague who told me about Facebook setting up a landing team in Europe, had I not applied to the Exec Ed course on climate at Princeton my life would be very different. Be directionally correct but open to what might come.
- Be interested before trying to be interesting: A person I know well has a superpower. She is able to learn more about a person in ten minutes than I might know having known them for a decade. And it’s simple. She is interested in others. She creates comfort for others to share. She asks questions out of genuine interest. And that is what makes her interesting. In the wise words of Epictetus “Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.”
- Be vulnerable: I so wish I could tell my younger self that the social adage about men needing to hide their emotions and vulnerabilities is complete BS. Embrace the hard moments, learn from them, ruminate on them, if needed cry about them. It will make you a better man, husband, parent, colleague in the long run
- Be joyful: And by that I don’t mean, fake like everything is OK and put on a happy spin on everything. Linked to the above on vulnerability, I mean being open to moment of great pleasure and happiness. Allow the highs to be high and lows to be low.
Above all, however, should I have the opportunity to meet that 20 year old driving down the streets of Durham, NC trying to figure out what he would do after University, the one thing I would say is “It’s all going to be allright… enjoy the ride!”
And to my now 50 year old self I will say… you still have some work to do on all of the above to be that man you want to be at 60 and beyond!
