Lessons at 40

Forty feels less like having life figured out and more like knowing which reminders I need to hear again.

• Simple living is not simple. It takes thought to notice what is enough, and discipline to leave the rest alone.
• Problems rarely go away on their own. Avoiding them can make them quieter for a while, but seldom makes them smaller.
• Take the high-energy risks before having kids. Later, your choices affect more people, and your time belongs to them too.
• Do meaningful work, and make your own roads. A good path may not exist until someone is willing to build it.
• Technology is only as wise as its employer. The tool can extend our judgment, but it cannot supply the values behind it.
• Education is only as good as the teacher. A curriculum matters, but so does the person who helps you see why it matters.
• Give your career, time, and money to help others. There are many ways to be useful; choose some and show up consistently.
• Flow, food, family, and friends are wealth. None is guaranteed by a bigger number in a bank account.
• Expectations can lead to disappointment. Say what you hope for, but leave room for people and life to surprise you.
• Share experiences with your children. The ordinary things you do together may stay with them longer than the things you buy.
• I-90 construction will never end. Plan accordingly.
• Sugar is evil, but delicious. Knowing both things has not made the choice any easier.
• “Impatience with actions, patience with results.” Do the work now; give the outcome time to arrive.
• Everything is changing. Treat certainty lightly, especially when it depends on the world staying as it is.
• Resource inequality sits beneath many of the world's problems. Scarcity is not always natural; sometimes it is built into who gets access and who does not.
• Institutions and leaders are vulnerable to corruption. Old institutions fall, revolutions replace them, and the cycle can begin again.
• Time may be an illusion, and thought may be one too. At the very least, neither is as solid as it feels from inside the moment.
• How to think matters more than what to think. The first can help you keep learning when the second needs to change.
• “Better a bird in hand than two in the bush.” What we have is real; what we imagine may never arrive.
• Biological intelligence drives cultural intelligence. Our ideas and institutions still have to answer to the needs of living people.
• You rarely regret travel and adventure. The trouble is usually finding a reason to go, not remembering that you went.
• In love, leave space for the other person. Closeness is not the same as becoming one person.
• Plant seeds. Some good things take longer than you expect, and some will grow in ways you could not have planned.

A few priorities I keep returning to:

• Situation over identity.
• Good and bad together, rather than good versus bad.
• Action over theory.
• Biology over belief.
• Human over nation.
• Debate over conformity.
• Slow over fast.
• Balance over extremes.

It is easier to break than to build. It is easier to break than to build.