A fierce storm tore its way across the state, blowing sticks and branches, leaves and debris with the force of a baby hurricane. The looming dark sky provided warning before its full dramatic performance: billowing clouds, gusting winds, whitecaps on the water, and winds you could hardly stand against. Then the curtain finally came down.
The responsibility of home ownership includes cleanup after the storm. Lots of branches down, lots of leaves, and as I walked out to survey the damage at the waterfront, I spotted what looked like a good-sized log drifting against the side of my dock.
I should move that, I thought, like a responsible adult. So I kicked my shoes off and was about to wade into the water … when the log moved, and stared me down like it was ready for an oversized meal. It was an alligator pretending to be a log. I have decided he can remove himself at a time of his choosing. I will not be rushing him. I don’t need the drama. Nor will I dangle my feet in that water again.
But here’s the thing about that storm: It cleared the air. It stripped the dead branches off the trees. It reminded the yard … and me … what actually matters and what’s just deadwood waiting to fall. Storms do that. They’ve always done that. And so, apparently, do alligators.
The Storms We Hate
I’ve spent years preaching the importance of embracing storms … the metaphorical kind. And I want to be completely honest with you: I didn’t look at hard times the same way when I was young.
Hard times were bad. Difficulty was an obstacle. I wanted none of it. I wanted the straight line from here to success. No pain but all the gain.
I still don’t love a storm. Let’s not romanticize this too much. But I understand them now in a way that the younger version of me simply could not. Because almost every storm I’ve ever weathered was one I created myself. Unbridled ambition, moving too fast, not thinking about the human beings in my path, not paying close enough attention, overspending and under-listening. I bumped into people. I bruised egos. I left some wreckage in my path.
The storm was the universe handing me the invoice.
Brilliance or Arrogance?
Recently I worked with a brilliant young man. Talented. Driven. A force of nature. And watching him was like finding an old photograph of yourself that you’d prefer no one else ever sees.
All he cared about was forward momentum. Career trajectory.
Results. Speed. And if you weren’t keeping up … if you didn’t respond fast enough, produce fast enough, think fast enough … you were either getting a very pointed conversation or he wanted you fired. He had the impatience of a man who had somewhere important to be, and you were on the escalator and in his way.
He thought he was impressing me, yet I recognized every single move. Because I made every single one of them myself at his age.
He didn’t bruise my ego. He couldn’t … I’ve been working on that particular vulnerability for decades. My approach now is borrowed straight from Ted Lasso: Be a goldfish. Short memory. In one ear, out the other. Don’t carry what other people are putting down.
But watching him, I felt something more interesting than irritation. I felt clarity. Because that relentless, forward-at-all-costs energy … that is the arrogance of youth. And the arrogance of youth creates storms. And those storms? That’s the classroom. That’s where the actual education happens.
Screaming Billionaires
I’ll give credit where it’s due: Some of the most driven people on the planet … the screaming, table-pounding, “sleep-is-for-the-weak” crowd … have built extraordinary things. I genuinely admire the output, even when I cringe at their methods.
But I don’t have the stomach for it. And honestly? I don’t want it.
Because here’s what I’ve noticed: The people who rule by fear or pressure may win on the scoreboard. But they lose something far more valuable: the trust of the best people around them, who are counting the days until they can work somewhere else. Quality people don’t stay where they’re not respected. And a life surrounded by people who are merely tolerating you is a lonely kind of winning.
I’ll take a slower lap with people who actually want to be in the room. And if that prevents me from being a billionaire, I’m good with that. I have to live with myself.
Gift or Trap?
Now here’s where I turn the mirror around. Because the opposite of the arrogant young man isn’t wisdom. It’s the risk of becoming calcified.
Ancient wisdom … the kind you earn after decades of hard lessons, failed ventures, relationships tested and sometimes broken, and a few alligators you almost grabbed … is a remarkable thing. We understand human psychology now in ways we couldn’t at 30. We can accomplish through patience and insight what we used to try to brute-force. We know which fights aren’t worth having and which relationships are worth protecting.
I wish I’d known then what I know now is probably the most universal human sentiment in existence.
But. And this is a big but.
The dark side of ancient wisdom is being stuck. Closed. Certain.
Done learning. Convinced that the way things used to be done is the way things should be done. Treating new ideas like threats. Treating younger thinkers like they don’t get it yet.
To me, that is the kiss of death.
The Echo Chamber Curse
What I fight against every single day, if I’m honest, is the seduction of my own certainty.
It’s comfortable to be right. It’s comfortable to surround yourself with people who agree with you, who validate your worldview, who watch the same channels and read the same social media posts and conclude the same things you do. The world becomes very small and very manageable and very ... wrong.
I intentionally fill my life with people who are not like me. Different ages. Different backgrounds. Different cultures. Different starting points. Different political views. I love the energy of someone at the beginning of their career … hungry, maybe a little pushy, occasionally exhausting, always alive. I love the people in my world who are mid-career, dropping the worst habits of youth, picking up the first gifts of wisdom, and holding me accountable to keep up.
They make me better. Sometimes they make me uncomfortable. That’s how I know it’s working. Because discomfort is actually a key to all growth. When you find yourself squirming a little … embrace it.
Your Brain Is Rooting for You
Here’s something worth knowing: Your brain, unlike most things past a certain age, actually wants to keep growing.
Without getting too technical, neuroscience has given us the concept of neuroplasticity: the brain’s remarkable ability to form new neural connections throughout life. Not just in childhood. Not just in your 30s.Throughout life. The brain retains the capacity to rewire, adapt, and strengthen well into old age … but only if you use it. Challenge it. Expose it to novelty. Make it work. The brain changes itself based on what you do and what you don’t do.
And here’s the one nobody expected: Your brain loves cholesterol. Loves it. The brain is the most cholesterol-rich organ in the body … it contains roughly 25% of all the cholesterol in your system, most of it used to make your neurons fire efficiently. We spent decades demonizing the stuff, and it turns out the organ doing the demonizing needed it to function. And statins, it turns out, are not what they were cracked up to be, only extending life for about four days and often causing memory problems or worse.
An unused brain atrophies, just like an unused muscle. Sitting still ... intellectually, emotionally, experientially … is a slow erosion. The people I’ve watched become their worst selves in later life almost all had one thing in common: They stopped being curious.
What I Can’t Control
We have very little control over what happens to us. But we have enormous control over what we do with it.
We can control what we put in our bodies and what we let rot inside our heads. We can control whether we say yes to a new experience or talk ourselves out of it with excuses or fear dressed up as reasons. We can control whether we get on a plane to someplace that scares us a little, learn a phrase in another language, try the food, and sit with the discomfort of not understanding something, and come out the other side larger than we went in.
Personally, I don’t want to sit mindlessly watching the news. I want to travel the world. I want new languages stumbling out of my mouth. I want to understand why people who seem so different from me fight so hard for what they believe, and to genuinely ask myself what I might be missing. I want to read what challenges me, not just what confirms me.
The lounge chair and the news cycle are always there. They will wait for me. The world will not.
Questions Worth Asking
I ask myself some version of these every day. What about you?
What are you treating as settled that might actually be worth reopening?
Where is the arrogance of your youth still running the show, and where has it finally started to quiet down?
What has your ancient wisdom closed off that you should still be curious about? You don’t have to be old to be set in your ways. I’m fighting like mad to get someone I know to adopt some new technology that will change his life, yet he refuses.
What are you accepting as gospel simply because you’ve believed it for a long time, or because your parents or grandparents believed it?
When did you last do something that made you feel genuinely new? Or really uncomfortable?
What is one thing you’re calling “I’m too old for that” or “I’m too young for that,” which is actually just fear with a better vocabulary?
I don’t have clean answers to any of these, but I have a commitment to keep asking.
The Bottom Line
Youth’s greatest weapon is its energy and hunger, but those are also its greatest liabilities. It’s why insurance for reckless young men is expensive. Age’s greatest gifts, perspective and patience, are also its greatest threats, if we let them calcify into certainty.
The goal is to stay in the tension. Stay curious. Stay in the room with people who make you stretch. Let the storms clear out your deadwood. And for heaven’s sake, before you reach for something at the edge of your dock … look more carefully. Some logs have teeth.Now go do something that surprises you.
