Chip Conley

After I’d sold my boutique hotel company Joie de Vivre, a wise older man said to me, “Create space and see what emerges.” While sage advice, embracing the void has always been scary for me. Silence and an empty calendar used to freak me out!

I love my father, and it’s been a joy seeing him, at nearly 85, be such a foundational part of our MEA community in Baja when he visits me twice a year.

I've spent much of my life as an Exclamation Point! However, recently, I've seen myself sliding into my Comma era.

With a twinkle in my wrinkle, I told Ingrid Summerfield I would remember this day for the rest of my life. We were both in Baja just 17 days before she passed away. Ingrid was the one who taught me the hospitality biz. She was a pioneer in seeing the potential of San Francisco's Hayes Valley.

Paint-by-numbers…lead by slogans. They both lack authenticity.

Ken Wilber’s heady integral theory of the universe is above my paygrade. But, I appreciate his midlife adult development progression on the path to wisdom outlined in these four steps:

“In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.” - Albert Schweitzer

If you’re an air traffic controller in your early 50s, you’re a lame duck, as this profession has a mandatory retirement age of 56. If you’re a 65-year-old pilot, you’re not flying anymore—truly a lame duck! And if President Joe Biden chooses not to run again (possibly due to how people perceive his age), he will also be considered a lame duck, or in this case, a leader with less influence.

In an era when Americans are arguing about life beginning at conception or first breath, I would suggest adult life begins at the half-century mark. It’s when the butterfly emerges from its chrysalis.

Author Adam Grant suggests we've been emotionally "languishing" the past two years. This New York Times article "Too Young to Feel So Old" outlines the scientific evidence that our body has been depreciating more quickly, like that fancy car you drove off the lot worth half its value two years later.