Chip Conley

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is a mind-twisting film starring Brad Pitt featuring a man who ages backwards. One of my new friends in New Mexico, Doug Lynam, who wrote a terrific book "From Monk to Money Manager” feels he’s lived his life in the opposite direction of convention having started a career with contemplation and shifted to a financial career in his forties.

Andrew Huberman may be the most celebrated neuroscientist in the world. If not, he’s definitely the most listened-to, evidenced by this Stanford professor’s extremely popular podcast. It was recommended to me by Eduardo Briceno, Carol Dweck’s (“Mindset”) protege and a friend of MEA.

It was more than 170 years before the phrase “midlife crisis” had been coined, but one of the fathers of our country was having an existential crisis in his late 40s.

Occasionally, there’s a TED talk that brings a tear to my eye, a song to my heart, and an epiphany to my head. This TED talk by Dr. Dixon Chibanda is one of those. There are just 12 psychiatrists in Zimbabwe, a country with 14 million people.

As you know, I’m fascinated by words. Here’s one that has multiple meanings: “hermitage.” Separately, it speaks to being at the hermit’s age when you may want to seek a hermitage. And, yet, The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg is anything but a place for asceticism.

Of course, this is a very general question. In the U.S., we tend to answer based on our body or physical health and usually revolving around our age.

Our greatest ageism foe is often ourselves. How many of these statements or actions apply to you and may even seem perfectly normal but likely make you feel shameful about your age? And then think about the counter-response that accompanies that statement.

Having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than forty years, I know the majesty of a towering redwood, the tallest tree on the planet. They can span more than 400 feet, which is taller than a 37-story skyscraper. A typical redwood lives for 500 to 700 years, although some have been documented at more than 2,000 years old, meaning that some of the coast redwoods living today were alive during the Roman Empire.

Today’s topic may seem like a strange segue after yesterday’s post expressing concern about a potentially declining population. But, while the juxtaposition of these two trends may cause some demographic agita, these are the kinds of questions we like to ask at MEA when we’re donning our sociologist hats.

For the sixth straight year, the U.S. birthrate declined in 2020 and has fallen 20% since 2007. In addition, more restrictive immigration policies capped population growth as well. Recently released Census Bureau population estimates show that from July 1, 2019, to July 1, 2020, the nation grew by just 0.35%. This is the lowest annual growth rate since at least 1900.