Guest Post

Last summer, I celebrated turning 60 by taking an epic road trip. I dubbed it my #Tourde60. A few days into my 7,000-mile journey, I heard Tim Ferriss’s podcast with Chip Conley. Immediately, I downloaded the audio for Wisdom@Work, the Making of a Modern Elder.

I’m thinking about the ‘growing-up’ process, or rather the ‘growing-way-up’ process and how we name it. All of human culture necessitates naming; the act of naming makes ideas and forms manifest. Heraclitus turned ‘logos’ into a signifier connecting the structure of the cosmos and human reason. A primal ‘analogy’: as the universe creates, man creates. Naming has a generative effect. This is especially true of naming ourselves.

I am not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens. – Woody Allen The widely promoted notion that we Americans are living progressively longer, healthier lives is inaccurate.

Life is b-u-s-y. And that doesn’t change just because we become Middlescents—that stage of life when we question who we want to be when we are grown-ups—even though we are supposed to be all grown up!

First things first: I was weird. Chip was an all-star. Generous, handsome, smart and ready to open the door for anyone who needed a hand. Second: The real leap in Chip’s search for Wisdom that day at Stanford was going first. Not waiting to be picked, but becoming the picker.

For the decade and a half that I was a struggling entrepreneur, rubbing two sticks together for heat, I’d find myself in San Francisco a couple of times a year. And I’d stay at the Phoenix. Not because it was free (Chip charged me the slightly-discounted starving-entrepreneur rate) but because (at least at the beginning) Chip needed the business and I needed a cheap place to stay.

The marking of time is a funny thing. 2020 feels more significant than 2019. We celebrate “special” milestone birthdays and feel drawn to take big, new steps during the “big” years. We wait to hit major work anniversary dates before changing jobs, launching new ventures or retiring.

“Understand your unique value and take that forward into the world. Do not inherit labels others place upon you,” I told the 2019 graduating class in my keynote speech. The students immediately reacted and recognized what I meant. It seemed to resonate with them.

Nobody has mastered curiosity more than a child. Give a kid a rock, and some bubble wrap and their imagination will light up with possibility. From a blade of grass to their own shadow, the whole world is a child’s playground, ready to be explored, investigated and questioned. Unfortunately, as we get older and busier, our curiosity narrows to what’s practical or will get us to the “next level.”

Last week I met someone I hadn’t seen for over two and a half years and they asked me what I’d been up to. I could have said so much.