Following up Jeff Hamaoui’s post from yesterday: “Zach. Why are you going surfing? There are no waves… you’re being dumb,” my dad’s voice carried into the garage that early Saturday morning in March. As I strapped my surfboard to the car roof, I called down the garage stairs to him, “I just… have to.

I am writing this on Thanksgiving day. Thinking about gratitude and some of the people in my life. I wanted to share a particularly unexpected friendship I have developed over the last 7 years. Life has a curious origami to it. Ways of folding in on itself, finding unexpected edges and if you are lucky revealing an unprecedented shape.

Thanks to those of you who’ve made the trek down to Baja to spend a few spacious weeks with us for Sabbatical Sessions. Fernando Vazquez made the trip from Mexico City and brought me a few books (much appreciated by this bookaholic who still hasn’t figured out how Amazon can deliver to our dusty street with no name) including this New York Times bestseller.

An adolescent with a pacifier. A young adult clinging to the nest. A mid-lifer with bulging lips and an unbudgeable, Botox-infused forehead. None of these are natural. But such is the way of life when you’re trapped in the ugly clenches of the ego.

Sometime in my mid-forties, I stopped being terrified of wrinkles. Until then, I had followed all the expert advice on how to fight them. Some rules were basic— like always using SPF. Others required a bit more investment—like sleeping on a silk pillowcase.

Our lives are buckling with the stress of undue complexity. So are our organizations. For that matter, so is society. Truth be told, we face all kinds of gnarly problems that don’t seem simple to solve. It’s during these complex times when we need to get back to “first principles,” otherwise known as a basic proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption.

She was one of my best friends in my dermatology residency, the period of a physician’s education spanning three years after completing medical school followed by a one-year internship. Wickedly smart and unabashedly quirky, Dr. L had graduated from Princeton and earned an MD-Phd degree from one of the most prestigious medical schools in the United States, Johns Hopkins University.

Life expectancy. Such a profound concept, even melancholic if you let it be. But, here’s the thing: the word not only speaks to how long we live, but how much we expect from life. In other words, it can be an empowering concept and one worth investigating. To that end, I want to introduce four insightful articles/studies and one question.

Spoiler alert: This book isn’t really about how to live forever. This is the Foreword I wrote for the paperback edition of Marc Freedman’s fabulous book that originally launched two years ago (paperback coming out in December).

I probably don’t need to tell you that this is a strange Thanksgiving. Far fewer of us are seeing family and friends today. Some of us will raise our glasses and share out thanks on Zoom or by phone. I thought it was a good time for a little emotional math.