This is an outline of a talk I gave in Vancouver in 2018.
And then I was old…
A few years ago I turned 40 and I suppose I had a bit of a midlife crisis. Not the buy-a-Porsche or recruit-a-mistress kind of crisis, mind you. But I did have a moment of introspection, reflecting on what I had accomplished so far, wondering what I’d do in the second half, and lamenting my already-declining physical state. On this last point, I got pretty deep into a pool of self-pity revolving around the fact that my 40-year-old self couldn’t physically keep up with my 20-year-old self. To be fair, I’m still in decent shape, but the difference between 20s and 40s is stark. Activities that used to be easy now require training and (gasp!) effort—if they’re even still possible.
At some point, the realization that there wasn’t much I could do about my aging body triggered a question: Would I go back to being 25 if I had the chance? The answer wasn’t clear, in spite of my yearning for a younger body.
Ultimately, I concluded that I’d never trade away my 40-year-old brain to have my 25-year-old body again. This realization triggered an obvious follow-up question: Why wouldn’t I make that trade? What had I learned in the last decade or two that was so valuable? I started a list and over the next couple of days added a few dozen things. Several items from the list overlapped or could be generalized to the same principle. Other items just weren’t as impactful as others. In the end, I whittled the list down to six things. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine whether these have value beyond the narrow scope of my personal experience.
The list
I’ll include the entire list for now, and link to future posts as I develop them from my talk notes.