Categories
Philosophy

The Respectable Older Man

A young man’s value is self-evident and largely unearned. He walks into a room trailing decades of future productivity, like an invisible credit line, like a shadow ready to emerge. Society reads him the way venture capitalists read a Series A deck: high upside, tolerable risk, and, above all, a gloriously long runway.  His mind […]

Categories
Philosophy

The Runway Problem, Time, Youth and the Inevitable Wall

One of the most challenging realities of aging is the shortening runway. When you’re young, time stretches out like a long, open field, you have a long runway. You can run hard, build speed, take risks, and trust that you have enough distance to get airborne. Youth gives you the margin for error: time to […]

Categories
Philosophy

Youth, Age, Energy & Serendipity

In the theater of a single life, where the curtains rise on boundless vitality and fall on quiet acceptance, there unfolds a profound arc shaped by the interplay of energy, time, and fortune.  Youth arrives as a lavish subsidy from the universe, a non-renewable gift of effortless abundance, where every sensation is amplified, every risk […]

Categories
Philosophy

Aging & Retaining Value of Human Connection & Exchange

There comes a moment in life when a person begins to sense his or her own disappearance—not the biological one, but the social one. It is the quiet vanishing of relevance. You leave a job, you sell a business, you step back from the arena of competition, and suddenly, the world looks past you as […]

Categories
Philosophy

Aging Past You

I’m sitting at a restaurant and notice a gentleman having lunch with his children.  He’s disheveled, middle aged and the kids appear to be about 8yrs old.  If we were introduced, I wouldn’t hesitate to address him as “sir”, and use honorifics.  Then it dawns on me:  I could actually be older than him.  It’s […]