This is a message I'm trying to put together for the next generation. The generation that's being born right now, into the world that we live in. In some ways I think that that world has taken the phrase carpe diem well past its logical conclusion and into something almost scary.
So for those kids who about to be born, I just need to remind you that humans live for a very long time. A lot of people live to be 100 years old, and the decisions that you make early have such an incredible impact on how the rest of the years of your life go.
If you're really young, just think about when you're 20. Do you really want to be 20 and still be trying to make your way through high school someday? Could you imagine being this old man around a bunch of kids and they've got their futures ahead of them and you're hoping to someday graduate? That's why when you're young you do have to think about the future. There are a lot of things that are outside of your control, but there are also a lot of things that you have full control over. Everyday you go to school and you make the decision about whether to be a good student or a terrible student or somewhere in between, and that decision doesn't seem like it means much now but it will in the future.
At 30 there was a silent Revolution for my entire generation. Any of us that turned 30 for whatever reason decided to take that moment to look back on what we build and find out if we'd wasted our lives to that point. There were some people who had accomplished a lot, they had careers and families and accomplishments. However, there were a lot of people who opened their eyes on their 30th birthday and realized that they just partied a decade of their lives away and they had absolutely nothing to show for it. For a lot of people this induced panic, they felt like somehow they had to start trying to make up for it. A whole bunch of middle-aged college students trying desperately to make something of their lives before it's too late.
Then think about it when you're 20: it seems like your life will be like this forever but it really won't. For a woman in your twenties, you might think the world is always going be there to help lend you a helping hand, but the fact of the matter is right now you are getting the biggest undeserved boost that you will ever get in your life. Someday you're going to be 30, and maybe you won't regret it then, but eventually you're going to hit the wall and probably hit 40 and by then nobody cares about how beautiful some old lady used to be. At that point, what really matters is what you've built along the way. Welcome back to you. For men, a lot of you might think that the world is an unfair and no one cares about you and you're not going to ever get a helping hand. To an extent that might be true, but that's why it's so important in your twenties to start building something now.
I'm approaching 40 as I write this, and it happened little by little over the course of 10 years or 20 years, but every single job that I did, every single task on every single job, I was building competence, and I was building people's level of respect for me and what I do, and today I can say that I'm reasonably successful. I got some unexpected wins, but I also had a lot of unexpected failures. Part of the process was succeeding in failing and keeping my nose to the grindstone and working hard to get to where I am. There are a lot of men who see that they don't have anything when they turn 20, and they assume that that's just going to be the way things are forever. Because of that, they squander their precious time and the years of their lives where their physical body and their mental acuity is at its peak, and eventually they turn 40, and there are so many jobs out there that pay pretty good money, and they're completely locked out of that market because they spent their twenties and maybe their 30s doing meaningless things.
At 40, I think there's another reckoning. You're sitting there with whatever life you've built for yourself and the cohort ahead of you is starting to die. You're realizing that you won't be around forever, and you certainly don't want to be working until you're dead, but that point if you approach it has already been set in stone. How you've LED your life to that moment has already decided what the remainder of your life is going to look like. There are a lot of young people who make a bad decision in their twenties, and throughout the rest of their twenties they keep on saying that they don't regret that bad decision or those bad decisions, what they don't realize is your not in your 20s forever.
Eventually, and it happens way faster than anyone expects, you've reached 60. For most people you've reached a point where even if you like your career you're getting old enough that you don't really want to take the crap of a day-to-day job anymore. I know a lot of people who turn 60 and you could just tell. They were just getting sick of working, they were getting sick of all of the rules, they were getting sick of being told what to do, they just wanted to be able to go out and live their lives however they want without some boss telling them to show up here at 8:00 tomorrow. That moment when you turn 60 is the accumulation of everything that you've done. If you've built a career, or you've built a long-term marriage with somebody who has a career, then at that point you can make the decision to say "okay, that's it I'm done". For a lot of people in my generation, they're going to reach 60 and their bodies are going to be aching and they're going to be slower mentally than they used to be and they're going to be crotchety and cantankerous and they're just not going to want to be coming to work anymore. But they never bought a house, they never saved a pension, they don't have any retirement plan, and so they just have to keep on working well after they really don't want to be. The other thing is if you reached 60 and you don't have any kind of decent career then you're not working very nice jobs for a 60 year old body. And you're probably going to be resenting the 25-year-old who is your boss who's sitting there ordering you around like he's somehow important.
Even later, maybe you'll hit 80. By 80 there's just no way that you're doing real work, if you set yourself up to live in poverty then you're eating dog food. The government gives you a pittance, but it's not enough to live on for real. Not if you haven't built anything. And you're watching your friends die one by one. And if you never raised a family, you're getting awfully lonely because that family they're the only people left who have a reason to care about you.
Now finally, imagine that you are one of the few who hits 100. If you are an esteemed family matriarch or patriarch then maybe you are held with respect by multiple generations of your offspring and their offspring and they're offsprings offspring. Very very few people make it past this point, but that moment of your death and the moments leading up to it are going to be defined completely by what you've built. If you've built relationships with your family over a lifetime, then you may be surrounded by loved ones in your final moments. Otherwise, you might be all alone. Starving. Freezing because you forgotten how to pay the heating bill, or you just don't have the money for it. Living in squalor because you just don't have the energy to deal with the growing mess around you. And you'll reach out in those final moments for a reassuring hand that will never ever come, because you never built that.
Now imagine after you've gone, and the Legacy that you leave behind. What sort of people are your children? Your grandchildren? Your great-grandchildren? If any of those generations exist at all. Your works, what did they amount to? Is there something out there in the world that exists solely because you put the effort in? Or did the fruits of your labor end the moment that the family who's groceries you bagged got home and unbagged the groceries? The home you leave behind, will it remain as a monument to your industriousness a wonderful home that a new family is happy to move into? Will people generations down the line move into your house and be impressed with the workmanship? Or will the landlord have to close it up and condemn it once you are gone and spend 6 months fumigating and weeks pulling garbage and trash out of the place, and that's the final time that someone thinks of you: "that disgusting hoarding old thing that died and left this burden for me"
I'm painting a terrifying image of what can happen if you don't build something, but imagine on the other hand what could happen if you do build something. You work hard in your twenties, you nurture what you have in your thirties, you build upon what you've built in your 40s, you save up in your fifties, and you have a grand retirement for the remainder of your life where you get to pass your accumulated wisdom and values on to generations to come, and it's all a pretty good time. Maybe out of respect for what you've built the family hangs on to the family home once you're gone and it stays in the family for several generations as an asset not a financial one as much as this place that people can go. Imagine that you spend the time with your kids and your grandkids and your great grandkids and they grow up to be great people who go off to do wonderful things and make the world a better place, and your name is remembered as the great matriarch or patriarch who led the family to great things. Imagine if your works stand for generations, maybe you've built some amazing structure or some wonderful piece of art, maybe you put some design into an industrial plant or a consumer product that lasts and become something influential long after you're gone. Especially now that we are reaching an age that for over 100 years we've had recordings of video and audio, and for at least the last 60 years we've had very high fidelity video and audio, kids these days can grow up listening to the music of bands whose members have all died of old age. Culture is at the precipice of something terrifying and incredible and you can be a part of that if you build something timeless.
From this point of view of everything that I've written so far, I see a lot of younger people or a lot of people my age who haven't really built anything, and I'm not mad at them for it, I'm just sad. Somebody at some point told them that none of it matters, life is so long, and the world keeps turning after you're done and the only evidence that you've ever existed is what you've built to last. It isn't going to be long until they wake up and realize that they've got nothing. They'll pretend that it doesn't bother them, but the tragedy will already be in motion.
So for those kids who about to be born, I just need to remind you that humans live for a very long time. A lot of people live to be 100 years old, and the decisions that you make early have such an incredible impact on how the rest of the years of your life go.
If you're really young, just think about when you're 20. Do you really want to be 20 and still be trying to make your way through high school someday? Could you imagine being this old man around a bunch of kids and they've got their futures ahead of them and you're hoping to someday graduate? That's why when you're young you do have to think about the future. There are a lot of things that are outside of your control, but there are also a lot of things that you have full control over. Everyday you go to school and you make the decision about whether to be a good student or a terrible student or somewhere in between, and that decision doesn't seem like it means much now but it will in the future.
At 30 there was a silent Revolution for my entire generation. Any of us that turned 30 for whatever reason decided to take that moment to look back on what we build and find out if we'd wasted our lives to that point. There were some people who had accomplished a lot, they had careers and families and accomplishments. However, there were a lot of people who opened their eyes on their 30th birthday and realized that they just partied a decade of their lives away and they had absolutely nothing to show for it. For a lot of people this induced panic, they felt like somehow they had to start trying to make up for it. A whole bunch of middle-aged college students trying desperately to make something of their lives before it's too late.
Then think about it when you're 20: it seems like your life will be like this forever but it really won't. For a woman in your twenties, you might think the world is always going be there to help lend you a helping hand, but the fact of the matter is right now you are getting the biggest undeserved boost that you will ever get in your life. Someday you're going to be 30, and maybe you won't regret it then, but eventually you're going to hit the wall and probably hit 40 and by then nobody cares about how beautiful some old lady used to be. At that point, what really matters is what you've built along the way. Welcome back to you. For men, a lot of you might think that the world is an unfair and no one cares about you and you're not going to ever get a helping hand. To an extent that might be true, but that's why it's so important in your twenties to start building something now.
I'm approaching 40 as I write this, and it happened little by little over the course of 10 years or 20 years, but every single job that I did, every single task on every single job, I was building competence, and I was building people's level of respect for me and what I do, and today I can say that I'm reasonably successful. I got some unexpected wins, but I also had a lot of unexpected failures. Part of the process was succeeding in failing and keeping my nose to the grindstone and working hard to get to where I am. There are a lot of men who see that they don't have anything when they turn 20, and they assume that that's just going to be the way things are forever. Because of that, they squander their precious time and the years of their lives where their physical body and their mental acuity is at its peak, and eventually they turn 40, and there are so many jobs out there that pay pretty good money, and they're completely locked out of that market because they spent their twenties and maybe their 30s doing meaningless things.
At 40, I think there's another reckoning. You're sitting there with whatever life you've built for yourself and the cohort ahead of you is starting to die. You're realizing that you won't be around forever, and you certainly don't want to be working until you're dead, but that point if you approach it has already been set in stone. How you've LED your life to that moment has already decided what the remainder of your life is going to look like. There are a lot of young people who make a bad decision in their twenties, and throughout the rest of their twenties they keep on saying that they don't regret that bad decision or those bad decisions, what they don't realize is your not in your 20s forever.
Eventually, and it happens way faster than anyone expects, you've reached 60. For most people you've reached a point where even if you like your career you're getting old enough that you don't really want to take the crap of a day-to-day job anymore. I know a lot of people who turn 60 and you could just tell. They were just getting sick of working, they were getting sick of all of the rules, they were getting sick of being told what to do, they just wanted to be able to go out and live their lives however they want without some boss telling them to show up here at 8:00 tomorrow. That moment when you turn 60 is the accumulation of everything that you've done. If you've built a career, or you've built a long-term marriage with somebody who has a career, then at that point you can make the decision to say "okay, that's it I'm done". For a lot of people in my generation, they're going to reach 60 and their bodies are going to be aching and they're going to be slower mentally than they used to be and they're going to be crotchety and cantankerous and they're just not going to want to be coming to work anymore. But they never bought a house, they never saved a pension, they don't have any retirement plan, and so they just have to keep on working well after they really don't want to be. The other thing is if you reached 60 and you don't have any kind of decent career then you're not working very nice jobs for a 60 year old body. And you're probably going to be resenting the 25-year-old who is your boss who's sitting there ordering you around like he's somehow important.
Even later, maybe you'll hit 80. By 80 there's just no way that you're doing real work, if you set yourself up to live in poverty then you're eating dog food. The government gives you a pittance, but it's not enough to live on for real. Not if you haven't built anything. And you're watching your friends die one by one. And if you never raised a family, you're getting awfully lonely because that family they're the only people left who have a reason to care about you.
Now finally, imagine that you are one of the few who hits 100. If you are an esteemed family matriarch or patriarch then maybe you are held with respect by multiple generations of your offspring and their offspring and they're offsprings offspring. Very very few people make it past this point, but that moment of your death and the moments leading up to it are going to be defined completely by what you've built. If you've built relationships with your family over a lifetime, then you may be surrounded by loved ones in your final moments. Otherwise, you might be all alone. Starving. Freezing because you forgotten how to pay the heating bill, or you just don't have the money for it. Living in squalor because you just don't have the energy to deal with the growing mess around you. And you'll reach out in those final moments for a reassuring hand that will never ever come, because you never built that.
Now imagine after you've gone, and the Legacy that you leave behind. What sort of people are your children? Your grandchildren? Your great-grandchildren? If any of those generations exist at all. Your works, what did they amount to? Is there something out there in the world that exists solely because you put the effort in? Or did the fruits of your labor end the moment that the family who's groceries you bagged got home and unbagged the groceries? The home you leave behind, will it remain as a monument to your industriousness a wonderful home that a new family is happy to move into? Will people generations down the line move into your house and be impressed with the workmanship? Or will the landlord have to close it up and condemn it once you are gone and spend 6 months fumigating and weeks pulling garbage and trash out of the place, and that's the final time that someone thinks of you: "that disgusting hoarding old thing that died and left this burden for me"
I'm painting a terrifying image of what can happen if you don't build something, but imagine on the other hand what could happen if you do build something. You work hard in your twenties, you nurture what you have in your thirties, you build upon what you've built in your 40s, you save up in your fifties, and you have a grand retirement for the remainder of your life where you get to pass your accumulated wisdom and values on to generations to come, and it's all a pretty good time. Maybe out of respect for what you've built the family hangs on to the family home once you're gone and it stays in the family for several generations as an asset not a financial one as much as this place that people can go. Imagine that you spend the time with your kids and your grandkids and your great grandkids and they grow up to be great people who go off to do wonderful things and make the world a better place, and your name is remembered as the great matriarch or patriarch who led the family to great things. Imagine if your works stand for generations, maybe you've built some amazing structure or some wonderful piece of art, maybe you put some design into an industrial plant or a consumer product that lasts and become something influential long after you're gone. Especially now that we are reaching an age that for over 100 years we've had recordings of video and audio, and for at least the last 60 years we've had very high fidelity video and audio, kids these days can grow up listening to the music of bands whose members have all died of old age. Culture is at the precipice of something terrifying and incredible and you can be a part of that if you build something timeless.
From this point of view of everything that I've written so far, I see a lot of younger people or a lot of people my age who haven't really built anything, and I'm not mad at them for it, I'm just sad. Somebody at some point told them that none of it matters, life is so long, and the world keeps turning after you're done and the only evidence that you've ever existed is what you've built to last. It isn't going to be long until they wake up and realize that they've got nothing. They'll pretend that it doesn't bother them, but the tragedy will already be in motion.
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