Turning Thirty
Today is my youngest son’s birthday. He was born in 1995, so he is technically turning twenty nine today, but as we all know, that means he is starting his thirtieth year. I don’t know how much of a milestone that feels like to him, but it feels a bit like a milestone to me. Thomas was born in the middle of the decade of endless possibilities to me. I started the Nineties in the throes of career and life disruption and ended it on top of the world. As 1990 was ushered in, I was looking into the first big abyss of my life. I had spent the 80’s as a high-flyer at my bank and had built several amazing businesses from scratch such that I was one of perhaps two of the fastest rising stars in the bank when suddenly, a loan loss in one of my smaller divisions blossomed into a full-scale financial crisis for us. As such and as punishment, I was being assigned to smaller duties as CEO of our Canadian bank, or as I have called it, a transfer to Gulag Toronto. I was also going through my first divorce and dealing with all that that would entail. The woman I was seeing, who lived in London, was systematically ripping my heart to shreds by flip-flopping on our relationship. By 1999 I had recouped my career and was a member of the Management Committee of my bank and we had sold the bank at a good price to Deutsche Bank. The result was a very large payout to me (the largest of my career) and I was suddenly the CEO of the third largest money management firm in the world. I’ve never had as much money in the bank as I had as the new millennium clicked us out of the 1990s. Life was good.
Life stayed good for me for another seven years or so until I hit another career wall at Bear Stearns. Once again, it was a rather dramatic undoing and I was once again flying very high when the sun started to melt my wings and I fell precipitously to earth. I have since recovered from all of that and as the old saying suggests, what didn’t kill me made me a lot stronger. I have come to understand that it is completely true that we learn our most valuable life lessons from our failures and that if we take them as the learning moments that they are, we become better for them. I will also say that judging by my last two decades, the best moments I had came right in the middle of them. In 1995 I mark my good fortune as the birth of Thomas. In 2005 I mark my good fortune as my meeting and falling in love with Kim. I suppose I should look forward to 2025 on the theory that perhaps I am due for my next great moment in life.
Thomas has spent this year adjusting. He was married about a year ago, so that has probably been his most important adjustment. He and Jenna, his wife, moved from NYC to Denver early this year, so since Thomas is a young man who spent his entire upbringing in NYC, that has certainly been another major adjustment for him. He has always been a lover of the great outdoors, but now I see on his social media feeds that he is out and about enjoying all the Rocky Mountain High pleasures there are to be seized. He is also adjusting to running his own business and having to do all the front end, middle and back end work that entrepreneurship demands. I suspect that in the future, Thomas will look back on 2024 as one of his great learning years.
It is funny to think that my youngest child is turning thirty. That seems like it should be a big milestone for me. I am not at all oblivious to the realities of aging. I am neither in denial nor do I feel I am falling into some form of despair over starting my seventh decade. Kim and I seem to be aging quite differently. She has taken all the right corrective steps. She has gotten her weight down to near ideal levels for her overall size, with the help of bariatric surgery. She had both of her knees replaced a while ago and has great mobility. She is quite dogmatic about exercising, and is therefore keeping herself fit. But she also has a regular series of things that go bump in the night. The latest issue has been with her eyes and it seems she will need some treatment to head off any further problems. My path has been quite different. I am still working on all original issue equipment and while I have an occasional joint ache (hips, knees or shoulders), everything seems to be in more or less fine order. My numbers are still good showing no signs of diabetes or cardiovascular degeneration or even cancerous indicators. I do some exercise here and there with swimming and gym work, not to mention gardening whenever its needed. My biggest emphasis has been on keeping myself intellectually challenged. This I do between my daily writing and my expert witness work, both of which are growing and not shrinking. I think about what is likely to come for me and Kim in the next decade, but its all about anticipating change rather than dreading it. I have no problem with the aging process at this point.
I have also decided that all the talk about longevity and the ability of mankind to extend his life has questionable value to me. I don’t long for my youth and I don’t dread my demise. I am quite happy and content to just keep on truckin’ as fate and nature allow. I find myself often repeating the refrain from The Highlander, which warns us with “Who wants to live forever?” When I watched the struggles of Joe Biden over stepping down from the presidency at age 81, I found myself thinking that he needed to move on and let go. I simply don’t want to find myself being a cat on a curtain, hanging on for some reason and not able to recognize that all things must pass and the real challenge is to let them pass gracefully and find your next stage of life. Joe Biden will not lack for things to fill his life with meaning for as long as he is able. I have a moment or two when I wonder what I will do next, but there really is an endless array of opportunity to seize if you take the time to look around with an open mind.
Ever since I was seven years old, I was a man in a hurry. I started by skipping 2nd grade, graduating from high school early and getting my MBA at the age of 22. I rushed through a career until I hit those two walls I mentioned before and now here I am at age 70. Its a good thing that I was smart enough to never dream of retiring early since I didn’t really retire until I was 67 and even then I can say with a straight face that I’m only somewhat retired. I rushed my whole life to get to a finish line only to realize that there is no or should not be any finish line in this race of life.
If I sit and think about what I would advise my children, and perhaps especially my son who is turning thirty, it would be to certainly have goals and dreams to aim for, but not to let any of that get in the way of enjoying every day and treasuring the path that leads you past all the richness of your life. I have always liked the grandma from the movie Parenthood who says that when she was a young girl some liked the Merry-Go-Round, but she enjoyed the Roller Coaster because she felt you got more out of it. Clearly the filmmakers were speaking to the ups and downs of life. Based on that sentiment I kept a framed graphic of a roller coaster in my office for years. It is now on the wall of my oldest son’s home. He’s in the attractions business, so who knows what he gets out of it. But for my baby boy turning thirty, I wish a life of abundant ups and downs and the good sense to value them for all they are worth.