I met up with an old business colleague while in New York City for a meeting. He had tracked me down through the miracle of LinkedIn. We hadn’t seen each other in over twenty years, back when we worked together as two young bucks in a small management consulting firm.
I was curious about his career path, and what had become of him - or someone like him, I should say. At that time, in my mind he was untouchable: a pedigreed Harvard MBA; a high-caliber superstar who was smart, ambitious, the whole package. He was charging hard and fast to make a name for himself, as was I.
We met on a rainy afternoon at the Starbucks across from my hotel. I ran inside to find him sitting at the window counter, his slouched reflection staring back at him like an old joke while the raindrops pelted madly against the gray glass. He had a little less hair, a bit more paunch, and when he stood up to greet me he was slightly taller than I had remembered.
There was something sad about him, too. He had a weathered and worn-down look, the kind you get from being beat up by life a bit. I only recognized it because I know all about it, first-hand.
He probably saw the same in me.
We got caught up on our families and careers, gossiped about our old boss, and then he recounted some risky business moves that sounded great but had not turned out so well for him, or his family. He finally settled with a stable job at a firm in NYC where he is able to maintain a decent lifestyle and get his kids through college.
We talked about the ups and downs of our careers, the trying and failures, and the shifting priorities that come with getting older. Status, recognition, world domination – that stuff isn’t as shiny as it once was. We both agreed, what’s important now is stability, our families, the ability to shrug off the stressors of life.
He then started laughing and pulled out his i-phone to show me something. It was a chart of some sort.
“Have you seen this?” he asked.
It was a simple graph, with “Age” on the horizontal axis, and “Give a Sh*t” on the vertical axis. “Look,” he pointed. “The further to the right you go, the lower the line descends.” In other words, the older you get, the less you care. About what people think. About pushing your ideas around. About taking over the world. Priorities shift with perspective and experience.
I laughed, a hard laugh of recognition.
To be continued.
