Recounting the life lessons that guide successful careers and relationships
When my youngest son was around 4 years old, he had a voracious appetite for reading. He spent countless hours with his mother in the library and bookstores. Instead of stuffed animals, his bed was covered in books. One day, he came across a kid’s version of a one-volume encyclopedia called The Great Big Book of Everything. In it, there were loads of “kid facts,” like how loud a lion roars, what makes a balloon float, why bees sting, etc. He couldn’t put it down. We borrowed it from the library for so many consecutive weeks that we were asked to bring it back so the other kids on the waiting list could have a turn (in which case, I had to buy him a copy).
Soon after the purchase, my son (in his youthful innocence) asked how the writer of this “great big book” had come to know so much. In his mind, all books had one writer. The only justification I could come up with was that the writer had been around a long time, witnessed a lot of things, and written them all down. My son contemplated that, nodded, and went back to reading.
Decades have passed, and he is now a conscientious employee, a devoted husband, a doting father, and many other things in addition to simply being our son, and perhaps now, I’m a version of that imagined writer who, so many years ago, was a hero to my boy because of all the knowledge he had accumulated. But what is it I really know at the ripe, old age of 65? Which of those things would be worth writing down in a book about everything?
