On a recent visit, my oldest son brought up an interesting thread that ties him, me and his grandfather, my dad, together. It seems that all of us made life-changing, significant decisions right around the year we turned 40.
Now there’s a stat.
I thought it was insightful that he bring this up as I hadn’t thought of it before. Last year, the year he turned 40, he moved his young family across country from the upper Midwest to the Southwest.
Thirty years ago, I made a similar decision when I moved my sons and their mom from Seattle to Minnesota.
In 1957, when my dad was 38, he was running a small drug store in a Southeast Arizona town of about 3,000. Just 6 years before, he and his wife and two children had been residents of Detroit.
OK, so he was closer to 30 than he was 40. But the point is still reasonable: we make decisions at key moments and times in our lives that impact the rest of our lives. And the lives around us and that follow us.
Similarly, my son moving to Arizona really brings our family full circle. In 1951, my dad took his young family west to reset the course of their lives. As a Navy veteran and Midwesterner, he was like many post-WWII men wanting to find their next opportunity. He chose to come to Tucson, Arizona, with his wife and two children (my brother and sister) in tow to work for a pharmacy downtown. Over the next two decades he worked in the industry in Southern Arizona.
Add to these scenarios Dan’s post college graduation move to Dallas and my post-50 move to Dallas—what I call the “leap off a 10-story building without anything to catch me.”
In each case, we weren’t afraid to take the “hard left turn” and go down the road less traveled. Yes, each had risk, but in the end they all worked out and set a different trajectory.
We can’t be afraid to step out and try the unknown. Sometimes we do it out of necessity (a job change that takes us elsewhere). Other times it is voluntary.
Life is really the four quarters that some philosophers and religious types have spoken of: setting a foundation, working, studying and then teaching. At the end of each of these segments is the beginning of a new one and a change to “take a leap.”
Whatever choices we make, we need to make them. Life is meant to be lived and taking the road less traveled is always the better choice. We learn more, love more, engage more.
Besides, midlife should be more than a place along the road of life. Make it a turning point like Harry, Dan and I did.
Relentless
