I write about my eighties not because my life has been exceptional, but because so few people my age write about this time of their life at all. I want to inspire them if I can to embrace the future not fear it.

Trying to Understand What Defines Me

A few weeks ago, I created a series of Venn diagrams on my iPad to help me understand what defines me.

The diagrams weren’t about my career. They weren’t about money or success. They were about curiosity, contribution, gratitude, imagination, learning, relationships, health, and creating things that didn’t exist before.

As I looked at the overlapping circles, I realized that after more than eighty years I was only beginning to understand the thread that connected my life.

Perhaps my first eighty years were just about building the platform for what is to come next.

The Curious Child Is Still Alive

At 81, I still feel like that little boy who found that everything was interesting.

For the curious every unanswered question is an invitation, not a problem. Every new technology promised another adventure. Every book opened another world. He never saw limits, only possibilities. The piano keyboard was always waiting for his fingers. The typewriter wait for his touch.

That little boy is still running my life. And he wants to run even faster.

A Beautifully Complicated Life

My life today is wonderfully, and sometimes frustratingly, complicated.

I’m still helping create companies. I’m fascinated by science and still consider myself a scientist. Writing is a big part of my creative process; in addition to this blog, I am working on two new books. I play the piano and compose music. Deborah and I have moved to Italy, where I’m learning not only another language but another culture. We’re restoring a three-hundred-year-old palazzo and imagining what a truly intelligent home can be. I am creating a digital twin of a home that was born in 1731.

At the center of all of it is Deborah. Our relationship is the anchor of my life. I have been blessed by such love.

When I’m not working on those projects, I’m reading about physics, history, medicine, artificial intelligence, or whatever else captures my imagination. I exercise, work on my health, and try to give myself the best chance of making good use of whatever years remain.

Would I Be Happier with a Simpler Life?

Sometimes I wonder whether I’d be happier if life were simpler. I honestly don’t know. Whenever I imagine giving these things up, I don’t feel lighter. I feel smaller, reduced.

Aging

I don’t think of myself as old. But reality doesn’t disappear simply because we ignore it.

If I’m fortunate, perhaps I have ten really good years ahead of me. Maybe more. Maybe less. None of us knows. Oddly, that thought doesn’t frighten me. Fear has never been the emotion that shaped my life. I experience fear, but my drive always overcomes it. Of course, illness, dementia, and physical decline are possibilities. It would be easy to spend time worrying about them and I do have worries but mostly I am committed to doing the things that will not only lengthen my life but, more importantly, increase its quality.

What occupies my mind is something quite different. I wonder what I will leave unexplored. What could have been but no more.

The Hardest Choice

The older I become, the more I realize that every yes is also a no.

If I spend years helping build a company, perhaps I won’t write the piece of music that only I could have written. If I devote myself to one idea, another may remain forever unexplored. There is no way to really know the best path. But it is possible to avoid wasting time and opportunities. High on that list I would put attending conferences and sitting on boards of directors something I have to confess I did a lot of in my younger years.

Making a Difference

I believe we have two purposes: to appreciate the gift of being alive and to make life better for others.

I’ve gradually realized that I don’t want to spend my remaining years doing things that would almost certainly happen without me. I want to spend them making the unique contributions that only my particular life has prepared me to make.

That doesn’t mean they have to be grand. Perhaps it’s a company, a book, or finally the song I have always imagined I would write. Perhaps it’s a conversation or an invention that changes someone’s life. It may be all of the above and more.

I don’t think much about how I will be remembered. I do think about how I am experienced now. I love it when young people in their early twenties, or even younger, relate to me not as an old man but as someone vibrant they enjoy and can learn from.

Everything Compounds

People talk about compound interest.

I think experience compounds too.

Knowledge compounds.

Judgment compounds.

Empathy compounds.

Perspective compounds.

The great privilege of living a long life isn’t simply accumulating memories. It’s having enough experiences to begin seeing connections that were invisible when you were younger.

My life story can seem complex with several careers, countries, languages, and relationships but for me they are all woven together into one tapestry.

What Comes Next?

People sometimes ask whether my best years are behind me. I honestly don’t know, but I hope not. I do know that I have never been more curious. AI alone has opened up so many new possibilities for me and never more grateful. Never more aware that time is precious.

The first eighty years gave me knowledge, experience, a wonderful family, friends, and lovers. There were many painful moments as well.

Like many who have reached the success and financial security that I have, I was lucky, not just talented. And I was helped by so many along the way.

Now I have the freedom to choose how I spend my remaining time. I do not want my past have a hold on my future. I have no obligation to it. But it does have a grip on me. I often find myself thinking about the past, especially missing those who are already gone. But if I have another decade, I don’t want to spend my time with memories. I want to spend it creating the future.