Your message is simple: the privileges that come with each birthday (gifts, fun, celebration) are balanced (not negated) by attention to new responsibilities.

Rarely is ‘advice’ applicable to everyone; and like beauty ‘good advice’ is often in the eyes of the beholder. But this piece, by Michael Grothaus, is a real exception. 

The philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has exercised both voice and power by giving away $12.5 billion to more than 1,250 organizations in less than two years.

"During Brett Kavanaugh’s hearing, listening to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford give her testimony about him, I remember sitting in the Chicago airport, between flights, and watching it on my phone. I cried.”

Life just plows forward. Plans, intentions, hopes-- all have impact but control of life is an aspiration; not a thing; no matter how willful I am. In January 2020 I joined a bank to help launch a new Institute to support the development of human capital in families; that’s a story of its own which will wait for another day. But six weeks after starting, life was disrupted as the world shut down in the face of the coronavirus. I spent the next 18 months working remotely; reimagining the original job, and completed that assignment this summer. During that time, I was MIA on this site.