Freedom – Grandpa Bob Encouraging Leadership

What I’d Tell a 21-Year-Old Now

My niece is turning 21 in a couple of weeks. That milestone prompted me to go back and read a post I wrote in 2013 called Advice for a New 21-Year-Old.

Reading it now, I still stand behind it. But a lot has changed in the world and in me since then. A 21-year-old stepping into adulthood today faces a different landscape than the one I was writing about then. After more than a decade of watching young people navigate it, I think an update is in order.

Back in 2013, I intentionally opened with drinking and gambling. Those are two of the classic threshold items attached to turning 21. Things the world suddenly says you’re allowed to do.

Turning 21 feels significant in part because it comes with new freedoms. New access. New choices. New opportunities to say yes to things that used to be off limits.

But if I were to distill what I want to say today, it’s this:

The most important part of turning 21 isn’t what you’re allowed to do. It’s what you’re responsible for doing with your new freedom.

On Drinking

Back in 2013, I wrote specifically about types of alcohol, mixing drinks, drinking water between drinks, and a few other practical things. The tips were fun, and I meant them. But what I was really trying to say was simpler.

Don’t let alcohol become the thing that teaches you who you are.

A 21-year-old can easily mistake access for maturity. Being allowed to drink is one thing. Knowing how to carry yourself is another.

If you choose to drink, stay in charge of yourself. Stay aware. Stay responsible. Don’t confuse recklessness with fun, or excess with adulthood.

There’s nothing impressive about losing control, hurting people, damaging your future, or building habits that begin as entertainment and slowly become dependence.

Freedom says you can. Wisdom says you don’t always have to.

On Gambling

Gambling is worth talking about, less for the casino tips and more for what it teaches us about life.

A lot of life will tempt you into thinking you can outsmart systems that were built to profit from your confidence. Sometimes that system is a casino. Sometimes it’s consumer debt. Sometimes it’s a flashy investment story. Sometimes it’s just your own belief that you’re the exception to every warning sign.

Understand the odds. Understand the incentives. Understand that some games were built for you to lose slowly enough that you keep playing.

That lesson applies far beyond cards, dice, and slot machines.

On Money

At 21, your income may still be modest. Your savings may be thin. But your financial decisions aren’t any less meaningful.

This is the age when you should begin learning how money actually works.

Learn how to live below your means. Save at least 10% of your income, always. Learn how savings accumulate and compound over time. Einstein called compound interest the most powerful force in the universe, and he was right.

Learn how debt can easily grow if you allow it. Learn how investing works. Learn what markets do over time. Learn what risk is and what it isn’t. Learn how compounding works for you, or against you.

Don’t hand the whole subject over to experts and decide this isn’t for you.

It is for you.

Nobody can make this investment in your understanding except you. It’ll take effort, time, and discipline, but the payoff will be enormous. The earlier you begin, the more options you give yourself later.

On Taxes

This is one area I would add much more explicitly today.

Taxes shape your paycheck, your investments, your business decisions, your home decisions, and your retirement decisions. They are one of the most powerful forces shaping the economy around you. Most people your age treat taxes like background noise. They are anything but background noise.

Learn how federal income taxes work. Learn how your state handles taxes, including property taxes. Learn the basic tax forms. Learn what withholding is. Learn the difference between deductions and credits (it’s a big one). Learn how capital gains differ from ordinary income.

Most importantly, learn how and why governments shift tax policy. You’ll find that it’s often less about revenue generation and more about encouraging or discouraging certain behaviors. When you understand this, the debates about tax policy start making a lot more sense.

You don’t need to become a tax attorney. But you do need to stop treating taxes as some mysterious thing that happens in the background while adults in suits handle it for you.

The sooner you understand taxes, the less often you’ll be surprised by them.

On AI and Paying Attention to the Future

This didn’t belong in the 2013 version the way it does now.

If I were talking to a new 21-year-old today, I’d tell them to learn how to use AI well.

Not as a crutch. Not as a substitute for thinking. Not as some fantasy weapon that will let you dominate the world.

Use it as a tool.

Use it to expand your access to knowledge. Use it to test ideas. Use it to get a rough draft or minimum viable product moving. Learn what a minimum viable product is and why it matters so much to growth.

Use it to make an idea more tangible. Use it to model possibilities. Use it to iterate faster. Use it to tighten your thinking by forcing your vague idea into something clearer and more real.

An idea in your head can feel pretty smart. The moment you try to express it, structure it, test it, or build it into something visible, you’ll begin to see its strengths and weaknesses. AI can help accelerate your thinking process.

A lot of people are afraid that AI will eliminate jobs, upend industries, and leave ordinary people behind. That fear is understandable. But the larger pattern is nothing new.

History is full of major technological shifts that changed the economic framework people were living in. Industrialization changed everything. Then electricity. Then assembly lines, cars, computers, the internet, and smartphones. Each wave brought creative destruction. Old methods faded, old jobs shrank, new opportunities appeared, new leaders emerged.

AI is doing the same thing now. And the people who will thrive aren’t the ones who wish the old way would come back. They’re the ones paying attention to where the world is going, and responding.

Pay attention to what’s becoming easier, faster, cheaper, more valuable, or more scalable. Pay attention to which skills are fading and which ones are growing. Then adapt. Learn. Position yourself well.

That’s a far better response than fear.

On Health

At 21, most people feel almost invincible. That feeling can fool you into thinking poor habits are free. They aren’t. They just send their bills later.

Make physical activity a normal part of your life. Build it into your routine so deeply that you miss it when it’s absent. Walk. Run. Lift. Stretch. Work outside. Stay active in ways that make your mind and body stronger, more capable, and more durable.

Healthy habits pay real dividends over time. Energy, mobility, resilience, mental clarity, confidence, longevity, and quality of life. These aren’t accidents. They grow out of a disciplined and consistent approach to taking care of yourself.

If you build a strong base now, your future self will thank you.

On Faith

A 21-year-old may or may not have ever been meaningfully exposed to faith. Some were raised around it. Some were barely around it at all. Some were exposed to a shallow version of it and walked away before they were old enough to examine it for themselves.

But by 21, your openness to faith is your responsibility.

Faith should never be reduced to pretending. You don’t need to manufacture certainty where you still have questions. But you should stay open enough to seriously consider that life is more than work, pleasure, achievement, money, and survival.

Ask the bigger questions.

Why are you here? What is good? What is true? What does it mean to live well? What does it mean to love well?

These are foundational questions. If you ignore them, you’ll still build your life on some kind of answer. You just may not realize it.

Faith has a way of changing the scale of everything. It changes how you think about suffering, success, failure, purpose, love, forgiveness, responsibility, and hope. It gives context to things that otherwise feel random, hollow, or purely material.

Stay open. Read. Ask. Listen. Seek out serious people of faith, not just loud people with opinions.

You don’t have to have everything figured out at 21. But you’re old enough to begin seeking honestly.

On Learning from Good People

Find good people and pay attention to them.

Look for people whose lives make sense up close, not just people who look impressive from far away. Find people who have built something solid. Who work hard, keep their word, love their families well, handle money responsibly, and have endured difficulty without becoming cynical.

Ask questions. Watch what they do. Learn from their patterns.

At 21, you’re old enough to choose your influences more deliberately than ever before. Choose wisely.

On Freedom

Turning 21 brings new freedom. But freedom by itself is only raw material.

What matters is what you build with it. You can use it to drift, indulge, imitate, and react. Or you can use it to build capability, health, wisdom, faith, discipline, and a life that stands up under real weight.

That’s the better use of it.

The world tends to celebrate 21 by pointing to what you can now do.

I’d rather point to what you can begin becoming. That’s where the real opportunity is.

Happy Birthday, Isabella, from your favorite uncle.

Photo by Shai Pal on Unsplash

What Your 70-Year-Old Self Knows That You Don’t

We know about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and how our wants and desires are like a pyramid that goes from our basic needs up to our desire for self-actualization. The Pareto Principle reminds us that 80% of our results come from 20% of our efforts, helping us focus on what truly moves the needle. Saint Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises guide us through discernment, teaching us to distinguish between what brings life and what drains it.

But there’s another framework worth considering: the evolution of what we consider important throughout our lives.

As kids, we know what’s most important. It usually revolves around attention, followed by winning at whatever we are doing, which we think will get us more of that attention we crave. Everything feels urgent. Every disappointment feels permanent. The world revolves around us, and that’s exactly as it should be for a child learning to navigate life.

Teenagers start to focus on freedom, independence, and figuring out what they’re going to do when they grow up (whatever that means). They often reject what their parents value. Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes solely because rebellion feels necessary for finding their own path. What matters most is breaking free from the constraints that feel suffocating, even when those constraints were designed to protect them.

As young adults, we’re getting started, establishing our independent life, our financial foundations, our career foundations…at least we’re trying to get these things established. We’re in acquisition mode: getting the job, the apartment (maybe a house), the relationship, the respect (something we crave more than attention at this stage). We often dismiss advice from older generations, convinced they don’t understand how different the world is now.

Then something interesting happens.

As the decades flow by, what was important a few years ago, isn’t. We start to think about how to serve others, help our kids flourish, help their kids flourish. The shift is gradual but profound. From getting to giving, from proving ourselves to improving the lives of others.

Major life events accelerate this evolution. A health scare makes us realize that all the success in the world doesn’t matter if we’re not here to enjoy the fruits of our labor. The birth of a child or grandchild suddenly makes legacy more important than achievement. The loss of a parent reminds us that time is finite, and relationships are irreplaceable.

Sometimes the shift happens more quietly. Earlier this week, two co-workers were discussing the NBA finals and asked me what I thought of Game 2. I had to admit that I haven’t followed basketball since the Magic Johnson era of the Lakers. As we talked, it became clear to me that I haven’t followed any sports—except for the Savannah Bananas baseball team’s shenanigans—in many years.

What captures my attention now? I’m drawn to watching people live their best lives in rural settings, building homesteads for themselves and their families. I find myself rooting for others to succeed in their chosen vocations, nothing more, nothing less. It’s not that sports became unimportant because they were bad. They just became less important than something else that feeds my soul more deeply.

As we get older, preserving our health, and the freedom that comes with it, moves toward the top of our priority list. Interesting how the freedom we sought as teenagers is still important to us in our senior years, but for different reasons. Then, we wanted freedom and thought we were ready for responsibility.

Now, we want freedom to focus on what truly matters. Freedom to be present for the people we love, freedom to contribute in meaningful ways, freedom from the noise that once seemed so important.

There’s a beautiful irony in how we often spend the first half of our lives accumulating things, achievements, and accolades, only to spend the second half learning to let go of what doesn’t serve us. We chase complexity when we’re young and value simplicity as we mature.

Questions worth considering:

– What would happen if we could skip ahead and see what our 70-year-old self considers important? What about our 80-year-old self? Would we make different choices today knowing what they know?

– Why do we have to learn the hard way that some of the things we chase don’t matter? Is there wisdom in the struggle, or are we just stubborn?

– How can we be more intentional about evolving our priorities on our terms instead of waiting for time to do it?

– What if we could honor the lessons each life stage provides without completely losing face and dismissing what came before?

The evolution of importance isn’t about getting it right or wrong at any particular stage. It’s recognizing that growth means what we value will shift.

That’s not a bug in the system. It’s a feature. The teenager’s desire for freedom isn’t foolish. It’s necessary for their development. The young adult’s focus on building a foundation isn’t shallow. It’s essential for future stability.

Perhaps the real wisdom comes in staying curious about what matters most. Knowing that the answer will keep evolving. And maybe, just maybe, we can learn to trust that each stage of life has something valuable to teach us about what’s truly important.

The key is staying awake to the lessons, even when they challenge what we thought we knew for certain.

Photo by Filip Kominik on Unsplash

Things I Learned in China

Our China trip is what I’d call the “TV highlights tour.”

If my count is correct, I’ve visited seventeen countries, so far. There’s no better way to learn about a country than being on the ground in that country. First-hand knowledge cuts away the spin, partial news coverage, opinion, conjecture, half-truths, urban legend, and other forms of information we carry as “truth” about our fellow travelers on this planet.

Visiting foreign countries is also an exercise in adjustment. There’s jetlag, and the obvious language barriers to overcome (even in countries with English as their official language). There are differing customs, different transportation rules and systems, differing levels of sanitation, new foods, new spices, hardly any ice (what’s up with that?), and living conditions that range from squalor to opulence.

Each country has its own rich history. The local people we’ve met are proud of their country and their way of life. They’re always curious about how we live in the US, our customs, our landmarks, our system of government. They, like us, have a sprinkling of knowledge about the world outside of their country and are eager to gain a deeper understanding through their visitors’ perspectives.

Our China trip is what I’d call the “TV highlights tour.” If you were to queue a video montage of famous cities and landmarks in China, our tour hit many of them: In Beijing, we visited The Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, Lama Temple, The Great Wall, and the Olympic National Stadium (Bird’s Nest). In Xi’an, we visited The Terra Cotta Warriors, and The (leaning) Wild Goose Pagoda. In Shanghai, we visited The Bund (waterfront), The Shanghai Museum, and Nanjing Road. We also took a river cruise on the Huang Po River that runs through Shanghai. We rounded out our tour with a road trip to Suzhou (the “Venice of the Orient”). We attended some dinner shows, featuring traditional music and dance, and incredible acrobatics.

China’s airports are awesome. I dreaded the idea of taking two in-country flights in a seven-day period. That wouldn’t be a picnic in the US, and I assumed (incorrectly) that it would be worse in China. The customs process, the flight and baggage check-in, and the baggage claim processes were incredibly efficient. Shanghai has two airports. We flew into one, and out the other. Both were huge, efficient, and well-planned. It probably helps that all the airports we visited were built within the last 15 years, so they have all the latest design and technology concepts built-in.

We have over 400 photos and a couple hours of video, showing nearly every angle of the places we visited. The lessons from our China trip run much deeper than what’s captured in our photos.

The massive urbanization that has occurred in China over the past twenty years is amazing. Nearly 400 million people have moved from the countryside and into cities across China (that’s about 80 million more people than we have in the US). Billions of square feet of real estate, massive new roadways, tunnels, bridges, railway systems, subway systems, sewer systems, electricity generation, and all the other infrastructure required to support this massive migration have been developed over the past two decades. More accurately, all of it is still a work-in-process, since the migration continues.

In each city, the skyline is filled with skyscrapers and tower cranes. I stopped counting tower cranes at about 50 (on our first day in China). Everywhere we looked, commercial or residential skyscrapers were under construction. Single-family houses are a rare sight, something we only saw in a small section of Shanghai. People live mostly in high-rise apartment buildings. “Pods” of 25 high-rise apartment buildings, spanning many city blocks, are common. Imagine the entire Los Angeles basin filled with 30-plus-story buildings, instead of just the skyscrapers in the downtown section, and you start to get an idea of how massively sprawling Beijing, Shanghai, and even Xi’an are.

Some statistics may help illustrate just how massive China’s cities are. The total population in China is 1.35 billion. The total population in the US is 317.5 million. The population in Beijing is about 21 million; Shanghai, 23 million; Xi’an, 9 million. The population in New York, NY is 8.4 million; Los Angeles, 4 million; Chicago, 2.8 million. One other interesting statistic: there are more people in China who speak English than there are in the US.

Our guides in each city told us about the huge growth of their cities, and the dramatic improvements in the standard of living across China. Their apartments average 500-700 square feet. Our guide in Xi’an talked about how her first apartment, in 1990, didn’t have a bathroom or a kitchen, and yet she and her husband found a way to raise their new son in that environment. Now she and her husband, and their 24-year old son, live in a 1,000 square foot, 3-bedroom apartment, with two bathrooms. She beamed with pride while describing such a luxurious apartment and said that she hopes her son will be able to keep living there after she and her husband die.

The government owns all land in China. Long-term leases allow people to make use of the land. The lease duration is dependent upon the type of use. For instance, for urban residential real estate development, lease durations of 75 years are available. This allows a developer to build a residential apartment building, and then rent or sell the units to private parties.

Citizens used to get annual vouchers strictly allocating the amount of meat, butter, and other products they could buy per year. Goods and services can now be purchased without government vouchers. China’s huge economic growth makes goods and services much more readily available to its population. The only requirement is having enough money to make the purchases.

Car license plates are rewarded by lottery. If you are lucky enough to win the lottery, you then pay the fee (in the thousands of dollars) for the license plate. Once you have the license plate, you can shop for a car. A Canadian ex-pat in Shanghai told us there is a healthy black market for license plates, and that it isn’t uncommon for the plate to be as expensive as the car itself.

March, 2014 is a happy time across China. The one-child policy that has been the law of the land since about 1979, is being softened. Violating the one-child policy brings heavy fines to the parents, equaling about 2 ½ times their annual salary. With the new, softer policy, if you or your spouse are only-children in your parent’s family, you can apply to have a second child, 3-4 years after your first child is born.

We heard consistently about one of the many unintended consequences of the one-child policy. Consider that each child has two parents, and two sets of grandparents who make that one child the center of their universe. That one child carries the hopes and dreams of their parents, and their grandparents. With no siblings and very few (if any) cousins, sharing isn’t part of the child’s upbringing. Spoiled, un-sharing children is the result, and represents the newest generation of young adults in China.

Ironic that a Communist system that purports to be about fully-shared (communal) ownership created a new generation of citizens who have little experience sharing anything, communally or otherwise.

On our first full day in Beijing, we visited Tiananmen Square. Our guide pointed out that Tiananmen Square is similar to The Mall in Washington, D.C. It’s where their government officials from around the country meet for two weeks each year. The square has numerous monuments to the history of new China (since Chairman Mao rose to power in 1949).

As we prepared to exit the bus, our guide’s voice changed tone. She told us that there are cameras and listening devices everywhere in the square, and that many of the tourists we’d see are actually undercover police or government officials. She asked us not to ask her where the tank was, or about the protest that took place there. She officially doesn’t know anything about the protests. She only knows about it from tourists like us, talking about what happened in 1989.

It’s true. There are monuments and flags in Tiananmen Square, similar to our Mall in Washington, D.C. But, that’s where the similarities stop. As I looked at the monuments, mostly depicting Chairman Mao and the government’s control over the people of China, I couldn’t help contrast that theme to the theme of the monuments in Washington.

We have monuments to many of our Founders as well. Each monument is not only a tribute to the person, but to a belief system that our greatness comes from freedom and liberty. Ours is a government of the people, by the people, for the people…not a government whose greatness comes from its control over the governed. Tiananmen Square is vast, treeless, and austere. One can’t help but feel insignificant in comparison to the government buildings surrounding the square.

We asked about traveling outside of China. Two of our three guides had done so. Both had traveled to the US. They aren’t allowed to travel with their family. At least one family member must remain in China while the other is traveling abroad. They are required to put about $15,000 in an escrow account prior to leaving China. The funds are returned when the traveler returns. They are warned that if they choose to remain in another country, their family members will be punished financially, and could lose their jobs.

I learned quickly what it means to use a restricted and censored internet. Email worked, but FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google are all heavily restricted, especially if accessed via a Wi-Fi connection. I found that if I randomly flipped my phone out of airplane mode while in the cities, FaceBook would “work” about half the time. I had 90 seconds to post an update or a quick photo. Then, it would stop working. Apparently, 90 seconds is the amount of time it took for the censoring protocol to find my phone and shut down the app’s update capability.

China is amazing. The sheer scale of their development over the past two or three decades is unbelievable. The people are warm and friendly (as long as they aren’t driving a car, motor scooter or bicycle where you’re trying to walk…pedestrians apparently do not have the right of way, even if your light is green). The locals we met have the same hopes and dreams for their future that we do. They want to have a rewarding job, enjoy their life, spend time with their families, and see their children (child) have a better life than they’ve had.

I’ve never visited a country that lacks most of the basic freedoms I take for granted. China has rapidly “westernized” their economy and their culture, on the surface. However, they are fundamentally walking a tightrope between the freedoms required to drive their economic growth, and the strict controls and structures of a Communist state.

I can’t help wondering what China will look like twenty years from now. Will their urbanization continue at the same pace? What will the “softer” one-child policy mean for the next generation of Chinese? Will the quasi-freedoms associated with capitalist economic expansion propel the country toward real freedom in the future? Can China continue to operate one way on the surface, while controlling its population with a velvet-covered fist, beneath that surface?

These questions about China’s future make me think of similar questions for the US. What will we look like twenty or thirty years from now? Will we enjoy the same freedoms and liberties that we have today?

Full story of Tank Man from a PBS FrontLine episode in 2006: http://youtu.be/HNtA8RZ1FAA

No travelogue would be complete without some photos: