Pink Unicorn Principles

Curiosity, love and beginning again

Not even five feet tall, my grandmother, known as Gram, was a towering figure in our lives.

Gram worked as a secretary, raised three boys and managed the bookkeeping for the family business well into her 70’s. She was a force.

Gram lived through depression, wars, social unrest and dramatic changes in technology. She passed away at 95 with three generations at her bedside.

Her legacy for me was pragmatic optimism and resilience. And the ability to laugh.

I had a beloved uncle growing up who was one of the most positive people I’ve known.

He was not rich or wildly successful in conventional ways. He was a widower. He had one adopted son. He worked for the city.

But he was always positive. He was kind to his family. I remember him laughing a lot.

His legacy for me was understanding that there are kind and decent people in the world. That you can make an intentional choice to be generous to others.

My uncle followed a common path for his generation. He worked hard until he was sixty-five and then retired to do all the things he had dreamed of doing in his later years.

He died shortly after that of a heart attack.

I have another uncle who dreamed as a young man of being a fisherman. He skipped school to hitchhike to the ocean and watch the boats go out.

He worked his way up from a small boat to a seventy-five-foot steel lobster boat. His office was the rolling ocean a hundred miles offshore.

Offshore fishing is a hard life. Up at 4 a.m., long hours, high risk, physically demanding. He loved it.

Today, in his mid-eighties, my uncle still goes out to fish, when the weather allows it. He will do what he loves as long as he can.

My wife is a cancer survivor, and we’ve spent many years with inspiring and resilient friends in the cancer community. We’ve found purpose in training cancer survivors to climb mountains.

Along the way, we’ve lost some dear friends to cancer. This is also a possibility we all carry with us. Life can be deeply unfair.

My uncles, my grandmother and lost friends often come back to me when I think about how to live a life. When I passed the fifty-year mark, I reflected on the lessons they left.

Consider the paradox we all face. Any of us could expire tomorrow. Equally, a few of us may live to be 100. We need a life philosophy that somehow encompasses both possibilities.

How do you do that? What set of principles can we set for ourselves amid this uncertainty?

I don’t think there are right or wrong answers to this, but I’ve formed some principles.

My first is that curiosity may be the greatest superpower. The happiest people I know are the most curious. They’re willing to be beginners again. They laugh at themselves.

They’re not know-it-all’s. They have an insatiable need to keep learning. They are innately interested in the world around them, in a way that is almost childlike.

My second principle is that love and human connection triumph over everything.

We obsess over many things in life: money, job titles, how we look, the big house. But all this fades away. What will matter is the people we love and the difference we’ve made in the world.

In our waning hours, I believe we’ll think most about the people we loved and helped. The times we laughed. The accomplishments that made people’s lives better. The teams we worked with.

The Beatles got it right. Love is all there is.

Here’s my last principle: Forget everything you’ve been taught about getting older.

After five or so decades on the planet, you’ve amassed immense wisdom and experience. If you have a passion to contribute and do meaningful work, please continue to do so.

And if you have a dream to do something different, do it. I have great role models for this.

My wife is always an inspiration. She just graduated with a master’s degree in social work and accepted a job as a therapist. Well into her fifth decade, she is beginning again, powered by an intense joy to help others.

I’ve seen other peers do equally inspiring things. One moved with his wife to Portugal. Another became CEO of a company. Another left a corporate career to become an entrepreneur. Another took up acting, a lifetime dream.

I also see peers struggling with purpose at this stage. I believe legacy notions of retirement and career don’t serve us well.

Not too long ago, I celebrated a milestone birthday. It was everything I wanted. The people I love, beers, music and dancing.

At about nine p.m., I slipped out of the bar. In a parking lot across the street, I got into an inflatable pink unicorn costume my sister gave me.

It was so big I felt like the Michelin man, like a float in the Macy’s Day parade. As I walked to the bar, bent over laughing, I could hear the din of music and conversation. Familiar voices. The people I loved.

Before stepping into the bar, I thought of Gram. Of my uncle who passed away too young. Of my uncle the fisherman, still working on his boat when he can. Of the dear friends we’ve lost.

I imagined how much they would enjoy being alive and with us that night.

I stepped into the room to laughter and applause. “Dancing Queen” by Abba blasted from speakers. I’m a mediocre dancer on my best night. But, for a fleeting moment, I had the moves of a young John Travolta, costume and all.

We all need principles to navigate the uncertainty of life. It can be both wonderful and deeply unfair. This becomes especially important in the back half of life, where traditional ways of thinking may not serve us well.

Philosophers, theologians, poets, Bob Dylan and others far wiser than me have written about this. Regardless, my encouragement:

Be curious. Put love and friendship above everything else because this will matter most. Don’t limit yourself. Be bold. Be unconventional. Occasionally embarrass yourself.

Put on a pink unicorn suit. Laugh out loud. Help others. Be a beginner again. As Steve Jobs famously said, stay hungry and stay foolish.

You’re just getting started.