I always thought the big decisions were what shaped my life trajectory, but my 50th birthday celebration revealed something way more interesting—it’s actually the tiny, everyday choices that determine where you ultimately end up.
It was the most meaningful birthday I’ve ever had.
Fair warning, this is a long one, but it will be worth your time.
First, a quick recap of why my 50th was so meaningful. It began with a trip to Florida to visit my Mom before my birthday. One of my sisters and my nephew also came up from Miami to surprise me. We golfed, ate, swam, played games, and laughed until we cried.
Afterward, my heart was full.
Next, I arrived home and the next day celebrated with my wife and children. My wife had arranged for my kids, family, and mentors to write encouraging letters. My kids read theirs to me during dinner. There were tears and laughter.
My wife wrote, “Honestly, Kent, you are one of my biggest inspirations, and I can’t even imagine where I would be if I hadn’t met you.” (The feeling is mutual; my wife is the best person I know by far and has had the biggest impact on my life).
My twenty-one-year-old son wrote, “I realize everything you did and said was for a reason.”
My eighteen-year-old daughter wrote, “You were and still are my biggest inspiration to follow my heart and my head, which has shaped the kind of person I am now.”
And my twelve-year-old son wrote “50 Reasons Why You Are So Awesome.” Some of them were a hoot:
“You always say I can do it, even if it’s not helping.”
“You always know what’s best for me, even if I don’t admit it.”
“You correct my grammar, even if I don’t like it.”
And there were endearing ones, too:
“You always congratulate me even if I get B’s in school, and some parents are angry about that.”
“You get me birthday and Christmas presents with your own money.”
“You always somehow tend to make up a stupid name for me each day.”
My heart was bursting.
But it wasn’t over. A week later, my wife arranged a final celebration at Jack’s Abbey Brewery with six of my close friends. Two-thirds through the celebration, my friend of twenty years asked everyone to share a word of encouragement with me.
Words like loyalty, perseverance, father, pastor, faithfulness, and friend were used. And one of my friends asked me to share three pieces of wisdom I’ve learned in my 50 years that would be helpful for them.
My heart was overflowing.
The Compound Effect
Throughout all these celebrations, one thing stood out to me:
The investments people have made in me and those I have made in myself, in my faith, and in others, were compounding.
Like compound interest in an investment account, your choices compound, too.
That’s not to say I’ve done it perfectly. In some of those same letters from my children were some hard statements, like:
“Though we haven’t always gotten along.”
“You taught me responsibility (albeit a bit heavy-handed sometimes).”
But for the most part, the number of good choices I made far outweighed the poor ones. Honestly, before this year of compounding joy and abundance, it felt like twenty-five years of hardship. Not that it was all bad, there were many good things, but there was so much struggle…
- The late-night fights trying to save our marriage
- Praying for money to buy groceries and pay bills
- Struggling to overcome my anger issues
- The frequent disappointments, setbacks, hurts, and letdowns that come with leading organizations and people
Looking back, I realize those struggles made me who I am. But through it all, there was also persistence and perseverance to stay the course, though I sometimes felt like giving up.
It reminds me of the One Degree Rule…
The One Degree Rule
On March 28, 1979, a sightseeing plane bound for Antarctica crashed into a mountain, killing all 279 people onboard. The crew had not been informed of a two-degree correction made the night before, but one or two degrees can make all the difference. The One Degree Rule states that for each degree a plane veers off course, it will miss its destination by one mile for every 60 miles it flies.
The same is true for life.
If your trajectory is just one or two degrees off, you may not notice it much over a year or two, but by the time you get ten or twenty years out, it’s apparent to everyone around you.
My ten-year high school reunion was a good example. I went from the class hellion to receiving the “Most Changed Since High School” award.
Now, thirty years out from high school, those choices and that trajectory are clear. And the future looks bright. I feel more peace, contentment, and joy than ever. Not that there won’t be more hardship, there will. But I’m learning to enjoy life for what it is,
A beautiful, messy gift.
Lessons Learned from Each Decade
“Age is just a number, isn’t it?”
That’s what a friend said to me when I recently turned 50. It suggests a person’s chronological age doesn’t define them or their capabilities, interests, behaviors, or how they should live their life. After thanking him for the birthday wishes, I responded to him.
“Yes and no for me. It depends a lot on your perspective of life. I always look at the decades as a time for reflection, and I feel much differently about each one. This one in particular feels really good because of the place in life where I find myself. The investments I’ve made in my family, friends, faith, and myself, as well as the investments others have made in me, are paying off, and it feels really good. I’m deeply grateful. Sorry for the long exposition. This one feels more sentimental and reflective than 30 or 40…”
In some ways, age doesn’t define you, but it should define us in other ways (like not trying to dress like a twenty-year-old when I’m 50). Just think of how many people try to act twenty when they are forty because they fear growing old. I’m fifty, I don’t want to try to be twenty-five again – dress like I’m 25, act like I’m 25, think like I’m 25. I was newly married, didn’t know anything (but thought I knew everything), had a wicked anger problem, and possessed zero emotional intelligence. Heck, I don’t even want my 25-year-old body again. I was a youth pastor, eating way too much pizza, and 40 lbs heavier than I am now!
Decades are a great time for reflection because we can see more in hindsight than by peering into the unknown. A decade is also a non-trivial amount of time. Ten years of seemingly small daily decisions set the tone for one’s trajectory.
My ten-year high school reunion was a good example. I went from the class hellion to receiving the “Most Changed Since High School” award.
With that in mind, let me share some hard-earned lessons and reflections from each decade.
Don’t worry. I won’t bore you with 50 lessons from my 50th birthday, just a short reflection from each decade.
At 20…
I was too young and dumb to reflect on much of anything at 20, nor had I lived enough life. I didn’t necessarily want to look back too much; I wanted to escape the pain of my past. I was too busy living La Vida Loca (The Crazy Life) .
If I had to sum up my teen years in one word, it would be “turbulent.”
What would my 50-year-old self say to my 20-year-old self?
Truth be told, my twenty-year-old self would probably say, “F-off. I don’t care.”
Which led to me learning many things the hard way. But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt for a minute.
First, I would have compassion on my twenty-year-old self. “I know you had a rough upbringing. You have a tough exterior, but inside there is a big heart. There’s a big heart-shift coming, and it will determine your trajectory for the next twenty years. Things will still be difficult because life is hard, but they will get better. You won’t believe how much peace you will have on the inside, some of the things you get to do, the places you will go, the people you will meet, or where you will end up in the next 10-20 years. You’re about to set out on an epic adventure…and some tough times. In the end, they will make you a better person, but in the moment, they will sometimes feel unbearable.
At 30…
Am I where I thought I would be by now? Am I moving in the right direction? Do I need to make any adjustments to my trajectory? These are the questions I was asking at 30. Looking back at my twenties, I was learning who I was as a person and a leader, and cracks in my foundation from a difficult upbringing were starting to show. But I also had some major personal breakthroughs. For starters, my trajectory changed significantly upon coming to faith at age 21. After graduating from college, I moved home, found a community of faith, met the love of my life at church, began serving as a youth and young adult leader, married at 25, burned out at age 27 (as in a full-blown nervous breakdown), and was ordained a minister at 28. By 29, I had my first child and moved to Rochester, NY, to lead my first organization.
If I had to sum up my twenties in one word, it would be “forging.”
What would my 50-year-old self say to my 30-year-old self?
Did you ever imagine you would be where you are now? You’ve come a long way, buddy. It’s been intense, and it’s about to get more intense, but don’t worry, you will make it through and be better for it. There will be deep joys, intense sorrows, and some wonderful surprises along the way. Your thirties will be a blur and some of the most intense years of your life, as the thirties often are (family, having kids, leadership…it all happens at once). There will be many changes and challenges, but this is the stuff of life—the stuff that makes or breaks you as a person. You will persevere, though at times it won’t look like you’re going to make it. The tunnel will get dark, and sometimes, you won’t be able to see the light at the end, but trust me, it’s there. You will learn much more about who you are, your strengths, weaknesses, and how you’re made. Take heart and be brave. Never stop becoming who you were made to be and don’t stop pursuing your wife and family.
At 40…
By 40, I had heard all the tropes about mid-life, such as “life begins at forty” (which is not true, by the way). The question I found myself asking was, Am I making a difference? The thirties were demanding. We had two more children, I learned how hard it was to be the leader, and I left the non-profit where I had been the executive director for five years, moving from rural, NY to the middle of one of the most expensive, most densely populated cities in America— Cambridge, Massachusetts. Again, there were some significant challenges in my forties: personal, marital, leadership, and financial. Then, at age 39, something happened that would shape the trajectory of the next ten years and beyond. Dancing on the edge of burnout…again…I had an epiphany. One afternoon, during a time of prayer, another burnout felt inevitable, but instead, I was overcome by peace, and I heard this phrase reverberate in my soul,
Kent, you don’t have to understand or control things to live from a place of peace and rest.
Over the next several years, I learned how to live within my limits and establish healthy rhythms in the core areas of life: relational, emotional/mental, spiritual, and tangible (work, $$$, eat, sleep, and exercise). That set me up for exponential growth in my mid to late forties, as all the lessons I had learned began to coalesce.
What would my 50-year-old self say to my 40-year-old self?
You made it to 40! That in and of itself is a feat considering your early years. Don’t worry. You’re not going to have a midlife crisis, and you can’t afford a Corvette, so there’s no need to worry about that, but you will experience the most significant life shifts to date. There will be some more deep disappointments and family challenges that will leave you feeling confused and disoriented, but in the end, they will lead you to hope, and some of the things you thought you would do forever will change. Fear not! It’s all for your good, and as you experience more joy than you have in years. The future is bright!
There will also be some big changes you can’t anticipate, but you will also see a glimmer of hope. You will begin to know yourself well, and all the hardship and lessons you’ve learned thus far will start to crystallize. As they do, you will see and experience hope, and you will begin to share your wisdom with others from a deeper place. Things will start to click for you, and many will fall into place, setting you up for a decade of fruitfulness in your fifties. You will endure some of the deepest disappointments and navigate some of the most turbulent waters of your life, but hang in there, it’s worth it, and the peace and contentment you will begin to experience in your late forties is not insignificant. Press through, fight the cynicism, and keep your heart soft. The U-shaped happiness curve will start to rise the closer you get to 50, giving way to deep gratitude, peace, joy, and contentment.
At 50…
Looking back, my forties were a tough and demanding decade—raising three children (navigating the turbulent teen years with two), financial difficulties, leading and closing the church we had started from scratch, transitioning to a new career after twenty years of vocational ministry, and dealing with deep doubt and disappointment about my calling. On the flip side, they were arguably my most formative decade. In your forties, life’s hard knocks and deep disappointments seem to catch up to you, and it’s easy to become cynical if you’re not careful. There is also some evidence that happiness is at its lowest levels during your forties. It decreases after 18, bottoms out around your mid-forties, and then increases throughout old age (this is a general rule, and it isn’t agreed upon by everyone, but it rang true in my life). That being said, your forties don’t have to become a mid-life crisis, and for most, they don’t.
Riding the momentum of that epiphany in my late thirties about living from rest and peace, I paid appropriate attention to my rhythms—prioritizing my physical health, acknowledging my emotions, taking a weekly rest or Sabbath day, and investing more deeply in my significant relationships. My wife and I did our second bout of marriage counseling, which proved fruitful—helping us shift from a mediocre marriage to an excellent one.
With the second half of life in full swing, or what David Brooks calls, The Second Mountain, there is a deep desire to take what I’ve learned and use it to serve others rather than climb the ladder of accomplishment. Beginning in my mid to late forties, I’ve become increasingly aware of my own mortality and finitude—desireing to give more time and attention to the things that matter most—family and friends, faith, meaningful work centered on my gifts and strengths that bring me joy, and taking care of myself so that I can maximize my contribution to the people and the world around me.
What would my 60-year-old self tell to my 50-year-old self?
Looking into the crystal ball, so to speak, I might say, “Thanks for investing in yourself and others. The dividends are clearly paying off. You have an amazingly bright future ahead of you. There are going to be some opportunities that come your way that will blow your mind, but you don’t have to worry about that. Just stay tuned and present to God, yourself, and the people around you, and keep leaning into your mid-life anthem:
But I have calmed and quieted myself,
I am like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child I am content.¹
Your One-Degree Shift Starts Today
What small trajectory shift do you need to make right now, that in the coming months and years will compound into something wonderful?
Footnotes
¹ From Psalm 131
