The staggering diversity of human thought and existence.

Last night my almost eighteen-year-old son and I chatted about all things life. Expectedly, as he is about to enter adulthood, he’s thinking a lot about his future path. Many of his ideas are maximalist — expected at this age, although maybe he will stay true to his ideals. He says, for example, that happiness for him will be leaving a legacy. By that, he means being ultra-successful, for instance, in business. Politics, too, can help achieve that level of impact. There are narrower paths — like in sports. He contrasts the notion of legacy to “oh, I have amazing children and my family will remember me.” That’s mediocracy to him. He asks a lot about the paths of successful people. I tell him what I know. A lot of him he can explore on his own, and he’s starting — there are plenty of books about successful people or written by them.

We both agree — I, from the height of my four-plus decades on this planet and he, in his youth full of big ideas — that there is no single path. I caution him against going too grandiose in his plans. I don’t discourage but I explain that the journey still has to start small or let’s say, relatively small. I think many successful people were good at pursuing their ideas without necessarily obsessing about how their success will be measured at the end of the journey. They focused, and they persevered. The results were the outcome of their hard work, not grandiose goal-setting. Also, there are risks to being too ambitious. I know first-hand. I graduated from Harvard Business School and…