This Is Something I Am Forever Grateful For

I would never say I am glad it happened.

I don’t want to dismiss the tragedy and the disruption and the loss.

But as I think about what happened five years ago, as I think about my life shutting down for the pandemic in March and April of 2020, I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude. I see how it changed me. I see what it taught me. I see the trajectory it put me on.

I’m not talking here about the resurgence of Stoicism that came from these last few troubled years, although that too has been fascinating, exhilarating and obviously good for ‘business’ as an author. I am mostly just talking about how deeply those strange, quiet months — when I was forced to slow down and stay put — recalibrated what I value, what I prioritize, what I want my life to look like.

In March of 2020, as social distancing and lockdowns started, my wife and two young sons settled into our ranch on the outskirts of Austin. We’d lived there for five years, but we were able to live there in a way we’d never lived there before. No more commutes. No more daily trips to the store. No more weekly trips to the airport. No more waking up in hotel rooms. No more time apart.

We would spend literally hundreds and hundreds of days together…in a row. In a way that I don’t think I had ever spent in one…