I just keep thinking about this young man, a mid-level manager where I still do some consulting, and he was offered this DIRECTOR role, a BIG promotion, and everyone is congratulating him but I saw him yesterday, in the break room looking out over the city, and his face, it just hit me, he looked exactly how I felt at his age, this kind of... disengagement, almost. Like the joy was being sucked right out of him even as he was supposedly winning. And I know why. He has these two little ones, just tiny, and he’s so GOOD with them, I see him picking them up from daycare sometimes, holding their hands, and I just… I know he’s thinking about the travel, the demands, the CONSTANT expectation to be available, and how that’s just going to take him away from all of it. The breakfast cuddles, the bedtime stories, those little voices that are just bursting with new words every day. He’ll miss it. He’ll miss the mundane magic. And I don't even have to ask him if he’s worried about the financial pressures of living here, I mean, of COURSE he is, anyone with a brain cell knows that a pay raise often just means you can afford the same struggle in a SLIGHTLY bigger box, but that’s not what’s eating at him, I can tell. It’s the time. It’s the irreversibility. I was exactly the same, you see. I made those choices. The ambition, the climb, the perceived necessity. I mean I don't even — whatever. My children are adults now, wonderful, successful, but sometimes I think about those early years, those fleeting moments, and I just get this ache, this phantom limb sensation, for what I let slip through my fingers. The little hands in mine, the sticky kisses. You don't get that back. No amount of money or impressive title fills that particular void. And watching him, so close to that precipice, it’s just… it’s a profound sadness, isn't it? A kind of anticipatory grief for a life not fully lived with the people who matter most.