Sunday musings…10/19/2025
1) Three. Our Hollywood email thread is the gift that keeps on giving. Launched way back before the Great Recession, we are a group of old men who went to a tiny little New England college in the 70’s and 80’s, we convene to communicate for myriad random, less than consequential reasons. Like wishing each other a happy birthday.
One such birthday wish went out to a buddy who once tricked me into participating in a psych study on the mechanics of memory. Turns out we remember things best in threes. Weird, huh? Like your TSA pre-check number. It’s 3 sets of 3!
HT and belated HBD to my boy Cows and his 45 year old insight.
2) Kings. Lots of strum und drang on the interwebs today. I’m sitting in an airport that doesn’t sell newspapers so can’t comment on legacy sources (should we call them outerwebs?). Got me to wondering: are there any kings anywhere in the world ruling over a kingdom? Real live kings in the way that everyone knows and remembers from every fairy tale we heard as a child? And don’t give me any elected person or some eunuch figurehead cavorting around castles inherited from ancient ancestors who really did, you know, rule stuff (looking at you, Chuck).
Anyone? Buehler?
3) Noblesse Oblige. Once upon a time there lived a class of people who were terrifically wealthy who felt something other than the deep self-satisfaction worn on the sleeves of today’s wealthy like another fancy logo that telegraphs their wealth. Indeed, unless surrounded by true peers this group took pains to carry their good fortune with grace and, while not humility per se, some sort of, I dunno, restraint. Where now we see their ancestors strut toward their private jet with their FaceGram post letting everyone know that St. Tropez is STILL a thing if you are, you know, them, this earlier version of uncountable wealth simply went quietly about their way.
Not every “fortunate one” behaved like this back in the day, of course. One need only google “JFK Sailing” and you will find a bit of the self-aggrandizing that certain among this clan indulged in, albeit in analog media. But even those who indulged in a bit of self-congratulation still demonstrated a sense of social responsibility which I find lacking in today’s ultra-wealthy. Something we once called noblesse oblige.
The notion that from those who had much was the responsibility to give much back.
Even the Kennedy’s, for all of their self-serving faults, must receive kudos for turning away from the various louche pursuits of their day and spending meaningful percentages of their days in service of various kinds to country and fellow countrymen. Did they happen upon additional riches bestowed upon them that were directly related to their civic and other contributions? You know, for all of the tawdry things we have learned about this generation of the super rich I find such details lacking. Contrast this with the most controversial politicos of our time, the Clintons and the Trumps for whom no benefit from service is too gauche to turn down.
I’m not really sure if there’s a bottom line or a lesson here, unfortunately. Maybe just a quiet little lament that the assumption of the responsibilities of wealth that can be consumed in personal pursuits that exceed even the imagination of the likes of Larry Ellison do not result in behavior that one might call noblesse oblige makes one sad.
Sad that we have so many more Jeff Bezos than we have, say, MacKenzie Besos.
4) Receipt. In the world of my day job there is one massive conference for which attendance is obligatory for at least half of my professional colleagues. As a younger doc I would arrive early and leave late, especially after I found my place in the extended world where doctors intersect with the companies that make the stuff we use to treat our patients. For some 20 or so years I made myself available for the entirety of the meeting, giving my time entirely to professional pursuits.
While I can’t say for sure exactly when or why it happened, at some time over the last 6 or 7 years I started to carve out time for more personal pursuits. I became notorious for the “Irish goodbye” a day or two sooner than I would typically leave the meeting, occasionally skipping out on promises to appear at some fancy Surf ‘n Turf affair in favor of a burned grilled cheese with my Dollie and my man cub. It was the right call, for sure, despite my rather inelegant execution.
More to the point, though, is what I started to do from the jump at these meetings: prioritize the engagement with my people. My tribe. The people who are responsible for my continued attendance at meetings that quite honestly I don’t really have to attend. Like my friend, who will remain unnamed to avoid any embarrassment, who always joins me in arriving early so that we can spend an evening together just being friends. Or people in my life who through good fortune just happen to be near enough to these events that I can skip out and see them.
This meeting brought me near enough to one of my aunts, one of my Mom’s younger sisters who’d been just lovely to me when I was little. My cousins scooped up their Mom and brought her out for breakfast with her first nephew despite her firm conviction that there was no real reason for her to either leave her house or entertain anyone there. What a gift! I got 2 solid hours with my Mom’s sister (and my cousins), and the only thing it cost me was missing a day at a conference.
Unlike my drivel above on noblesse oblige, there IS a message, there is a lesson here: there are people you need to see. There are people who were so meaningful in your life that when you get within a couple hundred miles of them, YOU need to get up and go see them. And when you do, you need to make it about them. I grabbed the bill for breakfast and was about to head up to the cashier to pay the tab for my aunt and my cousins, but my aunt wanted one last chance to take care of her first nephew. The little lump of flesh who made her an aunt. To take care of me, one more time.
And I had the chance to let her.
In case you are wondering I had a very productive and successful conference from a professional standpoint. But it was so much more than that. I was able to set aside time with a close friend who had offered the gift of his time to me. And I was able to accept the gift of time, and the gift of care one last time from my aunt. To let her take care of me again after all these years. One more time. One more chance for me to thank her, for today, and all of the yesterdays that gave us what may very well be our last chance to say it. I didn’t miss my chance.
One last chance to say “I love you”.
I’ll see you next week…
This entry was posted on Sunday, October 19th, 2025 at 7:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.