David Brooks

My question is, if the next five years is a chapter in your life, what's the chapter about?

Then I always tell young people in particular, three adventures a decade.

Try three new things a decade.

I have a son who was in the military.

He taught a little kindergarten in Nairobi.

He worked at a sports camp, he did a little business, and then he became a fourth grade teacher, which is, I think, what he'll spend his career on.

He had at least three adventures through his 20s.

If you have children in your 20s, chill out and let them have their adventures.

Life is long, they're probably going to be working until they're 75, so let them have their adventure so they figure out what they really want to do.

That's my one piece of advice.

Another professor said, what distinguishes people is not their opinions, it's not their IQ, it's not their ethnicity, it's the ruling passion of their soul.

It's really important for us all to know, at this moment in my life, what's the ruling passion of my soul?

And what I love most right now, you know, I'm like, I don't know if you're like this, but I tell young people, remember when you were 13 and horniness came into your life?

Well, when you get to be about 55, there's a new form of horniness will come into your life, which is called generativity, which is the desire to leave a legacy, to give back, to contribute something to society.

And so that's kicked in and my little form of trying to do something good for the world is to like figure out how to modernize our thoughts about moral formation and how do you find your purpose and how you think about your own desires.

And so I love taking amorphous subjects, like how do you think about your desires?

That's a very amorphous subject.

And I love reading and studying and researching.

So I get it down to something concrete that I can communicate through stories.

And then if I say it to a group of people, I see people writing it down because they find it useful.