20 Reasons I Want to Live to 100

1. I have been to Mexico City in every decade of my life except one. I intend to fix that, and then keep going. Tongue tacos and extra viejo tequila.
2. I want to dance salsa in twenty-five countries. I am at nine. The math requires time.
3. My luthier is building me another uke — curly recycled old growth redwood top, ziricote back and sides, curly maple neck. Clearly this will need another 40 years of play.
4. The next dog. The dog after that.
5. I get to witness scholars discover that writing is cognitively benign at worst, and joyful at best. I want to do that another couple of thousand times.
6. I have yet to eat pigeon tagine in Morocco, cassoulet in France, or injera in Ethiopia.
7. You, dear reader — you who haven't found me yet, or haven't written to me yet, or wrote once and disappeared — you have things to teach me I don't know I need. And I, you.
8. The Japanese maple where I will bury several generations of dogs' ashes, all still in urns, isn't planted yet.
9. I want to become 34.5 percent better a coach and still be, paradoxically, constantly satisfied and unsatisfied.
10. Salsa. Still salsa. Always salsa.
11. I have laughed more in this work than I ever expected to. I intend to keep being surprised by that.
12. I want to sit in Montevideo in whatever café Galeano used when he was assembling The Book of Embraces.
13. None of my clients have won a Nobel yet. Yet.
14. And the dog after that.
15. I have things to write that haven't found their form yet.
16. I get to be gifted, daily, with people trusting me with their most vulnerable selves. That will never get old.
17. I have not yet lived enough mornings where the sentence arrives before the pu-erh tea.
18. Tikkun Olam is slow work.
19. I have been doing this more than half my life. I am not done.
20. Did I mention salsa? 🦄