As you age, how do you insure that you continue to enlarge your universe? How do you educate yourself? What do you read? How do you grow? That is our dilemma when we grow old, and we all find our own answers.

Through Work

Some of us stay busy: you choose to (or have to) work, and you grow through your work. In 37 years of practicing law, new revelations and a quick rush of adrenaline have regularly spurred that growth for me.

But there were times when I hit the proverbial brick wall, and stagnated, and then made myself evolve. I would slowly change the type of law I practiced to some new area. A couple of times, it seemed as if I had begun a whole new career. That doesn’t work for everyone. I know attorneys who tried to change, and couldn’t, so they left the law and went to full-time writing. I’m very close to that myself.

Through Shakespeare

Over the last decade, I’ve developed another way to grow and learn. I immerse myself fully in a subject. One subject, all year, intensely. Last year it was Shakespeare. Thirty-one plays. Listen to lectures on the play on the internet, then watch videos of the play, then read the play. Attend performances of the plays when available. A full twelve months of Shakespeare. It was a wonderful experience. I was glad when it was over.

Through Lock-Picking

I’ve done more bizarre subjects. I spent one summer learning how to pick locks. Hours on YouTube watching the videos, and then I’d buy a box of old combination or key locks from the dollar store. Spend all day with my little kit trying to pick them.

My wife didn’t appreciate that summer. We were taking a cruise and as soon as we checked into our cabin, I announced I was going to prove to her how good I was by picking the lock on our cabin safe. I had studied it many times, knew the tricks and understood the probabilities of Cruise Ship Cabin Safes. (That’s a whole separate thing, if you didn’t know, and I was sure I’d learned it).

I shut the safe door and began my effort. My wife stood back, as far back as she could. You know how small a cruise ship cabin is, but she stood back, with her arms crossed and no faith that her husband knew what he was doing (not the first time she showed that lack of faith).

I spun it for a while and set off some sensor. I continued and the cabin automatically locked until a cabin steward came to unlock our door and reset the system. My wife would have been embarrassed if she hadn’t been laughing at me so hard. I wasn’t quite the expert I had convinced myself I was, and her lack of faith had been justified.

At the end of the summer, my wife asked me, “Are you finished with your little crime-spree, now?” Yes. Yes I was. I announced to her that I’d learned all I needed to about locks.

“Good,” she said. “It’s time to study something else.”