Remember the feeling.
Leaving Wall Street to write about Wall Street obviously changed Lewis' life. But for so many of us, taking that kind of leap is exactly what we put off...indefinitely. Holding on to that feeling of infinite possibility that we felt at graduation feels harder as we get older, but it matters. Lewis says, "I knew what intellectual passion felt like — because I'd felt it here, at Princeton — and I wanted to feel it again. I was 26 years old. Had I waited until I was 36, I would never have done it. I would have forgotten the feeling."
You got lucky.
This led up to his most salient point: "People really don’t like to hear success explained away as luck — especially successful people. As they age, and succeed, people feel their success was somehow inevitable. They don't want to acknowledge the role played by accident in their lives."
...So make it count.
"Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck — and with luck comes obligation. You owe a debt, and not just to your Gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky." Lewis illustrated this poignantly with a cookie metaphor:
Photo: Courtesy of Princeton University