No matter how smart or hardworking one is, it still takes time to grow wise. It takes years of hard work to have overnight success. It takes nine months for a baby to gestate. It takes time for the fruit to ripen on the tree.

The Bible says that Moses, on his way to the Promised Land, got lost in the desert and wandered in the wilderness for forty years! How could that be?! The Sinai desert is so tiny that nobody could get lost there for that long! 

The answer might lie in seeing this 40-year journey in metaphorical terms where the wilderness is internal, and the Promised Land is the acquisition of wisdom to address fundamental questions such as what is the meaning and purpose of my life? Perhaps the journey comes down to becoming the very sage we had been seeking.

We spend most of our lives checking off items on the list dictated by society, our parents, teachers, priests, and coaches. We watch ads hoping to emulate the model on the cover of some magazine. Then, if lucky, one day we wake up to realize we had been living our life based on someone else’s script.

At my age, I have seen multitudes of such 40-year journeys: my Boulder life; my business life; my personal relationship, and my ownership of Highland. As I have strived throughout to lead a conscious life by paying attention to details, I would like to share a few observations on these forty-year cycles:

Forty years ago the homeless problem along Boulder Creek was as bad as it is today, the only difference is heroin has been replaced by fentanyl. Forty years ago AIDS was devastating the gay community; today it is Monkeypox. Forty years ago we were fighting the Soviet Union in Europe; today we are engaged with Russia in Ukraine. Forty years ago Stagflation was ravaging the American economy; I fear we are on the cusp of repeating that experience with inflation at 9.1% and the Government spigots wide open.

No matter how it is expressed – there is nothing new under the sun; the more things change, the more they stay the same; there are only seven musical notes and seven primary colors – the wisdom to be extracted is that we have seen and heard all this before. Passage of time and subtle attention to cycles and rhythms of life are the secrets to becoming a sage.

— Sina.