Live your time

I love my children, and as a good father, it has been my absolute pleasure to start watching the teen drama “Gossip Girl” together with my daughter, who has an excellent understanding of what is right and wrong in life. And fortunately, she accepts without any protest whenever her responsible father decides to turn the laptop to the side.

I was recently returning from a trip to Hannover, where I enjoyed both a challenging session as a lecturer at the university and a lovely BBQ with two of my dearest friends from college and their respective families. And what can I say? I remembered Blair Waldorf's mom telling her daughter in the very first episode that she will never be that beautiful and young again.

I really feel that those words had a profound impact on many friends’ current situations, who have been looking for jobs in a rather challenging and uncertain environment. In the time of AI it is quite often assumed that those of us who experienced probably some of the most exciting times in the 1990’s are uncappable to keep up with the next generation, the so-called millennials, who quite often seemed to belief that they deserve all the opportunities in life.

But what does that mean to those of us who remember the planes crashing into the World Trade Center or who had to prove themselves during the financial crisis when jobs and challenging career opportunities were simply not available? I believe that those crises and significant moments taught many of us not to take ourselves too seriously in life and instead focus on hard work and keeping to belief in ourselves, our strengths, and our dreams.

The world in which we are living is obviously changing and coming with new demands and challenges. But instead of being afraid of those challenges it might be worth remembering that we mastered other challenges in the past before. This gives us a major advantage over those, who were handled everything on a silver platter and  never understood what it meant fighting for good opportunities and a good life.

We recently finished the first quarter of the 21st century and many people I know are afraid to mention that they were born in the last quarter of the 20th century. But why would they be? When I look back at those significant years of my life then I can see adventurous twentysomethings taking risks, moving countries, working hard and attending the most outrageous parties, which don’t even exist anymore.

I was one of those guys who moved countries, who boarded flights to London and New York and got his kids on a train to Barcelona with seven pieces of luggage and who wouldn’t end up regretting those major and life-changing decisions. I won't be making this article about myself but rather about the importance of having good friends supporting us through those changing times in life.  

When I came to Hannover that weekend, I met friends from my college days. Friends who finally bought their first home ever or decided to sell their homes for the last 20 years and start a new life abroad or friends who will need to find themselves new jobs and are not afraid of a challenge. I look at those friends who I have known since my days as a Bachelor student in Hannover, and I am amazed that they finally decided to take risks and to live their lives.

Friends close to me recently went through job interviews and found themselves being confronted with either their own age or the significantly younger age of those who were interviewing them. But they also noticed that there seemed to be a change as soon as they took control, turning this so-called weakness into a strength by highlighting their significant experience and ability to work well together with colleagues being at a younger or older age.

This article is especially for those among us who remember their grandparents dressing up in lovely clothes before the annual Eurovision de la Chanson Contest on television in the 1990s, and this article is for those who find themselves being in the job market and competing with a younger generation. The thing is that we can blink, and within a few seconds, we remember the last twenty years of our lives.

Just like Elenor Waldorf, who finally realized that her only daughter, Blair, ended up becoming more and more beautiful with every year passing by, it is also our task to accept that we grow with every year in our life passing by. Those years stand for living not just our life but also our time, which started a long while ago and which is far from being over. And fortunately, there are constant reminders and people who have done it before.

I constantly get inspired by the youth as a father of small children and as a lecturer at colleges, who is surrounded by the younger generation. And when I listen to the stories of others, I get the impression that there are smart people who rely on their own proper judgments and not on the advice of artificial intelligence, who are called names and wish their users a good night and send kisses every day.

Having integrity, being intelligent, and being inspired by proper role models who actually exist in the real world and are not afraid to share their own stories seemed to be the key to not just a successful career but also a happy and meaningful life in those challenging times, which I had mentioned earlier in this article.

Having said that, I wish you all a good week, and please don’t be afraid to send me a message if you decide to join Building Bridges next session on Sunday, June 28th, 2026, at 2pm New York time and 8pm Barcelona time. Xoxo. Dirk Luis