What Matters More Than Your Talents — Jeff Bezos

As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas... One summer, when I was around 10, my grandmother was smoking during a road trip. I hated the smell, and I had heard an anti-smoking advertisement that calculated: every puff of a cigarette takes two minutes off your life. So, I sat in the backseat and did the math. I calculated the number of cigarettes per day, the number of puffs per cigarette, and when I had a reasonable number, I tapped my grandmother on the shoulder and proudly announced: "At two minutes per puff, you've taken nine years off your life!" I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. My grandfather, who had been driving silently, pulled the car over onto the shoulder of the highway. He stepped out of the car, walked around, opened my door, and signaled for me to follow him. He was a very quiet, serious man. We stood by the highway, and he looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said: "Jeff, one day you'll understand that it's much harder to be kind than clever." Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy—they're given after all. Choices, on the other hand, can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you're not careful, and if you do, it will probably be to the detriment of your choices. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices.