Two of my favorite insights about aging come from the unlikely sources of Star Trek episodes. In the series finally of Voyager, the older and younger Captain Ja

Two of my favorite insights about aging come from the unlikely sources of Star Trek episodes. In the series finally of Voyager, the older and younger Captain Janeway meet face to face. After overcoming their initial distrust, they come to realize that each has something to learn from the other, and when they team up they're unbeatable even by the Borg queen. I can take something away from that when writing about work I've done in the past, which is like collaborating with my younger self. His job is to have the bold ideas, mine is to correct the errors and omissions, and neither of us is much use without the other. The other insight comes from an episode of TNG when a dying Captain Picard is given the chance by Q to relive an incident from his youth that he regrets. Fully expecting to put everything right because of his accumulated wisdom and experience, he succeeds only in alienating his young friends and setting the rest of his life on a course of mediocrity. Aside from the similar theme of the older self underestimating the younger one, that story makes me look at all the dumbass things I did when I was young in a different light. A lot of them were due to having too big of an ego, but some measure of that same personality characteristic was also an essential prerequisite to doing anything worthwhile.