He couldn’t have been more than twelve.
Shoes untied, backpack too big, eyes carrying questions far older than he was.
Then he hit me with it:
“How do you win at life?”
Not “Why do adults drink so much coffee?”
Not “What’s the point of long division?”
No—this kid skipped straight to the existential endgame.
I asked him where it came from, and slowly the truth spilled out.
His dad had been struggling—work changing faster than he could keep up, machines replacing tasks he’d mastered for years. The thing he used to be great at had quietly become the thing holding him back.
Because no one warns you:
you can’t relearn what you refuse to unlearn.
And unlearning is brutally hard.
I realized I never even asked the kid’s name.
“Jack,” he said.
“Well, Mr. Jack,” I told him, “life doesn’t come with a roadmap. People pretend they know where they’re going, but they don’t. Sometimes the world changes the path under your feet.”
He listened, really listened.
“So if you want to survive,” I said, “you’ve got to be like that jackrabbit we saw in the field.”
His eyes lit up. “The zig-zag one?”
“Exactly. That jackrabbit doesn’t know his route—that unpredictability is the only reason he survives. The coyote chasing him can’t guess the next move.”
Humans don’t get that automatically.
We have to choose reinvention.
We have to unlearn to relearn.
Jack was quiet for a long moment. Then he hit me with another one:
“How can I help him?
How can I help my dad?”
This time I took my time.
I wanted to give him something real.
“Jack,” I said, “your dad has nothing wrong with him. Not a single thing. He’s a hero. Not the magazine-cover kind. Not the battlefield kind. The kind who wakes up every day and fights a quiet war against fear, change, and the feeling of falling behind.”
Jack’s eyes dropped. He knew.
“So how do you help him? You take one small thing off his plate. One chore. One worry. One task. Do something before he asks. Give him back a little energy so he can keep fighting the quiet war.”
He nodded.
“And when it’s your turn someday, you’ll face your own version of the same battle. The world will change on you, too. And the only way through it is constant unlearning, relearning, and redefining who you are.”
He looked at me again, waiting for the real answer—the one he could actually carry with him.
And in that moment, my mind raced through everything I could say:
I could tell him you win by caring deeply and learning fast.
I could tell him the world rewards the unpredictable.
I could tell him heroes raise heroes through grit and curiosity.
I could tell him the people who “win” are the ones who unlearn before they’re forced to.
All of it was true.
But none of it was what a twelve-year-old needed in that moment.
So I knelt down, leveled with him, and said:
“Jack… life isn’t about winning.
It’s about waking up every day willing to become someone new.”
His shoulders relaxed—not in defeat, but in understanding.
And that was enough.
🎙 Listen to The Deconstructionists Podcast on Apple | Spotify or anywhere you get your podcasts. Listen now: 👉 Apple Podcasts 👉 Spotify
🔗 www.TheDeductionists.com (with extra content)