A Birthday Letter to Anyone Who Feels Time Rushing By

Thoughts on aging, ambition, and the work we’re actually here to do

Today I turn forty‑five. Man, how fast time flies! We all say this, and I know it can sound like a cliché, but I mean it in a very practical, hopeful way. Life really does go by in a flash. Days slip into weeks, weeks flip into years, and suddenly you look up and realise you’ve arrived at an age you never imagined you’d reach this quickly.

That realisation is not a reason to panic. For me, it’s a call to stop leaving things undone. If there is one message I could leave you with on my birthday, it’s this: do not leave the things that matter most to you for “later.” Let your work in this lifetime be to create and leave behind the one, two, or three things that are deeply important to you, the things you know you want to see exist in this world because you were here.

I don’t mean this in some lofty, abstract way. I mean it in the most grounded, practical sense. Time is short. Use it on what actually matters to you.

The Seduction of Comfort

When I look around, I see how easy it is for life to quietly become about one thing: comfort.

Did today feel comfortable?
Was my life today luxurious enough?
Did I manage to avoid hardship?

We don’t always say it out loud, but comfort becomes the yardstick. A good job is one that pays well and lets you drive a comfortable car, eat at the right restaurants, live in a nice apartment, and avoid the struggles your parents or grandparents went through. And to be clear, I understand that. If you grew up with very little, the exit from that state feels like the only definition of success that matters.

This, for me, is one of the most dangerous aspects of poverty, or even just “not quite enough.” When you spend your early life in that space, the exit itself becomes the dream. You hit a stable middle-class lifestyle, you can pay your bills, you can go on vacations your family could never have afforded, and it feels like: This is it. I made it. This is success.

There is nothing wrong with wanting safety and security. The problem is when the story stops there. When the entire goal of your life becomes “never feel that fear again,” you will sacrifice almost anything, including your bigger potential, to protect comfort.

Interestingly, I’ve noticed that people who grow up more comfortable, often middle or upper-middle class, don’t have that same fear of “going back.” For some of them, discomfort becomes part of the adventure. They’re more willing to take wild swings because they’re not haunted by the memory of what it means to truly not have enough. They’re not carrying the same emotional weight of money.

Different vantage points. Different internal bargains. But underneath all of it lies the same question: is the point of your life to be comfortable, or is it to create impact?

From Microsoft and Porsches to a Different Question

For a while, I lived the classic comfort story.

I did well at Microsoft. I worked my way up, built a strong career, which culminated in a move to Dubai. I lived in a beautiful apartment. I drove a beautiful Porsche. I ate at the fancy places. I was living what many would easily label “the high life.” Side note: Dubai has a sneaky way of making the the middle-class believe they’re above it.

And by the standards of comfort, I had succeeded. My days were smooth. My status was clear. There was no visible struggle in my daily existence. If you had looked at that version of me from the outside, you could have easily said, “That’s the endgame. He did it.”

But inside, something started to unravel. The high life ran its course. It didn’t feel like enough. Not because I was ungrateful, but because I realised that comfort, achieved and maintained for its own sake, was a very small destination to build an entire life around.

So I walked away from that version of success.

Entrepreneurship was the turning point. Nothing I have ever done has reshaped me the way entrepreneurship did. It forced me to clean up my thinking, align my actions, stare straight at my own value and my own blind spots. It required me to grow up in ways that no corporate role had ever demanded.

That doesn’t mean my time in corporate was useless. Not at all. I needed that chapter. I needed to learn the game from the inside, to build networks, to enter circles and layers of society my parents never had access to. I needed to step into that world, and then, importantly, I needed to step out of it to see what truly mattered to me.

And through all of that, the real question changed from:

“How do I live a comfortable life?”
to
“What is my life actually for?”

When the Endgame Becomes Impact

At this stage, the answer is crystal clear for me: the endgame is impact.

I want my life to be about making a contribution that extends beyond my own comfort. I am deeply committed to the idea that people should be commercially active, commercially viable, and able to stand on their own two feet financially. I want people to be able to step into the world with economic independence, to raise children in a secure environment, and to make decisions from a place of freedom rather than desperation.

That’s not some side interest. That is the core of my mission.

I want people to be able to get out of true difficulty and out of abject poverty using the tools of business, commerce, and enterprise. I want them to experience what it feels like when you are no longer forced to tolerate certain behaviours, environments, or relationships simply because you cannot afford to leave. That is where money and impact intersect for me: in the creation of choice.

So I need to be clear about this: I am not someone who believes money doesn’t matter. The heart of my thesis is that whatever you do, you must make it commercially viable. Meaningful work and financial sustainability are not enemies; they belong together.

But impact sits above all of it. You cannot say, “I want to change the world, but only if I get three cars, a mansion and a lake house out of it.” Impact doesn’t work like that. If you say you’re driven by impact, then impact has to remain the north star, even if the externals don’t always look like a lifestyle magazine.

The beautiful part is that when impact becomes the true measure, action stops being such a struggle. You know that the only way to create change is through doing, so the urge to act doesn’t feel like restless torment anymore. It becomes your natural state. You move, you build, you create, not because you’re chasing comfort, but because you’re compelled by your mission.

Comfort, Inaction, and the Poolside Illusion

Comfort glamorises inaction.

We worship the image of “finally resting by the pool,” as if that is the pinnacle of a life well lived. There is absolutely nothing wrong with rest. Quiet days, holidays, time by the water… those moments matter. But we have vastly over‑glamorised them. We talk about them as if they are the main event, when in reality they are the intermission.

When comfort becomes the measure of success, we unintentionally glorify not doing. We start to believe that a good life is one in which we are shielded from effort, risk, and discomfort. But if you are led by impact, you will do the opposite: you will willingly walk into discomfort for the sake of something you believe matters.

The reward for that is not only what you build, but who you become in the process. The real paycheck is being able to point to a corner of the world, however small, and say, “That is different because I was here.”

What You Hitch Your Happiness To

Another shift that happens when you move from comfort to impact is where you “park” your happiness.

If you hitch your happiness to your looks, your status, your possessions, all of which are transient, you are building your sense of self on sand. Aging will feel like a threat. Market downturns will feel like an existential crisis. Every wrinkle, every lost title, every change will feel like it’s taking something from you.

But if you hitch your happiness to impact, the ground is much firmer. Aging can’t steal that from you. Changing industries can’t steal that from you. A market crash can’t steal that from you. As long as you can still contribute, speak, build, mentor, create, lead, or support, your life retains its meaning.

You stop asking, “How do I keep everything from changing?” and start asking, “How do I keep contributing, no matter what changes?”

The Quiet Superpower of Your 40s

Now, let’s talk about this age thing.

I see so many discussions online about ageism. I know it’s real. I’ve read the comments about being “over the hill” at forty, about careers stalling at fifty, about younger talent being preferred. I understand the frustration and the fear.

But here’s where I stand, on my forty‑fifth birthday: I feel like I’m just getting started.

I am not going to sit here and label myself a failure or tell myself I’m late. That kind of self‑attack is not a place of power. No one builds anything meaningful by constantly criticising themselves or everyone around them. You have to train yourself to see the good in you, and to see the good in others, even when you’re not where you want to be yet.

When I look at my life, I see a very different picture. I see someone who needed every single chapter to get here. I needed my years in corporate to understand that world, to build credibility, to learn how big systems and big companies operate. I needed my years in entrepreneurship to strip away illusions, sharpen my thinking, and show me what I am capable of under pressure.

There was nothing quite like this last decade of entrepreneurship. It rearranged my inner world in the best ways. And I would not trade what I know now for the smooth face and fast metabolism of my twenties. Truly. There are things I wish I had known back then, of course, but if the price of going back was to lose the depth, clarity, and experience I have today, I wouldn’t pay it.

Your forties are a beautiful convergence: you have a massive arsenal of lessons, experiences, wins, losses, techniques, and insights… and you still have energy. You still have a body that can keep pace with your ambitions. You have enough scars to know what matters, and enough time ahead to do something significant with that knowledge.

That combination is powerful.

Your Second Wind

So to everyone around my age, or older, this is my birthday invitation to you: give yourself a second wind.

Stop telling yourself the story that life is almost “done,” that the horizon has shrunk to the point that effort is pointless. Ask a different question instead: What do I want to create in the next twenty years?

Twenty years is a long time. You can build entire companies in twenty years. You can write multiple books. You can change industries. You can transform communities. You can raise children and then reinvent yourself again. You can start something at forty‑five that only reaches its peak at sixty‑five, and that would still be a life profoundly well spent.

And here’s another advantage of this stage: people are not watching you as obsessively anymore. You’re less consumed with what everyone thinks. That is pure freedom. Use it. Use that freedom to build what you actually want to see in the world, not what looks good on someone else’s timeline.

Define your own value. Decide for yourself what your experience is worth. Let impact, not age, not title, not comfort, be the measure.

My Birthday Promise

So here I am, forty‑five years old, feeling more energised and more committed than ever.

I am committed to my mission: to help people become commercially viable, to help them step into economic independence, to help them use the tools of business and commerce to rewrite their stories. I am committed to impact over comfort, to action over mere aspiration, to building things that outlast me.

I know now that to the extent I prioritise daily comforts over long‑term impact, I will fall short of what I’m here to do. I also know that there is still so much horizon ahead of me. This is not the beginning of the end. This is the start of the next, deeper chapter.

The party is just getting started.

So if you take anything from my birthday reflections, let it be this: time is moving anyway. You can spend it chasing comfort, or you can spend it creating impact. One will make your days easier. The other will make your life meaningful.

I know which one I’m choosing.

Make it rAIn, KG