I don’t remember getting in the helicopter. And I almost didn’t make it out alive.
It was the summer after my freshman year of high school, and I was playing 7-on-7 football against a rival school. No pads, no helmets. I dove for a ball and caught a knee to the head. Hard. I remember the flash of pain, stumbling off the field, my coach telling me if I kept up this effort, I’d start varsity next season.
I took a knee on the sideline. Nausea hit me like a wave. Then I blacked out.
The rest was relayed to me after the fact: I had a seizure, collapsed, went pale. A friend’s parent called 911. I was unconscious when the helicopter arrived. They flew me to the hospital where I was diagnosed with an epidural hematoma—a blood clot between my skull and brain. If the swelling got worse, they’d have to drill into my skull to relieve pressure. The mortality rate for this kind of head injury can be up to 41% in comatose patients. Even more if drilling into the skull is involved.
Luckily for me they didn’t have to. I woke up the next day, groggy, sore, and alive.
The doctors told me no contact sports for six months. That meant missing the real season of football and basketball that year. But that wasn’t what stayed with me.
What stayed was the feeling that I was still here for a reason.
The Shift
I’ve never been a particularly religious person. But lying in that hospital bed, something shifted. It felt like the universe—God, fate, whatever you want to call it—had saved me. Not yet. You’ve got more to do.
I was a pivotal moment in my life. I got serious. About school. About life. About making something of myself. I began acting like I was preparing for something bigger.
A year later, the towers fell on 9/11. That was the first time I felt like i knew what the thing was.
I set my sights on West Point. Made it in. Only the third class of cadets to join post-9/11. Everyone knew what they were signing up for. This wasn’t going to be peacetime. We were going to war.
And we did. I led soldiers across two deployments in Iraq. After I got out, I built and led companies. I joined Apple. I teach students. I’m raising kids. And through it all, I carried this persistent drive to do more.
The Question That Won’t Go Away
Even now—every win, every “gold star”—I find myself asking: Was that it? Is that the thing I was saved for? And if it wasn’t… what is?
That question has stuck with me for 25 years. It’s not fear of failure—I’ve failed before and bounced back. It’s the fear of wasting potential. The fear of comfort disguised as success.
Maybe you’ve felt it too. Maybe you will feel it.
The Realization
But lately, I’ve started thinking about it differently. Maybe it’s not one big thing. One single moment. Maybe it’s a series of small things done well, done intentionally, done in service of others.
I work on a product that 61 million people use daily. I teach students who go on to build businesses, launch careers, and make an impact. I support my wife as she runs a thriving art business. I show up for my kids.
Maybe the ripple effect of those things is the thing. Maybe the meaning I’m chasing isn’t the problem—it’s the magnitude.
It took a helicopter and a head injury for me to realize that life is short at 15 years old. But it’s taken me 25 years to realize that the biggest impact might not come from a single act—it might come from a lifetime of intentional ones.
So I’ll keep showing up. Keep building. Keep searching. Because whatever the mission is, I want to be ready. But I am done asking if I have done enough. Done chasing an ever-moving impact quota.
Maybe the question was never “Have I done enough?” Maybe it’s just “Am I still moving toward what matters?”
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