I learned to survive in that hellhole of a family by becoming all things to all people. Life is a game to me. Always look pleasant, look interested, look compassionate, and act as if you always wanted to be helpful. In my business it's important to win people's trust. I always show I care about their problems. I'm in a highly competitive industry, so it's important to win the trust of my clients to get the big-time deals [...]

[...] Silicon Valley is more than just a geographical area in northern California. It is also a state of mind - a state of mind that lusts after the easy life, wealth without working for it, wealth that defines your important status in life. [...]

[...] Youth was the gold mine CEOs could exploit, and the media hype of the 1990s kept proclaiming that not only was Silicon Valley a revolutionary new industry, it was an industry whose revolution was powered by young people. It was a time when everyone over thirty-five or forty was considered expendable. The corporations of Silicon Valley regarded workers in their late thirties and forties as "over the hill," expendable drains on profits. Loyalty and trust and the value of experience may have been appropriate for the old manufacturing way of life, but this new century was the Information Age century in which hiring and firing in obeisance to the bottom line took precedence over the other values in life.

As long as one was in one's twenties, this devaluation of becoming older was accepted as something to brag about and flaunt in the face of people in their thirties or forties who were doomed to live on a fraction of what the young men and women in the Valley were making. They had bought the belief that after thirty, creativity is lost. [...] They were entitled to their economic success because they were young [...]

Carol and Harry had bought this illusion that being young was the only value in life that mattered. But this illusion began to erode when they turned thirty. They made excuses for themselves on their thirtieth birthdays that they were not really deteriorating, going down hill in life after all. [...]

Having a child meant acknowledging you were growing older. But Harry wanted to be the only child in his marriage to Carol. For his behavior throughout the marriage was the behavior of a self-indulgent child, always wanting center stage, always wanting instant gratification. He considered his impulsive behavior a badge of honor, not something to be modified. These character traits, combined with his very competent adult business abilities, made him attractive to many people. He created an image of boyish charm combined with adult business success.

[...]

Harry remained Harry. He still lives in Silicon VAlley, still is successful in the job he still likes. He's known as a "player" and enjoys surreal short-term relationships. He continues to fight the battle of staying young forever and is now busy looking into new genetic and hormonal developments as possibilities for arresting the aging process. He has yet to realize that only the dead stay young forever.