A young fish was swimming through the ocean when he encountered an older fish heading in the opposite direction.

"Morning," said the older fish. "How's the water?"

The young fish smiled and kept swimming. A few minutes later, he turned to another fish and asked, "What's water?"

The most important things in life are often the hardest to see because we're surrounded by them every day. Time. Health. Family. Opportunity. Perspective.

It often takes a disruption - a loss, a setback, a major life event - to make us notice what was there all along.

This week's newsletter is about seeing the water before life forces us to.

One of the strange truths about life I have been thinking a lot about since becoming a father is how it often takes a life altering event (positive or negative) to force us into a period of reflection and shifting of priorities.

These realizations tend to show up after the phone call you weren't expecting. After the promotion you didn't get. After the relationship ends. After the funeral for a love one you attended. After the move away from home. After the baby immediately becomes the center piece of your home.

The event itself matters, but what often matters more is what follows (which we discussed last week as a lens) - perspective.

I've noticed that many of the beliefs we carry about ourselves are theoretical until life tests them. We think we know what's important. We think we know what we'd do in difficult circumstances. We think we understand who we are.

Then something happens.

And suddenly the things that once felt urgent seem trivial. The goals we were chasing lose some of their shine. Priorities rearrange themselves almost overnight.

Psychologists call this "transformative experience" - events so significant that they fundamentally alter how we see ourselves and the world. Neuroscientists have found that emotionally charged experiences are processed differently than ordinary ones. They command our attention, create stronger memories, and force the brain to update its existing models of reality. In simple terms, disruption breaks us out of autopilot.

The problem is that most of us wait for life to do this work for us.

We wait for the health scare before appreciating our health. We wait for loss before valuing time. We wait for burnout before questioning our pace. We wait for a major life event before examining the assumptions we've been living under.

But what if we didn't have to? What if we borrowed perspective before life forced it upon us?

One of the most powerful questions I've recently encountered is deceptively simple:

"What would need to happen for me to realize this thing I'm obsessing over doesn't matter nearly as much as I think it does?"

Sometimes the answer is uncomfortable. Sometimes it's imagining a loved one getting sick. Sometimes it's picturing yourself at eighty years old looking back on today. Not because we should live in fear of those things, but because perspective is often available long before tragedy arrives.

The lesson isn't to wait for disruption. The lesson is to seek perspective so intentionally that disruption becomes less necessary.

Life's biggest events will always teach us something. That's unavoidable. The opportunity is learning some of those lessons while life is still giving us the chance to practice them.

What could you proactively seek this week?

If chest day is the celebrity of the gym, leg day is the unpaid intern doing all the hard work.

I can count on one hand the amount of times I have skipped an arm day on the schedule. I have never accidentally forgets shoulders. But leg day? Leg day gets postponed, rescheduled, and mysteriously replaced with an upper body lift more often than we would like to admit over the years.

As an occasional skipper myself, I get it.

A hard lower-body workout is a different animal. The soreness doesn't politely announce itself. It waits 48 hours, then attacks when you're lowering yourself onto the toilet, getting out of your car, or trying to pick something up off the floor. Walking downstairs becomes a trust exercise. Sitting down becomes a controlled fall.

Yet the irony is that the workout most people avoid is often the one that delivers the biggest return.

Your legs contain some of the largest muscle groups in your body: glutes, quads, hamstrings, and calves. Training them creates an enormous metabolic demand, requiring your body to recruit more muscle fibers and expend more energy than most upper-body sessions. That's good news whether your goal is building muscle or losing fat.

For those trying to grow, compound movements like squats, lunges, deadlifts, and step-ups allow you to move significant loads and stimulate more overall muscle growth. For those trying to lean out, lower-body training burns a substantial number of calories while helping preserve muscle mass - the single best predictor of keeping your metabolism humming during a calorie deficit.

There's also a reason great athletes almost universally train their legs. Strength starts from the ground up. Better balance, power, speed, durability, and long-term mobility all trace back to a strong lower body.

The truth is that leg day never gets easier. You don't suddenly wake up excited to squat. The people who build impressive physiques and resilient bodies simply stop negotiating with themselves about whether they're going to do it.

So schedule your leg day right now. Not when motivation strikes. Not when you "feel like it." This week, do the workout you least want to do.

Your future self - walking up stairs without assistance at 80 years old - will thank you.

I am a sucker for a good fantasy / sci-fi series. I often find myself pulled into the series that coincidentally too are big, beefy reads that take some dedicated time to reading, but offer an experiential reading phase.

For me of late, that series was Sun Eater by Christopher Ruocchio.

Spanning seven books, Sun Eater follows Hadrian Marlowe, a man recounting the story of how he became one of the most consequential figures in human history. On the surface, it's a space opera filled with interstellar empires, alien civilizations, ancient mysteries, and battles that unfold across the galaxy.

But that's not what makes it unique on its own.

What elevates Sun Eater for me above most modern science fiction is its willingness to wrestle with big questions. What do we owe the future? Can a terrible act ever be justified if it prevents something worse? How much of our lives is choice versus destiny? The series explores these ideas through a deeply personal lens, following one man's evolution across decades of triumph, failure, sacrifice, and self-discovery.

The scale is massive, but the story never loses sight of the human being at its center.

If you're wondering whether it's for you, I'd recommend it especially if you loved:

I've read a lot of fiction over the last decade. Some books entertain. Some books make you think. A very small number do both while staying with you long after you've turned the final page.

Sun Eater is one of those rare series.

If you're looking for your next great reading adventure, this would be my first recommendation. Just be warned: once you start, you’re going to be searching for any additional time you can make to keep progressing through.