RELEVANCE: The Quiet Power of Lives That Keep Showing Up – An Excerpt

It’s Stay Whole Tuesday and a great day to turn 66.

In America, “Route 66” is more than just a highway. It’s an idea—a road trip rite of passage that runs from Chicago to Santa Monica, carrying dust-bowl migrants, young dreamers, and restless travellers westward. Songs and stories have made it iconic: the open road, neon diners, vast skies, and the sense that if you keep driving, you might find yourself.

Reaching 66 feels like stepping onto that road. Another mile marker. A stretch of highway I’ve never driven before.

A look back

One year ago, on my 65th birthday, I launched this website—every gPage Singletary thing—and shared some thoughts on creative impulses over possessive ones. I also celebrated sending 1,500 Nuggets from Dad to my daughters and renamed my personal blog Nuggets.

Those posts set the stage for what’s next. I committed to putting longer writing projects into the world instead of leaving them behind the barn, like poor Old Yeller. It’s time to open one of those projects up and ask a big favour.

RELEVANCE: The Quiet Power of Lives That Keep Showing Up

For more than a decade, one word has been tapping me on the shoulder: RELEVANCE. What does it mean to matter through all seasons of life? How do we root ourselves, grow, and then branch outward—not just for ourselves, but for others?

That question is now becomming RELEVANCE: The Quiet Power of Lives That Keep Turning Up. It’s personal, messy, and also filled with stories from friends and voices across generations who are grappling with the same questions.

A favour to ask

Here’s where you come in. I’d be grateful if you’d read the introduction to my draft manuscript. But don’t just scroll through it at your desk. Find a tree you like. Sit under it. Let the shade and the stillness hold you while you read.

Trees frame so much of this project: roots, trunks, branches, canopies. It feels right that the first reading happens under one.

I’ve included the introduction below for easy reading. And if you’d rather hold it in your hands, here’s a PDF version you can print or save.

After you’ve read it, I’d love your honest feedback. What lands? What misses? What questions stay with you? And even better if you send me a picture of your tree and tell where it is and why you picked that tree!

66 is not the end of the road. It’s a new stretch of life, winding forward, with more relevance to seek and more shade to give. Thanks for walking—and reading—this part of the road with me.

gPage

RELEVANCE: The Quiet Power of Lives That Keep Showing Up

PREFACE

Relevance is the capacity to remain meaningfully engaged across the seasons of life—to adapt without losing your essence, to contribute in ways that matter to others, and to carry forward a sense of purpose that outlives titles, roles, and circumstances.

This book is about living from a place of RELEVANCE, from the start of our lives until our very last breath. It is presented as a personal narrative. It’s a ‘gPage’ turner on RELEVANCE.

The road to this book started in small farm towns, the kind of places where one stoplight governed the day. From there, life kept widening. I found myself in Los Angeles and Aspen, Williamsburg and Nashville, Philadelphia and Austin—each city leaving its mark, each season shaping me in some way. Today, from London, I look back as an expatriate whose work in manufacturing technology continues to carry me across the globe.

My mother was a school teacher and wrote children’s books. My father a mill manager for The Columbian Peanut Company. The peanut plants of the Tidewater and northeastern Carolina countryside are a world apart from a Pot Noodle factory in Crumlin, Wales, or a Hellmann’s Mayonnaise factory in Manila.

The Little League baseball fields I played on in towns called Wakefield, Waverly, Capron, Franklin, and Boykins feature a different type of tightly mown grass than the grass courts at The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon, UK, where I will soon be playing doubles, or the putting greens at Sunningdale Golf Club in Berkshire, UK, where I will be rolling some putts.

Between these two nexus points, the tiny farm towns and the entire wide world, I’ve experienced a broad spectrum of things. I’ve earned degrees from two top universities, spent some time in a peanut mill as a Commodity Control Engineer (a tough-love story I’ll save for later), engaged in small entrepreneurial ventures, managed medium-sized businesses, and worked in enterprise sales for a large global technology corporation—all with a fantastic life partner, my wife Cathy, who is the rock star of our family.

Together, we raised three incredible daughters, Sally, Emily, and Lucy. I’ve walked each of our girls down the aisle and ‘given them away’ to wonderful young men. I was there when our first granddaughter, Collins, arrived, feeling time bend forward and backwards all at once.

Now, in my mid-sixties, I find myself surrounded by friends navigating their own final third of life. Some are thriving, still discovering new callings, leaning into passions that make them feel more alive than ever. Others are struggling, unsure how to carry forward meaning when the titles and structures fall away. Their stories—and mine—are woven into these pages. The ‘thrivers’ are my “cheeros,” the heroes who cheer you on, often in ways they don’t even realise.

At the same time, I live in close orbit with another generation—my daughters, their partners, and their friends—most in their twenties and early thirties. They are asking the same question from the other side: How do I build a life that matters, that feels relevant from the start? For years now, these younger voices have come to me for perspective, and I’ve found deep joy in listening, advising, and sometimes simply nudging. Their questions, just as much as my peers’ reflections, have sharpened my sense of why this book needs to be written.

CHAPTER ONE: WHAT’S IN A WORD

Relevance.

Sixteen years ago, one word—relevance—stopped me cold. A good friend, Rodge, who is my age, was standing in our kitchen at 1601 Easy Street in Austin, Texas.

‘Keep Austin Weird’ was the city’s slogan when we moved from Philadelphia to Austin in 2002. Twenty years later, Cathy and I said farewell to Austin and relocated to London. Austin has managed to stay somewhat quirky while also developing into one of America’s most lively and ‘relevant’ cities. London Town, as an expat, is a ticket to see the world, and we are making our time in Europe as relevant as possible – every single-TARY minute.

Rodge and Tracey had their hands full with four daughters in Austin, while my wife Cathy and I were busy with three of our own. All in all, we liked to joke that we were managing a school, a circus, and a drama club — all at the same time! We literally raised seven daughters together.

It was my 50th birthday. Rodge looked at me, shook his head and said,

gPage, those ten years went by fast!

And then, he said this,

gPage, I just want to stay relevant. That’s what matters. How can we just stay relevant until the end?

Rodge and I continued that conversation into the night. And it struck me that it’s true. We all hope to find relevance in some way or another as we go through the seasons of life.

“That’s what matters”

From that day on, every morning after I pour my first ‘cuppa’ coffee and settle into my ‘spot’ – the place where I like to read, think, and write – I’ve written the word RELEVANCE, in all caps, in the top left-hand corner of my daily journal.

The word will not leave me alone.

Rodge had stirred a deeper tension I had noticed, especially among men our age. For many men, relevance is connected to the roles they play — careers, competition, being providers, problem-solvers, or simply those in motion. When those markers fade, the question becomes clearer: If I’m not needed in the same way, do I still matter?

Women experience this too, often from different perspectives — expectations about appearance, nurturing, or society’s tendency to render older women invisible too quickly. For many, the shifts can come through the loss of a career, the end of years spent raising children, or no longer being needed to run the household in the same way. Yet the underlying longing remains the same: to matter, to have a voice still, to keep growing rather than being quietly pushed aside.

That’s when the image of a tree came to me. We root ourselves early on — in families, work, friendships, and faith. We grow upward, testing our reach, gathering experiences, stretching into new light. And eventually, if we’re fortunate, we branch out — not just for ourselves but to give shade, fruit, or shelter to others. Relevance isn’t a fixed prize; it shifts with each season. The struggle isn’t about holding onto what was, but about finding fresh ways to root, grow, and branch as the years move on.

Much has occurred since that day. Rodge was right; those ten years had passed in the blink of an eye. But that was nothing compared to how swiftly life sped up over the following ten years. And guess what, it’s not slowing down now.

As I write The Little Book of Relevance, I am about to turn 66 years old, and more than ever, the word and the questions surrounding it call out to me like a song I can’t get out of my head.

• gPage, what is next?
• gPage, what is it all about?
• gPage, what was good?
• gPage, what was bad?
• gPage, what matters?
• gPage, what does not matter?
• Why this book? Why now?

I write these words from London, though my story began in the smallest of American farm towns. Between those two points spans a life of travel, work, and leisure: from Little League baseball fields in Wakefield, VA to putting greens in St Andrews, Scotland; from a peanut mill in North Carolina to a digital factory in Manila. It has been a journey, indeed – but the more important question is not where I have been but what I have learned.

And now, in my sixties, a sharper question presses in:

What makes a life relevant, from beginning to end?

A Tree to Stand Under

I keep returning to the image of a tree. Its ROOTS are where we start – our families, our teachers, our first mistakes. Its trunk is the present, RISING strong but weathered, carrying the scars and rings of growth. Its branches REACHING forward into the future, offering shade, fruit, and shelter for others.

This book is organised in the same way:

• Roots, Trunks, Branches
• Grounding, Growing, Shading (canopy)
• Rooting, Rising, Reaching.
• Past, Present, Future.
• Always with the question: what makes this relevant – to me, to you, to us?

Relevance is slippery

It turns out that relevance is a slippery thing. To a twenty-year-old, it involves proving oneself. In our forties and fifties, we need to balance family and work. To those sixty years old and above, it means remaining useful to those coming after.

Relevance is the ability to stay meaningfully engaged through all seasons of life—adapting without losing your core, contributing in ways that truly matter to others, and carrying a sense of purpose that surpasses titles, roles, and circumstances. It isn’t about clinging to importance but about continuing to connect—with people, with community, with vocation, and with the deeper callings that give life its significance and joy.

How do you find and enjoy a place of purpose when you start your career, throughout your career, and when you stop ‘working’ and use your wisdom, resources, and skills to give back to the world?

I’ve been studying some individuals, whom I know well, who have figured it out. I call it my ‘RELEVANCE project.’ Relevance, like a tree with deep roots and broad branches, signifies growth, stability, and the spreading of wisdom and resources.

How do some people always know what they want and have a deep passion for life? It’s a question worth investigating, and I encourage young professionals, those just starting their careers, to really think about it.

Is it luck? I don’t think so.

This book aims to trace that journey — from our roots, through our bark, to our branches, our canopy, and our life’s purpose — and to demonstrate what it takes to stay connected along the way.

My story, and the story of my ‘cheeros’ (the heroes who cheer you on) who have remained relevant, will be divided into three sections:

• Rooting (birth to age 30)
• Rising (age 30 to age 60)
• Reaching (age 60 until death)

Each of us goes through three phases of life: a beginning, a middle, and an end. To keep it simple, let’s call birth to age thirty, the rooting years; from age thirty to age sixty, the rising years; and age sixty until death, the reaching years.

Back to Easy Street

It turns out, you can only stay on Easy Street for about ten years. Life isn’t always simple. It’s not always easy. Nonetheless, that period was one of the most magical, when we were performing at our best for the most part.

1601 Easy Street was our dream home – perhaps our most relevant of many homes. It was located just a short walk from the girls’ primary, secondary, and high schools and tucked away in the woods. Swimming pool, tennis court, basketball court. Table tennis, dance hall – the front room with the baby grand piano. Cathy’s dream kitchen, where she could work her magic. A guest cottage in the back, where the kids could ‘hang out’ and perhaps get in a bit of trouble. Easy Street had it all.

Big, yet small. Little things – like the solid wooden doors with the most amazing brass knobs. I will never forget the feel of closing or opening those doors. Hardwood floors throughout. The sliding wooden door with the glass etching between the family room and the room we called the dance hall, where we held the epic parties. The stacked stone fireplace. The kids’ wing, with three fantastic bedrooms for three amazing daughters. The ceiling fans. The patios. The screen porch, where you could sit and think or write, listening to the gentle sound of the pool’s fountain or the patter of rain on the tin roof.

We attended 144 consecutive West Lake High School Football games over those 10 years. Home games were the best. We hosted giant tailgate parties for both the kids and their parents. Hundreds of people came over for a pre-game meal and stayed after the game to party into the evening.

You could hear the buzz of it all from Easy Street. The band warming up, the public address announcer, the fight song, the chants, the cheers.

Let’s go Westlake!

This was Friday Night Lights, and did it get any better?

Well, the answer to that question is yes, it did get better, but not before it also got worse.

KOMOREBI

This is the part where I start to tell you about my shadows or my shadow-self, as therapists call it. I’ve experienced my share of tough times, just like everyone else. I have shadows in my life.

Have you ever wondered why walking in the woods makes you feel good?  I’ve stumbled upon a Japanese word I like. It means ‘tree leaking sun.’

In English, it would be spelt KOMOREBI.

The reason that “trees bring us joy” when we walk through the woods is that the trees filter out the ‘bad’ light and only leave the ‘good’ light. This phenomenon is linked to a concept called forest bathing (also known as shinrin-yoku), a practice that originated in Japan. The euphoric or calming feeling you experience in the woods is associated with a few key factors, including the filtration of light, compounds called phytoncides, and negative ions that boost mood and create a feeling of euphoria, as they can affect serotonin levels in the brain.

These combined factors create calm, relaxation, and euphoria when surrounded by trees and immersed in nature. That is one reason I get great joy out of playing golf or even tennis, especially when the court is tucked away amongst trees. Sea Pines Racquet Club in Hilton Head comes to mind. Or the beautiful view from the Richmond Lawn Tennis Club, here in Richmond, the London Borough in south-west London, we now call home.

Renowned for its lush green spaces, such as Richmond Park and Kew Gardens. It is the only London borough situated on both sides of the River Thames, offering royal parks, historic houses, and easy access to central London.

Richmond is the home of this specific tree, my favourite of all the trees, behind the 13th green at The Richmond Golf Club. I was in good form the day that photo was taken, playing for The Richmond Golf Club against The Stage Golfing Society in the annual match for the Stag’s Head Trophy. The Stage Golfing Society is the second oldest in England, comprising actors, entertainers, comedians, TV celebrities, and musicians. There is no more relevant example of how golf connects communities than the relationship The Stage has with The Richmond Golf Club.

Shadows and Light

But let’s be honest: relevance isn’t only about joy. It is also shadowed by fear—fear of becoming irrelevant, of fading, of being forgotten. These shadows matter because they sharpen the light. Without them, relevance would be a hollow word.

When you walk through Richmond Park or play golf at the nearby Richmond Golf Club, you enjoy all the benefits mentioned above. However, if you look a little closer, you also notice the shadows.

We lost babies

Cathy and I were blessed with three wonderful, healthy daughters. I’ve walked each of our girls down the aisle and ‘given them away’ to charming young men, whom we love. I was there when our first granddaughter, Collins, arrived, feeling time bend forwards and backwards all at once.

Cathy lost multiple babies—miscarriages that were difficult for doctors to explain. One before Sally and Emily, several before Lucy, and another after Lucy. Those were painful times, and the loss still lingers in our souls—perhaps more so for Cathy than for me, since her body carried those babies. But what a miracle it was when our third, Lucy May, finally arrived against all odds. From the shadows, the light will emerge!

And what a remarkable woman my wife is. She persevered. She didn’t give up. She found strength through shadows.

After Lucy was born, Cathy gave our family its most remarkable gift – the gift of togetherness. She ensured that the older girls, Sally and Emily, knew that they now had a baby sister and that Lucy would always be included in everything without exception. And that is exactly what happened. Now, those girls are inseparable.

Of course, inseparable didn’t always mean convenient. It’s one thing to tuck your baby sister into a stroller while you play “house.” It’s another to have her tagging along when you’re fifteen and trying to look cool. Sally and Emily put up with Lucy crashing sleepovers, trailing behind at the shopping centre, and chiming in when they would have preferred privacy. There were plenty of eye rolls, but underneath it all, they never left her out. What started as minor frustrations became the glue of their bond.

Cathy was right—togetherness wasn’t just taught; it took root and keeps them close even now. As a parent, that is truly the greatest gift.

We lost Easy Street

We lost Easy Street after becoming too leveraged in another start-up, following the rekindling of my entrepreneurial spirit. Selling that house felt like saying farewell to a dear loved one. It affected us profoundly and brought us to our knees. But we downsized and then found our footing again in a new neighbourhood.

From our new home, we hunkered down through the pandemic, before launching ourselves to England, where the world literally is our oyster.

You do what you have to do.

We lost partnerships

We also lost a business. Cathy and I invested heavily in Salient Systems, an established company we believed could be turned around. For five years, I worked alongside a partner, struggling through a tough economy to try to restore profitability. Eventually, the funds diminished, tensions rose, and my partner handed the reins of sales to others—leaving me sidelined. That fracture marked one of the most difficult and demoralising periods of my professional life.

Apple TV’s Friends and Neighbours captures that feeling well. Jon Hamm plays a calm professional who bears the pain of being undercut. His character reminds us that in business, trust is always provisional and setbacks, no matter how painful, are part of the risk of ambition.

I’ve come to see it the same way. That chapter hurt, but it also forced reinvention. Over time I found new purpose, built success elsewhere, and learned how to support the company from the sidelines without being defined by what had been lost. Like a tree scarred by a storm, the break is still visible, but the growth continues upwards.

Other shadows

Some losses are easy to name; others dwell in quiet corners we avoid discussing at dinner. There are times when the world moves beneath your feet and you no longer recognise the person in the mirror. In those moments, the wise course of action is to reach out to a trusted friend, mentor, or counsellor who will listen patiently. It’s not a confession so much as a course correction: practical, modest, and courageous.

A short poem sits in my notes from one such season; it reminds me that light can return, often in small, stubborn ways.

Click here to read my poem: Sometimes.

Therapy

I’ve come to think of therapy as an underrated tool for staying relevant — not for status, but for staying honest with yourself and present for the people who count on you. Many of us treat vulnerability like danger; we bottle things up until they leak. Talking, haltingly or clumsily, is not surrender — it’s a way of rooting again after a storm. For anyone who’s been tempted to “manage on their own,” it’s worth trying something different.

For men, especially, therapy is often something we avoid until we have no choice left. We’d rather endure it, work through it, or drink it away. Admitting we can’t handle everything on our own feels like failure.

Yet most men I know avoid it. We’ve been conditioned to link vulnerability with weakness, to suppress pain and carry on. The irony is that avoiding it often reduces the very importance we seek. When we refuse help, we lessen ourselves. When we risk honesty, we grow.

We guard our insides as if silence proves strength. But silence erodes. What I discovered instead was that speaking the unspeakable—sometimes awkwardly, through tears—was not weakness at all. It was a grounding, a way of sending new tendrils into the soil after a storm had snapped the trunk. Relevance, it seems, isn’t always about standing tall; sometimes it’s about daring to grow again from the broken places.

I am reminded of Dolly Parton’s beautiful song, The Story,

Tell you the story of who I am

So many stories of where I’ve been

But these stories don’t mean anything

when you’ve got no one to tell them to

There is also another verse in the song that profoundly speaks to me. It goes like this:

You see the smile that’s on my mouth

It’s hiding the words that don’t come out

And all of my friends who think I’m so blessed

They don’t know that my head is a mess

No, they don’t know who I really am

And they don’t know what I’ve been through

like you do

And I was made for you

The father generation

My own father carried shadows—seasons of depression that might have overwhelmed him. But unlike most men of his generation, he sought help. In his fifties, he started taking a low-dose antidepressant that stabilised him and restored decades of fuller living. That decision was unusual, even daring. In seeking treatment, he demonstrated a quiet strength: the courage to admit when he needed help.

My generation inherited the same struggles in different packaging. We had self-help books on shelves, motivational tapes in our cars, and seminars promising transformation. We consumed all of it, but still often hid behind work, sports, or bravado. Therapy was discussed more, yet usually as a last resort—something you turned to only when you were beyond repair. We were not much different from our fathers, just better marketed.

And the father generation carried another flaw, one harder to excuse. However kind or cruel, outspoken or silent, most shared the same blind spot towards women. Even the men we admired let it slip in their words. A few were exceptions, but far too few.

They mistook humility for weakness, when in truth humility is the essence of strength. It is what allows a man to listen, to grow, to treat others as equals. That is the kind of strength I want to pass on to my three daughters, and the kind of world I want them to inherit—one where women’s voices are not merely tolerated, but welcomed as essential.

“The father generation is, alas, mostly misogynistic. Nice ones, nasty ones, ones that speak what they think and others who keep their counsel. Weak. There are a few gems. But their language betrays them. Say that in the book. Shine a light on the value of humility in a man. It is valued as a weakness. It’s not. It is their strength.” – Sarah Tucker, journalist and author.

A young man’s take

I shared a snippet of my relevance story with a young man I really like, in his early twenties. His feedback caught me off guard, but it was reassuring to see that the story still landed. He said, “Thank you.” Thank you for showing me that men can reach their later years and still find relevance. He confessed that his father, and many of the men he once admired, seemed adrift as they aged—unsure of their place, stripped of joy.

He sees his own generation wrestling too, though in different ways. For many of them, it’s not a lack of talent—it’s a lack of launch. They are grounded not by failure, but by distraction. Heads down, necks bent, thumbs flicking screens for hours. They’ve grown up performing for likes and followers, chasing dopamine hits instead of building momentum.

Tiger’s father taught him to “putt to the picture”—to envisage the shot before letting it roll. Too many nowadays aren’t putting to any picture at all. They’re not looking up, not aiming at a future worth pursuing. They’re glued to their phones while life passes overhead.

But the questions swirling inside are the same ones men and women have always faced: Do I matter? Am I needed? What now? The difference is that screens drown out those questions in noise before the answers can be heard.

Humility, not bravado, is the way forward. My father’s decision to seek help, however quietly, was an act of humility. When I sat in those chairs for therapy, it became the same. Humility is strength—the kind that quiets the noise, makes you look up, and helps you regain your roots after loss, overcome struggle, and reach out in meaningful ways. And that, at any age, remains relevant.