Come closer, grandchild. Thanks for visiting me one last time before I die. I’ve lived a great life. I climbed Mt. Everest, founded a Fortune 500 company, and had six amazing children. But there’s one mistake that haunts me: not spending more of my life creating, entering, and re-entering passwords.
I’m ashamed to admit that for decades, I coasted by with a couple of passwords scribbled on a Post-it next to my laptop. That is, until websites started requiring passwords just to check the weather or read the news. Suddenly, I needed a login for everything. That’s when I realized: Nothing makes you feel more alive than registering for an account, making a password, instantly forgetting it, and repeating the whole process for every transaction. You haven’t really lived until you’ve reset a password four times just to peruse a forum on bathtub grout.
Some people say that no one on their deathbed ever said, “I wish I’d spent more time at work.” It’s true. I don’t wish I’d spent more time at work. I do wish I’d spent more time on the phone with IT while they authenticated my newly changed password on seven different devices. You know, if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. That’s why I’m so glad my company made us reset our passwords every three months.
Your generation is so entitled. You expect immediate success. Phooey! No one is born knowing how to create and remember scores of different sequences of digits, capitalized letters, and obscure symbols. Like any world-class craft, you must practice it for at least ten thousand hours. You have to make sacrifices. If you spend all your time with friends and family, you’ll never be lonely. But if you spend all your time practicing password entry, you’ll never be locked out of that pedometer app you’ve only used once.
No, the secret to success is delayed gratification. You know, a lot of nights on the couch while we were watching TV, your grandmother would beg me to turn it off and engage with her emotionally. But I would always turn her down. Sure, it’s satisfying to connect with your soulmate of fifty years. But using a remote control to type in a twelve-digit password one letter at a time is even more satisfying.
I worry about your future. The ice caps are melting, democracy is on the brink of collapse, and worst of all, passwords are being replaced with Touch ID. Without the constant need to remember and manually type nonsensical combinations of letters and numbers, you’ll have no choice but to do terrible things, like pay attention when someone talks to you.
That’s why I was so devastated when your uncle, my oldest child, told me his deepest, darkest secret. He’s been using an online password manager for the last five years. He doesn’t even type in the letters himself. It just auto-populates. That’s why I cut him out of my will.
Which brings me to why I’ve called you here today. I’m leaving you my fortune. You get the mansion, the beach house, and the yacht. But the greatest gift I’m leaving you is not the money. It’s a life without regrets. That’s why I’ve locked myself out of all my online accounts. You’ll need to figure out every password to access the funds. You’ll also need to correctly answer a dozen security questions, like the name of the street where I was conceived or my childhood best friend’s favorite movie. In fact, you’ll probably need to quit your job and dump your girlfriend.
Going forward, you’ll only have time to focus on life’s most important mission: resetting passwords. Godspeed, grandchild.