Lessons from My Mentors: How to Be Present
How a two-hour walk through Florence's Oltrarno reminded me that the path back to presence is simpler than we think.
Lessons from My Mentors is a recurring series where I share the life lessons my three children have taught me. In a world of constant digital noise, they don’t just fill my days—they reshape how I see the world and challenge me to grow. My kids have become my greatest teachers, pushing me to confront my assumptions, sit with discomfort, and show up more fully—as a father and as a human being.
In each post, I explore the unexpected wisdom that emerges when I let them mentor me in the art of being truly alive.
Toward the end of a two-hour ruck through Florence’s Oltrarno this week, I found myself caught in a quiet cascade of presence, one serene moment after another. And in that stillness it hit me: I had my children to thank.
Without effort or agenda, my three kids have become my greatest mentors in how to live in the present moment.
Picture me on all fours, nose to the ground like a bloodhound, chasing a scent that had flooded my memory. Picture me perched in a tree, eyes closed, listening to nature’s music. Picture me stomping through layers of thick magnolia leaves, savoring the loud, leathery crunch.
I had become curious. I had become childlike.
Just a month earlier, I had become someone I wasn’t proud of.
In our first month living in Florence, and me with a flip phone, I was going through life wearing horse blinders. I was laser-focused on restarting my career and little else, aside from my basic duties as a husband and a father. I had withdrawn. I tried to control what I could and optimized every minute, hoping it would ease the uncertainty. I glued myself to the laptop and intentionally deprived myself of time in nature, exploring the city or anything nourishing.
So my search for presence this past week was intentional. How I arrived there, and everything that followed, was not.
Last Wednesday morning, I stuffed my backpack with 22-pounds of books and water bottles and set out after school drop-off. I’d penciled a route on my tattered paper map: across the San Niccolo bridge up to Forte di Belvedere, then along the hushed via San Leonardo and winding viale Machiavelli back toward home.
Forte di Belvedere was closed, so I kept walking. And somewhere on the quiet stretch of via San Leonardo, things began to shift. As I watched an orange fall from a tree above and splat on the sidewalk, I slowed down.
A few minutes later, I passed a villa where movers were loading classical sculptures into a truck. Each statue was strapped to a dolly, one man guiding it forward while the others steadied it with care. I peeked through the foyer. Dozens more waited inside. My first thought was: this person probably doesn’t have young kids.
By the time I reached Giardino del Bobolino, the city had fully softened. This garden—small, sloping, almost secret—was the kind of place where time slowed.
Wanting to squeeze in one last uphill push, I walked the short distance to the top. There, I was hit by a scent. Strong. Earthy. Sweet. Familiar. It transported me to a year ago, in the hills of Piemonte, when we stayed at a house with a wild orchard out front. Everyday I walked down that orchard hill through chest-high brush to pick figs, mulberries, peaches and loquats. This scent was that memory. I couldn’t place it, but I felt it fully. And I was compelled to find the source.
I dove face-first into shrubs. Nothing. I examined the ground. Still nothing. Just as I started to walk away, something told me to slow down. Without thinking, I dropped to all fours and started sniffing the ground.
Grass. Milkweed. Fallen petals. I inhaled each like I was drinking through a straw. Still no luck—just a little lightheaded. But I didn’t care. The search felt like enough.
I asked myself: Does it even matter if I find it?
Would knowing the source of this scent change my experience? Or would it just become another random fact I could drop in some future conversation? It’s not like I was about to become a gardener.
Maybe some experiences should just remain that—a moment in time.
If I had been with my kids, there’s a good chance they’d have noticed the scent, grinned, and kept walking. No questions. No Googling. No analysis.
So I let it go and made my way toward the beautiful incense cedar tree we all love, the one that looks like a giant fork, curved and sturdy.
I ran my hand along its bark, then hoisted myself up the way my two oldest kids do. I sat there, staring out over the garden for a minute, and was about to hop down when I heard the familiar voice inside my head say: It’s time to get the day going….You should go grocery shopping.
But I didn’t listen. I fought that first thought. I straddled the tree, leaned back and let it hold me.
I closed my eyes and listened to the birds and the trees rustling in the wind. I ran my fingers over the smooth path of wood worn down by decades of kids and dreamers. Carved initials marked the tree like tattoos.
A wave of emotion welled up from my chest. Tears came, and I let them fall.
In that moment, I felt such profound gratitude for my children—my mentors.
I told myself I had nowhere to be but here, now. And I truly believed it.
Instinctively, my kids live that ethos daily.
We spent so much of the last 14 months of world travel in nature. In Piemonte, at pickup from summer camp, my oldest son spent extra time in the grass every afternoon, trapping grasshoppers beneath the July sun. In Bali, he waded through tide pools, eyes locked on the shifting sea life, time disappearing.
In Belgrade, my toddler once turned a 10-minute walk into a 60-minute journey to the park—stopping to stare at and acknowledge bricklayers, runners, dogs and every passerby.
In Montenegro, on a father-daughter date, my middle-child decided—on a whim—that we should bury each other in pebbles along the Bay of Kotor. To her, that beat any lunch spot I had in mind.
There are dozens of moments like that. Sometimes I was present. Sometimes I was distracted—rushing, planning, thinking of what came next.
But kids? Kids just are.
They don’t need a reason to be present. It’s how they move through the world.
And science echoes what we already feel: kids in nature aren’t measuring time. They’re immersed. They lose themselves in the moment, open to wonder, free from self-consciousness.
But I spent two decades measuring time in tasks, not moments.
And lately, my first thoughts have been pulling me away from presence and toward efficiency, output or obligation.
But last Wednesday, I dropped all of that. I channeled my kids and my inner child.
And I learned that the path back to presence is simple. You follow your nose. You sit in a tree. You listen. You become.
I’ll be sharing more stories every Sunday — the highs, the screw-ups, the awkward new routines — as I adjust to life with a flip phone. If you’re wondering what it’s like to live slower, simpler, and maybe even saner, stick around.
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