Forty-Two

Daily Letter · Mindset Operating System · 8:42 PM

FATHOM THIS

Anthony Kiedis spent most of his memoir writing about a father he spent his life trying to understand — chasing something across decades that he could not quite name until much later, when the noise finally quieted enough to see it clearly. He came to believe that his father's wild, unconventional spirit and his mother's steady, all-encompassing love were not a contradiction. They were the exact balance he needed, even though neither piece on its own would have looked like the right ingredient at the time. Not a perfect upbringing. Not a clean story. But a combination that, examined honestly decades later, turned out to be exactly what shaped him into who he became.

Simon Sinek has spent years writing about what he calls a circle of safety — an environment where people feel protected and trusted enough to invest their full energy into the work in front of them instead of spending it guarding against threats from inside their own walls. He is usually describing companies and leadership teams when he writes about it. But the circle he is describing starts much smaller than any boardroom. It starts with a family. It starts with the first person who ever made you feel like you belonged somewhere before you had done anything yet to earn it.

I did not understand either idea fully until I sat down to write this letter.

Some things skip a generation and land exactly where they are supposed to. You do not always see it happening. You see it later — in a hallway, in a jersey, in a number you picked without thinking twice about it.

Here is the story.

FORTY-TWO

I walked into the locker room at St. Paul's late.

I had just come from a makeup exam after school, and by the time I got there the jersey selection — the thing every new player on a team treats like a small ceremony — was mostly over. I was a junior. New to the team. Genuinely just happy to be there, which is its own kind of freedom, because you are not negotiating for a number that means something to you yet. You are choosing from what is left.

Three or four numbers remained on the rack.

I picked 42.

No story behind it. No number I had worn before. No older brother's number, no childhood idol, no superstition. It was just there, and it fit, and I grabbed it and went home thinking about absolutely nothing related to the decision I had just made.

My dad asked me what number I got.

I told him — 42 — and kept unpacking my bag, half paying attention, the way you do when you are seventeen and the conversation in front of you feels smaller than it actually is.

He left the room.

He came back a few minutes later holding a photograph.

It was him. At St. Paul's. Playing midfield. Wearing number 42.

I do not have adequate words for what that moment did to the rest of my life, so I am not going to try to overdescribe it. I am just going to tell you what it was. It was my father — without ever pressuring me, without ever mentioning it before I chose, without doing anything except living his own life decades earlier — handing me a thread I did not know existed and watching me pick it up entirely on my own.

He never told me his number growing up. I never asked. There was no quiet nudge in the locker room that I am aware of. I walked in late, grabbed what was left, and somehow grabbed the exact number that connected two versions of the same family across two generations on the same field at the same school.

I think about Kiedis writing about his father for a different reason now. Not because our stories resemble each other — they do not — but because of what he eventually arrived at after all those years of trying to make sense of the man. The realization that what gets passed down from a parent is rarely a single lesson delivered on purpose. It is something quieter. Something transmitted without either person fully realizing it is happening, until one day there is a photograph in your hand and the resemblance is undeniable.

And I think about that circle of safety differently too. Because the first circle any of us ever stand inside is not a company or a team. It is a family. And the specific gift my father gave me that day — without lifting a finger to engineer it — was the quiet, unspoken permission to become myself inside a tradition I did not even know I was walking into. He did not tell me who to be. He let me choose. And the choosing led me, somehow, exactly back to him.

Forty-two is not just a number anymore. It is the place where two generations of the same family stood on the same kind of field, wearing the same number, for reasons neither of us could fully explain — except that maybe some things are simply passed down whether we mean to pass them or not.

I think about that locker room often now. The exam I was late for. The three or four jerseys left on the rack. The casual way I told him the number, half distracted, not knowing I was about to learn something about my father and myself that I would still be thinking about decades later.

And here is something I will let sit with you for now, without fully explaining it.

This letter goes out every single night at 8:42 PM. That is not a random time. There is a second story behind why that specific number sits at the end of the clock — one connected to this one, woven into it the way these things tend to be — and I will tell it to you in a letter to come.

For now, just know that 42 has shown up more than once in the architecture of this life. Some things are not coincidences. They are threads. You just have to be paying attention when one of them shows up in your hand.

Some stories do not need a lesson attached to the end of them.

This one is just true. And that is enough.

If tonight's letter found something in you, pass it along to someone who might need to read it. Not for the numbers. For the person on the other end of that forward who might be standing in their own locker room right now, about to grab whatever is left on the rack without knowing yet what it means.

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About the Author

Kyle Smedley is the founder of Harbor Lane Holdings, building at the intersection of sport, people, and capital.

Career stops include Events.com, Tourmaline Builders, Lombardi Contracting Corporation, and DPR Construction. Today he leads Atticus Lacrosse Company, working alongside Mad Dog Lacrosse and Ravenscroft School, and Harbor Lane Company, operating across real estate, private equity, and talent placement.

Field & Fathom goes out every night at 8:42 PM.

Reach out directly: [email protected]

Until tomorrow,

Kyle

Founder · Harbor Lane Holdings · Atticus Lacrosse Company

Field & Fathom · Harbor Lane Holdings · Daily

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