I sat in a meeting on Monday with a lawyer, a doctor, a political consultant, and a real estate developer-cum-inventor as we strategized to influence the social, political, academic and economic climate of our state. One of the determinations was that we wanted to replace the welfare mentality of the populace—currently 1 in 6 Missourians nurses at the state’s nipple—with a dose of Puritan work ethic.

Fast forward 18 hours. I’m sitting in the exam room of my physician, the same one above. He’s telling me about how the great men he admires all died in their 50’s, that they were men of profound aspiration and achievement, but that they worked themselves to death; a not so subtle inference that I need to play more golf. “Sell all your companies but one and get a hobby” was how he put it.

Apparently I’m a Puritan. Who knew?