Aging & Wisdom Quote by Bob Schieffer

Schieffer sneaks a quietly radical idea into the familiar packaging of career advice: pleasure is not a guilty afterthought, it is a legitimate compass. Coming from a broadcast journalist whose profession is often mythologized as grueling, competitive, and performed under fluorescent lighting at odd hours, the insistence on "fun" reads less like whimsy and more like field-tested pragmatism. He is translating longevity into a simple filter young people can actually use.

The repetition - "Is it... Is it... Is it..". - does two things at once. It mimics an internal checklist, the private interrogation we run when we are trying to separate our own desires from everyone else's expectations. It also flattens the hierarchy of motivations: interest, enjoyment, and fun get equal billing, pushing back against the cultural script that seriousness equals worth. In a world where students are trained to speak in the language of credentials and marketability, Schieffer is arguing that sustained attention is the real scarce resource, and enjoyment is how you keep paying for it.

There is subtext, too, in the modesty of "always keep in mind". He is not promising that fun will pay the rent or protect you from layoffs. He is warning that the cost of ignoring it is slow self-betrayal: waking up years later fluent in a job you never chose. Coming from a career built on curiosity, the line is effectively a defense of curiosity as professional infrastructure, not a personality quirk.