Our company’s financial partners are headquartered in offices in Rockefeller Center in New York City. We have quarterly board meetings there, so I travel to the City usually once every three months, if not more often. A few steps away from the office is the plaza where the famous Christmas tree is erected every winter. On the plaza is the famous statue of Prometheus. Designed by American sculptor Paul Manship and completed in 1934, it is an 18-foot-tall, 8-ton gilded cast bronze figure floating inside a ring representing the zodiac. It seems that every tourist visiting New York comes to see that plaza and that statue. They all stand on the opposite side at the top of a staircase and have their picture taken.

Here I am, doing the same. My wife was with me this time, and she took my picture. I am holding on to the banister that guides down the stairs. This was on September 9, 2026.

It so turns out that the very first day in my life that I set foot in New York City was July 8, 1975. Here I am with a few friends, all foreign exchange students just days before returning back to their home countries. I am the one with the blue shirt. I was 18 years old. The girl in front of me, Eva, is hanging on to the same banister you can see me holding in the picture above.

The City is still there, timeless. As I watched the sea of people walking the streets of New York, as I observed the endless stream of tourists taking that iconic photo of the Prometheus statue, it occurred to me that most of the people walking the streets of New York now were not even alive yet when I stood there in 1975.

We don’t get to own the city. We just get to visit it occasionally, generation after generation. We come and we  go. But the City lives on.

I guess I am a little nostalgic today.