I spent a good chunk of my life learning to be reasonable. In
business, the mantra for any proposal was always: “Is it practical?” It
seemed to me that reasonableness (and its sister practicality) were
virtues. People who were unreasonable or impractical seemed to be
exceptions—they came across as flaky, dangerous, occasionally lucky,
unpredictable, disconnected, loose canons and, above all, they weren’t
team players. When I turned 50, I came upon