In an age marked by increasingly young founders and internet hype, Warren Buffett’s final annual letter to shareholders offered age-old wisdom.

The 95-year-old CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, now valued at $1.1 trillion, is stepping down at the end of the year. “As the British would say, I’m ‘going quiet,’” he wrote.

In the letter, Buffett offered some very modest conjecture on the health of the business, saying it has “better-than-average prospects” and “less chance of a devastating disaster than any business I know” (lol). Sometimes, the stock will plunge. Then, it will bounce back. Etcetera.

But the real focus of the letter was Buffett himself. He reminisced, he pontificated — an indulgence, maybe, but one he’s entitled to, I’d say, after nearly 60 years on the job.

First, what stood out: Buffett’s lifelong allegiance to Omaha, which brings us to lesson #1: you don’t have to live in The Big City to make it big-time.

The only house Buffett has ever bought for himself is located in Omaha, he wrote. It sits just two miles from where he grew up; about a six-minute drive from his Berkshire office of 64 years; six blocks from his grandfather’s old grocery store; and, back in the 1930s, one block away from Charlie Munger’s house. Munger, who once earned $2/day at the Berkshire Grocery Store, eventually became Buffett’s closest confidant, famously shifting Berkshire’s strategy from buying fair companies at wonderful prices to buying wonderful companies at fair prices.

In fact, many of Berkshire’s defining men lived in Omaha at one point or another, including: Stan Lipsey, who sold Berkshire the Omaha Sun Newspapers; Walter Scott, Jr., who sold it MidAmerican Energy; Ajit Jain, Berkshire’s longtime insurance exec; Greg Abel, the company’s incoming CEO; and Don Keough, who rose from his $12,000/year station as a coffee salesman to become the president of Coca-Cola, Buffett wrote.

Maybe, as Buffett put it, “there is some magic ingredient in Omaha’s water,” or maybe he was just downright loyal. After his dad “surprised everyone” by winning a Congressional race, Buffett moved to D.C. as a teenager and then, ultimately, New York. Although the city had “unique assets” (lol), the man returned to Omaha less than two years later, “never to wander again,” he wrote. Subsequently, Buffett met both his wives (the first died in 2004) in Omaha. His three children grew up and attended public schools in Omaha. He made a variety of friends in the Nebraska National Guard. In short, this was his home. And he was alright with that:

Looking back I feel that both Berkshire and I did better because of our base in Omaha than if I had resided anywhere else. The center of the United States was a very good place to be born, to raise a family, and to build a business. Through dumb luck, I drew a ridiculously long straw at birth.

That brings us to lesson #2: luck is real, but it doesn’t last.

Luck was a major theme of Buffett’s letter. The luck of growing up in the heartland. The luck of making it to 95 years old, “daily escaping banana peels, natural disasters, drunk or distracted drivers, lightning strikes, you name it.” The luck of being born in this country, as a man, in the 30s, with reasonable intelligence: “My sisters had equal intelligence and better personalities than I but faced a much different outlook.”

But Lady Luck, Buffett wrote, “has better things to do than work with those in their 90s.”