Autobiography of the Future
The Autobiography of My Future
It was Saturday evening, June 16, 2001. My beautiful wife and I were celebrating our twenty-second wedding anniversary at dinner in St. Paul. I asked her what she thought the next twenty-two years would be like for us. We started projecting. I would be sixty-six, she sixty-four. Although another twenty-two years sounded like a long time, sixty-six did not seem that old or that far away. Our teenage daughter would be thirty-nine! Now that put the twenty-two years into perspective. We did not discuss it, but I just assumed that life, as we knew it – having a nice dinner out, being able to afford it, walking safely through a neighborhood, able to breathe the air - would not change too much. Some might say I have a pretty naïve, self-centered view. Let us explore where that view comes from.
The Formative Years I grew up in a white, upper middle-class neighborhood in the Midwest. My Dad owned a small, wholesale sash and door business that his father started. My Mom was a housewife. I had a brother, two sisters and a Golden Retriever. Our family had two cars, each kid had a bicycle and we went to the lake each summer. My world was narrow and changed slowly. When I turned eight, my white-bread life started to change. My Mom went back to college to get her degree. When I was ten, she started a consulting business that specialized on helping organizations and institutions resolve long-standing conflicts. An early memory I will never forget was going into the basement of a community center in the ghetto in Passaic, New Jersey in 1969 and watching my Mom mediate between the police and the gangs. At seventeen years old, my parents divorced. They sold the house and toys. I spent my senior year of high school living with different friends so I could stay at the same school. I went from a relatively stable, seemingly idyllic life, to one where my foundation was seriously threatened. Change seemed like a very scary thing!
It was Saturday evening, June 16, 2001. My beautiful wife and I were celebrating our twenty-second wedding anniversary at dinner in St. Paul. I asked her what she thought the next twenty-two years would be like for us. We started projecting. I would be sixty-six, she sixty-four. Although another twenty-two years sounded like a long time, sixty-six did not seem that old or that far away. Our teenage daughter would be thirty-nine! Now that put the twenty-two years into perspective. We did not discuss it, but I just assumed that life, as we knew it – having a nice dinner out, being able to afford it, walking safely through a neighborhood, able to breathe the air - would not change too much. Some might say I have a pretty naïve, self-centered view. Let us explore where that view comes from.
The Formative Years I grew up in a white, upper middle-class neighborhood in the Midwest. My Dad owned a small, wholesale sash and door business that his father started. My Mom was a housewife. I had a brother, two sisters and a Golden Retriever. Our family had two cars, each kid had a bicycle and we went to the lake each summer. My world was narrow and changed slowly. When I turned eight, my white-bread life started to change. My Mom went back to college to get her degree. When I was ten, she started a consulting business that specialized on helping organizations and institutions resolve long-standing conflicts. An early memory I will never forget was going into the basement of a community center in the ghetto in Passaic, New Jersey in 1969 and watching my Mom mediate between the police and the gangs. At seventeen years old, my parents divorced. They sold the house and toys. I spent my senior year of high school living with different friends so I could stay at the same school. I went from a relatively stable, seemingly idyllic life, to one where my foundation was seriously threatened. Change seemed like a very scary thing!