This morning, I awakened after a restless night. As I settled into my living room morning routine, I checked my email and saw a piece that steered me to YouTube to watch a couple of in-depth videos from our country’ s history… the Siege and Battle of the Bastogne. You might be wondering how that series of events relates to Safe Harbor Pathways vision of focusing on life transitions. It occurred to me that our lives are very definitely affected by historical events that are completely outside of our direct “field of view”.
I once had a neighbor named Jim Hunt. Jim was a quiet, creative, caring, empathetic friend and architect. While he seldom spoke of his history, he divulged that he was involved in the battle of Bastogne. He said that he had become separated from his unit and that event had changed his direction in life. He returned from the war and, like so many of his generation, had become educated, started a business and become a representative of how mid-America had developed into the country that my classmates and I had inherited. After my Bastogne YouTube morning, I realized that I had never fully appreciated Jim’s experiences in the Ardennes. He was a cog in the wheel that defeated Hitler and the dystopian world that he represented. To survive the battle of Bastogne was, in many ways, a miracle. After Bastogne, Jim came home to help build America. While I understood the scope of his experience while he lived next door to me, this morning I am beginning to understand how that wartime experience dramatically changed Jim and how his transition from war’s horrors to building a peaceful America has changed me.
My “boomer” generation was born into a golden age of America, even with all of its fragile and challenging aspects… Civil War, McCarthy, Jim Crow, Cold War, Vietnam, 9/11, 1/6, etc. We entered the world on the leading edge of a lengthy transition from a relatively agrarian culture to a world-dominating industrial, political, economic powerhouse. To varying degrees, the members of my generation have lived within the context of the history that preceded us. Jim Hunt’s friendship has often reminded me that quiet, creative, focused, caring, men and women have built a country in which I am permitted to enjoy a fulfilling life.
The point of my scribbling today is very simple. If we understand that from which we are derived, we can more carefully craft the world that our grands inherit. It is always those who “have experienced” that prepare the path for those who “will experience”. The moral to the Bastogne story is that “if we forget the past, we are more inclined to repeat the past”.
Think about it…
bill@safeharborpathways.com
Safe Harbor Pathways 
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