This week on This American Life, the episode was called The Book That Changed My Life. They had people on whose lives were changed by a book that they read. It got me thinking about moments that had changed my life. Some of these moments, I realized, happened decades before I was even born.
A moment years ago that changed my life was when my great-grandfather left my great-grandmother. My great grandparents separated when my grandmother was a teenager. When he left he didn’t help my great-grandmother at all, with raising the kids or monetarily. This it made so that my grandmother couldn’t go to college, she had to work full time to help pay the bills.
My grandmother always resented this, even though she forgave him and tried to rebuild the relationship. When he died, a couple of months after I was born, he left my grandmother a ton of money in the form of stocks. My grandmother didn’t want any of it though. She had made it through her entire life without his money and she and my grandfather had done well with their money through hard work. She decided to split the shares of stock and give them to my mother and her siblings.
This became very useful to my family when my father was out of work for almost two years. Without that money I’m not sure how we would have made it. So although I don’t agree with what my great-grandfather did, it actually really helped me and my family at a difficult point in our lives. It’s interesting to see how one person’s action can affect people over 50 years after the fact.
Robert,
ReplyDeleteThis is a great, simple and focused summary of how a certain chain of events led to somewhere that changed your life. You wrote it well, and although there are a couple careless errors, overall it is well organized and structured.
Remember though, these blog entries are more a demand of depth as opposed to breadth. I would rather you cover something in detail and just use the breadth as a context. In the over a hundred words in which you are below the minimum, you could have filled us in with reflection of these circumstances. Do you have pans or any interest in saving your future kin? Their's and your grandchildren?
This also links with a sea change in American outlook. Many are screaming this "what about our children's children!" cliche, but do we really care about it anymore?
You had a great anecdote, now make something of it. Use it to prove a point.
-Filip