01 Jan HIStory written backwards

Jan 1, 2018

You cannot connect the dots looking forward

We spend our entire lives living in FF – planning for a future as yet unwritten.

You can only connect them looking backwards

That is until the day it is all done, and all we get to leave behind is our past.

I start this New Year by writing my father’s eulogy.  And as I do, it struck me that a Eulogy is HIS-story – written backwards and a lesson in Futurecasting.

To watch slowly, in REW,  how individual life decisions in his early years impacted subsequent choices and rippled out to influence so many lives.

Almost a century later, I wonder what wonders the 1940s teenage version of my Dad possibly imagined for his life.

At the start of his life, horse & carriage prevailed in East Africa. They were still laying down railroad tracks, and motorcars were a rarity.  I discovered only a few weeks back that he took his first flight in 1954 – despite being a global traveler from the young age of 9, when he was sent back to India to attend school.  Yet barely a decade later – in 1969 – I recall the day he insisted we all sit in front of our one-channel black and white TV to watch a delayed broadcast of Neil Armstrong taking ‘one giant step for mankind’.

Over his lifetime, he would live to see revolutions in medicine, politics, and technology – ideas much bigger and bolder than anything any 18-year old could dream or envision with the information and experience in front of him.

He lived through many wars, including the Second World War, Vietnam, and the Gulf War – and watched the Berlin Wall go up .. and be pulled down.

He was born into an era of long-hand cursive writing when information took weeks to cross the oceans on scented paper and air letter forms. But he would end his days WhatsApp-ing Christmas trivia in real-time with his grandchildren on 3 continents – on an iPhone5 that he bought himself on Amazon.

As I analyze his life, I once again see that it is not being able to predict, but being able to anticipate that is our best indicator of long-term survival.  As well as the ability to use a solid foundation of skills such as Flexibility & Adaptability, Resilience, Self-confidence, Empathy, Constant Learning, and strong social skills.

And to take our learning from our previous experience as the stepping stone into our next adventure.

Or as Steve Job’s said at his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford:

So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

From simple life decisions – like what to wear and what to eat.   To pivotal decisions – like where to study and who to marry.  Because it is only in hindsight that you will see how one decision impacted a second and a third.

And how the story of your influence upon this earth was a result of taking just one step at a time, moving from dot to dot to dot.

. . . And you look back and see the interesting journey you have taken.