Heeding The Sign, If Not The Goal

A piece in today's NY Times book review section combined with an undeveloped blog musing from August got me reflecting - What comes first to your mind as a value, model or goal you instinctively rejected?

A college and young adult friend of mine often spoke of his goal of being a millionaire by age 30. I recall having an immediate, almost viscerally negative reaction to that. I can even recollect parts of some brief testy discussions we had about it - 45 years ago.

My friend and I came from similar economic backgrounds, were born a month apart and grew up in the same town. We attended the same high school, began college in 1967, joined the same fraternity and were the first in both our families to finish college. He's the youngest of three boys; I'm the oldest of four - two boys, two girls. His parents were first generation immigrants; my family has been in the US for several generations.

That brief, superficial list of surface similarities and differences sheds no light on my instinctive rejection of his goal. But with the intersection of that NY Times piece and my strikingly similar blog musing still rattling, that old friend is in my head. My psychic saw has never been very sharp so this qualifies as a sign. If I've learned one valuable thing in three years of blogging, it's to heed these signs, wherever they lead.