What I Leave For My Children

Rethinking what’s of value in life

The other day my scales flashed up a digital message: 251 lbs.! ~~~Happy 47th birthday! ~~~You’ve now lived more years than you have left~~~Especially if the Rona gets you cause of that high blood pressure those extra lbs are causin.

Seriously though, I know I’m not going to live forever. I remember, when I was the age my three kids are now, sitting at the nightly family dinner with my dad telling my siblings and me that he wouldn’t live forever. He passed three years ago. He’s gone. I can’t ask him for more of his wisdom and experience.

When I’m gone, what am I going to leave my children, what legacy will remain? Maybe “legacy” is too big a word. Not all of us can be Steve Jobs, or Barack Obama. Even if we could be like Steve or Barack, it doesn’t mean that the next generation will know who we are or learn from our experiences. Do my kids know who Jimmy Carter is? I doubt it. Do they know that he won a Nobel peace prize? Doubt it. That he played a major role in eradicating Guinea worm or was President of the United States. Doubt it.

“ Do you know who Jimmy Carter is?”, I asked my eldest son.

“Nope,” he said as he continued to play some game on his iPhone.

So although my life has been wonderful, it has not been lived on a scale that would enter into the history books. But I’m going to make sure that my kids have my life lessons about important things. Not just money, or success, or fame, although I hope they get those as well. They won’t really care that I was a managing director at JP Morgan and worked for thirteen years on Wall Street, and it definitely won’t mean anything to my grandkids. The things I did will mean nothing to my children without the lessons that I learned along the way. For example, what did I learn when I was denied a big promotion to head of marketing by the management team one year, only to have them return a year later to ask me to take over the position? Or the year when discussing my bonus, I asked for twice what I thought I was worth! And waited, a little anxious for the reply?

I ended my career at JPM with little fanfare after losing a political battle and getting pushed out. But, they can probably learn something from how I left Wall Street, reinvented myself, redefined my self-identity, and took a completely different path in life at the age of 35. Two years later, I was screaming in a stadium in Ghana, while my brother won a Ghana Music Award for a song I wrote and produced.

My next step was into the non-profit world. I started a small educational NGO with two schools teaching Math, English, and Coding to less privileged children in Ghana. While spending more time in Ghana, I also decided to found a software development agency. I have great aspirations, but I don’t expect either of these to create significant intergenerational wealth or everlasting fame. However, they may show my kids a man finding a dream and how that dream rejuvenated his interactions with the world.

Life lessons are the most important assets I hope to leave to my children. Some may make life a little easier, some will challenge them. Either way, I hope they can stand upon the lessons of my successes and failures to look beyond the challenges that they will face. However, my 10,12, and 14 year old boys aren’t quite ready for lessons about salary negotiations or reinventing themselves. So I am embarking on the adventure of writing some of these lessons in this blog every week — sort of a Life-Lesson college 529 Savings Plan that my kids can withdraw from tax-free when needed.

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