Drink Charitably!

With a nod to Bob (that’s MR. Dylan to you, sonny!), the New Year has rendered me a bit nostalgic. Don’t get me wrong, I’m completely jacked up about 2010 and the future, but sometimes I drift off into thinking about my past. I’m guessing you do too.

Life does throw out interesting ‘twists of fate’. I mean, here I am, living in Napa, running one winery by day & owning/operating my own winery (that’d be Humanitas!) by night.  But there was a time when…I was going to be an architect.  And then I was going to be an oceanographer ala Jacques Cousteau.  And that of course led to the dream of being an under-water architect, combining the two dreams (my kids love that one).

Back in 8th grade, my buddy Brook had an uncle who was a US Senator.  We were going to be Senate Pages the following summer (not ever sure what happened to that) which no doubt influenced my decision to major (for a very short time) in political theory during my UCLA days in the ’70’s as I was sure I was going to go into politics.  In fact, it was a Facebook posting by a friend of mine showing shots of us in the Spring of 1977 that inspired this post.

High School introduced me to Yosemite and the glory of nature. I was one little click away from growing my hair out, not shaving, and becoming a Yosemite park ranger while I pursued my passion of being a world-class rock climber.  This closely associated itself with my post-college trip to Nepal where I was sure I was destined to be an adventure guide & lead folks down wild rivers in rafts & kayaks.

And of course, at one point, back in my UCLA days again, I was going to be a pro baseball player & break all sort of records and be fantastically wealthy & famous…and retire to play golf the rest of my life.  And that naturally led to my second career as a pro golfer on the Senior tour.

But somewhere along the way I was inspired to go back to graduate school — where I met my wife — and where somehow we ended up in Napa with me working for Robert Mondavi (hey…another Bob!) and ultimately leading to me establishing Humanitas.  Kids came along and emotions I never knew existed exposed themselves within me & a new series of adventures are in progress.

And now I’m really looking forward to the next ‘twist of fate’.  What will my dreams have brought in 10, 20, 30 more years in the future?  I don’t know the ultimate destination, but the journey so far has been a stunning one.

What about you?  Any dreams, twists of fate, left/right turns you made you’d like to share?  Might I suggest you grab a glass of something delightful and take a few moments to recount your own twists & turns.  It is well worth the journey — and please share!