Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Seeing the Future 8-25-09

I was sitting in the hot tub(spa) outside which is connected to my redwood deck in my backyard. My daughter who is 20 then joined me and later her boyfriend got in too.

Later, my daughter got out and just her boyfriend and I started talking. He thought I was "uncreating" (a way I like to speak about these things) what he was trying to do. I explained to him that that wasn't true. I said, "Hey look. I want both of you in college which was his goal. His parents broke up and then his mother had moved away from Colorado where he grew up and he had to take care of himself so college was put off until now. He is now 24. So I was very supportive of his goal to go to community college and to transfer to a state university or a UC in his junior year. This is what I did too and I have always thought it is the most economically viable way to get educated if you aren't rich yet.

Though my daughter was an "A" student throughout high school and went to 1 year of college she didn't have a major that excited her and started traveling the world instead until a useful major appealed her. Along the way her boyfriend and she started living together. She is a very mature 20 and I can see they have a very good chance of staying together because I am 61 and have seen thousands of relationships and if anyone has a good chance in staying together it is them.

But also as a good father I would like to see both of them get a good education as long as they have an idea of what they want to do with it, especially in the present economic conditions worldwide.

I said to my daughter's boyfriend. When I look down the timeline of you buying an engine for your VW van from Brazil I don't see it getting done by the time you think for a variety of reasons. Why don't you and my daughter stay here as my wife and I have a very big house and go to a community college here for your first semester and then for winter quarter just transfer to the community you and she want to? I could see this was very tempting for him. However, I knew this might cause problems for my daughter and her mother since she and I have been divorced for 15 years. So I told him that it could cause trouble between my ex and my daughter and even affect his relationship with my daughter if they did this. I needed to be honest about this or it wouldn't be fair to my daughter and he.

I could see he was a little scared because he had made friends with my ex and my daughters 35 year old sister who both live in Oregon now on a ranch. However, the chance of a place to stay while going to college was very tempting for him to get them started for her second year of college and his first.

I said looking down the present time line I could see a minimum 50% chance of it going this way but I also told him I can't always read other people's time lines as well as my own because I'm not sure what their decisions will be ongoing like I can usually know what my own will be. So I can sometimes predict major events in my own life for one or several years with about a 90% or better accuracy for my own life as long as I can see the important variables. Thank you God!

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