YORBA LINDA
The view is stellar. The house is on the crest of a ridge and the whole valley is laid out in front of us. Lounging in a recliner next to the pool, soaking up sun and sipping a gin and tonic -- what could be more perfect?
We are visiting my wife's nephew. I know from the time he was two years old. A very bright kid, driven by intense curiosity, always asking questions. And unlike many small children, actually listening to the answers. I enjoyed spending time with him on our frequent trips to Kolkata, explaining things, playing challenging games. It was clear that he was going to go a long way. Well, he did. Got a degree from IIT, the best engineering school in India, then a scholarship to the US for a master's at Vanderbilt. Then while working, he got an MBA from UCLA. Not only smart, but a really hard worker. Once he had his credentials he launched a small consulting business in traffic design and quickly built it up into a viable operation. He married an Italian girl and bought a beautiful, huge house. They prospered and traveled. Everything was perfect. Nathaniel was clearly an achiever in an impressive way. So why did our children dislike him so? Every time he came to visit, which he often did on consulting |
trips, our son and daughter complained that Nathan kept bragging to them non-stop about everything. How many horsepowers his Mercedes had, how many speeding tickets he receives a month, how many airports he landed at, how many hamburgers he can down in one sitting. Instead of impressing the kids e ended up irritating them.
He did this with us too, to a smaller extent. With us he was comparing the amount of money he was making to the amount I had made at his age, and kept calculating how early he could retire, and kept describing the next, bigger house he was planning to buy. I sat him down once for a heart-to-heart and told him that I thought he had achieved quite an impressive record for his age, and that his bragging detracted from his credibility. He thanked me, said I gave him a lot of food for thought. And he stopped bragging to us, almost completely. But not to our children or to his other cousins in India. We concluded that for some reason he has insecurities about his worth that he had difficulties facing. Then his son, Alex, was born. My first thought was that the kid is in for a tough childhood. Knowing Nathan for a perfectionist and an obsessive achiever, I expected him to exercise immense pressure on the kid to excel. Before there was a chance to see if my expectations were on the mark, Nathan reported that Alex had a quadruple congenital heart defect that required a series of major surgical procedures. |