Lessons I learned the hard way

Now that I am on the knowing side of 70, I do a certain amount of glancing into my rear-view mirror.

I know, I know, I’m not going that way, but every once in a while, it’s necessary to see how I got to where I am.

In all this time there are certain lessons I have learned, not because I took the advice of those who wanted me to benefit from their already having learned them, but because I had enough hubris to think that my experience would surely be different from theirs.

I was – at least in the majority of cases – completely wrong.

So now that I am the one in the position to dispense advice, here is a litany of lessons that I have learned the hard way. The really hard way.

Ready? Here we go.

Where you’re from really does matter

For example, if you are an Italian-American from Chicago transplanted to even the worldliest part of Kentucky you are an “Eyetalian” mobster who must be hiding from the feds.

Some things really never do change

When I was 18 years old, I left Chicago for New England. I went back when I was 38. In all that time nothing - and I mean no thing - in that city had changed. Neighborhood boundaries were still drawn according to race or ethnicity, and crime and politics were often the same thing.

It was a fabulous place to be a journalist.

It really is who you know

You know this whether you’re a Boston Brahmin or a poor ethnic kid from The Bronx.

Brahmin families move in the same social circles with other Brahmins, and they all get each other’s kids into Ivy League schools, and hand them high-powered jobs when they graduate. On the other hand, the families of kids from the Bronx do not rub elbows with movers and shakers of any kind, and those kids have to sweat blood to work themselves up from cleaning bathrooms to the executive suite.

It’s hard to love what’s good for you

Period.

Never tell anyone anything you don’t want the whole world to know

Sooner or later even your closest confidant is going to crack out of turn.

If you want to keep something secret, keep it to yourself.

You are never going to able to adapt enough fast enough

Though it’s true that some things never change, most other things are in a constant state of flux.

Not even the best prognosticator can keep ahead of it all, so chillax and enjoy things as they are.

No good deed goes unpunished

Do that good deed anyway.

And finally -

You only know what you think you know

And that by a long shot is not everything.