I recently had a long overdue dinner with several friends that I grew up and went to college with. The group comprised of a very mixed background, ethnically and culturally, but all came from mediocre economic standing. By in large, the dining companions had all the markings of modern-day success stories, and many had much to be proud of. Several in the group had to break away from less than ideal childhood upbringings and redefined themselves to create successful lives. They overcame a lot—escaping their families’ failed pasts, avoiding a bleak future of limited opportunity and limited happiness for themselves and their offspring. In short, they overcame and started over.
Sadly, some in my generation were trained, cajoled, or conditioned to be content with the flat line of high school education and continue the familial succession of holding labor-intensive jobs. Well, the truth is, many in this generation broke free from the past, punched through the wall of limited expectations, and worked hard to obtain college and graduate degrees. With it, they embarked on successful professional and personal stories.
However, during our dinner, there was one individual, Gus, who wasn’t so lucky. As we quickly came to learn, Gus was mired in his less-than-ideal upbringing. Cursed with limited opportunities, he struggled to find his way in the world. He blamed his upbringing, his tormented personal life, and the fragmented professional life on his parents, leaving all blame on the doorsteps of his childhood home. Buzz kill. But it got me thinking about making your own fortune and sometimes breaking with the broken past to arrive at a shiny future. Let’s spin the wheel.
There is a line in Alex Warren’s song “Bloodline” that hit home with some of my dining companions. The line is “I won’t be who you were.” It is simple and easy but packs a punch. This song is really a declaration, or a refusal, to submit yourself to the path that was not preordained for you when you came from a troubled upbringing. The song, and that line, is one some of us whispered to ourselves for years, starting in their head, and finally mustering the words out loud. The mantra of wanting a better future for our children starts with a promise and an action to free yourself from the constraints of the past, free yourself from the chains of parental disappointment, rejection, and past failure to be validated from those who gave you their DNA.
Those of us in New Jersey are a resilient type and many that I grew up with had less than ideal Ward Cleaver home lives. We look at Gus as our case book study. As we grew up, our identity, our truth, our existence evolved and soon borne out of resilience, out of stubbornness and rebellion, giving rise to a new beginning—coming full circle to a contemporary truth. More to the point, and here is the punchline: sometimes it is necessary to reject that bloodline you inherited. Once you do, you arrive as the first in your family’s long history with a new beginning, a beginning filled with hope, promise, education, opportunity, kindness and bereft of anger and resentment, removed from the generation that never resolved their inner torment foisted on them by the generations before them. Yes, a lot to unpack.
If I have learned nothing else in my 40 years of political travels of this magnificent state, it is that this state and its people are fighters and we get knocked down but always get up. Many of us grew up in homes with neighbors literally within a whisper of our property. The streets had rows of homes, and the neighbors were loud and busy. The parents worked hard. Most I knew had manual jobs and had it hard making ends meet. The parents often were from other countries or had failed upbringings, and didn’t always get it right. Some tried and many failed. Knowingly or otherwise. Many left behind a trail of terrific damage—psychological, social, and personal wreckage in their wake. And now it is up to this generation, each of us, to change that arc and forever create a more positive and dynamic universe for all to prosper.
Let’s cue up the song again. The songwriter captures this concept so perfectly—the fear that your parents’ mistakes are waiting for you like an inheritance or a birthright. When Alex sings about “breaking the chain,” it is not just words, it is talking about survival. It is at that time you decide that the depressed story about limited outcomes ceases and the story about vibrant ones begin.
Warren’s song isn’t about resentment or pain—it is about hope and reclamation. It is about taking something broken or failed and fixing it and making it new. It is rebuilding and reinventing and with it, providing you and the next generation with a solid foundation and a positive atmosphere to do more than just exist—to live, to celebrate, to inspire, to confound, to succeed and to be happy.
My message to Gus and folks like Gus – if you grew up believing you were destined to become the worst parts of your upbringing, to be a continuation of where you came from, you need to know you get to choose who and what you are. You get to decide your future and your legacy. You, and you alone, write the next positive chapter in your life, and you get to break free from your bloodline, if you so choose.
Take that pain, pass it down like bottles on the wall
Mama said her dad’s to blame, but that’s his daddy’s fault
Oh, there is no one left to call
You stay up countin’ down the days ‘til you make your escape
But you’re afraid you can’t outrun what’s runnin’ through your vein
Oh
You are carryin’ the weight
Oh, my brother
You don’t have to follow in your bloodline
Oh, we got each other
And if you got tomorrow, then you still got the time
To break the chains that left you scarred
From where you came from isn’t who you are
— Bloodline – Alex Warren, Jelly Roll
