Alumni family

Entire Greek tragedies center on the conflict between loyalty to family vs. civil society. The importance of family bonds usually granted, so let's take a moment to cherish and respect our ties to people we have chosen to be close to, or even who just happen to share the planet with us.

Some people were chosen for us. These include people in your college or MBA class. It extends to people who graduated from your university long before or after you. Think of your fellow alumni as people you might help or be helped by, now and in the future.

This year I made a small donation to our college in honor of a milestone anniversary of my sister's graduation. "We have become the people who helped us," I told her.

Here I wait for my husband to arrive in one of my favorite places in New York, the Lindbergh Memorial in Rockefeller Center.

Oh and the vexed question of what is due to the family vs. the state (and remember that a spouse is not a blood relative) is critical to the Oresteia. In the words of Agamemnon, "Which of these ways goes without disaster?" I warned you that it's a tragedy, though the reconciliation of sorts that ends the trilogy is foundational to modern thought.