What does it mean to live intentionally, with purpose and awareness of what one is doing? I don’t know; it’s not how I’ve lived my life. When I was young, the thought never occurred to me. I played outside, baby-sat and delivered papers, worked full-time during the summer, grabbed what I could grab. When it was time to pick a college, my decision wasn't driven by goals or ambition of my own, but by choices made by friends. After graduation, I spent two years in a ski town – without a clear purpose – and, in my mid-twenties, moved to New York City to get a “real” job. Suddenly, I was “grown up,” with a steady paycheck, rent and bills to pay, a girlfriend, none of it planned. The girlfriend and I got married, had kids, the job turned into a better job, the boys got older, our parents and siblings got older, we got older. Life happened, and it was mostly good. Was there intention, a plan or design? If there was, it was largely provided by the girl I married (and am still married to). Were we the beneficiaries of privilege? Of course. Like my wife, I grew up in a middle-class household during the middle decades of the 20th century – a prosperous time for the country and the white folks who were our neighbors. With kids to clothe and feed, my parents worried about money constantly but managed to keep a roof over our heads, always in a community with good schools. We didn’t travel much, but they found the money to send my siblings and me to a decent private school up the street, and for us to join a country club that some of the strivers in our community had developed on a treeless parcel outside of town. Everyone worked hard and played harder. Privilege? It would be silly to deny it wasn’t a factor in our lives, and the lives of the people we knew. But so was contingency. Life, we all believed, was about choices, and one was more likely to be happy if one did what he or he could to maximize one's choices and chose wisely among them. There wasn't a lot of intention, a lot of purposefulness, in it. But if, like me, you were lucky enough to walk around with some privilege in your pocket, things usually turned out for the best.