A Great Ancestor in the Making

Unblock enormous amounts of positive energy with a simple journey from past to future

- By Stephen Kiesling

Ari Wallach is a futurist. He helps corporations, foundations, and government agencies give more thought to shaping the future, but his passion is helping individuals recognize how our smallest actions reverberate for hundreds of years or more. His new book, Longpath, is a toolkit for becoming proud of our futures and happier in the present.

In your book Longpath you write about looking back in time before looking toward the future. Your dad was a Holocaust survivor and saw the worst that human beings do to each other. Somehow, you have devoted yourself to imagining the best. Let's start with your story.

I grew up in the shadow of a Holocaust survivor, but also a Holocaust hero. My dad lost his family early on, but he also killed Nazis. For me, being born in Guadalajara, Mexico, but growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, most of the Holocaust stories were about people getting on trains and being sent to the camps: stories about what happened to us as opposed to what we did back. My dad told stories about blowing up bridges and fighting the Nazis. And he was still the life of the party. When he wasn't sad about losing his family, he was very gregarious. He was a happy person because he was still able to experience awe at the most simple and basic things.