Today I saw my kid off for the first day of college.
I’ve been blessed with two brilliant children. I don’t know how that happened. I mean, I’m married to a math teacher, and I’ve done pretty well in development and security architecture for over a quarter-century. But every birthday until my fortieth, my dad would tell me, “I can’t believe you survived this long.” And in high school I was voted “Most Likely to Die in the Electric Chair.” That’s not a joke.
Is my burning passion identity and access management? Is it what I live for? Well, in the realm of security, it’s certainly one of the most interesting arenas. App security is all SANS Top 25, network security is mostly hardware, database is a commodity. But IAM is something you can actually architect across an entire whiteboard, with plenty of variations.
But it’s primarily how I make my living. That’s what it is. In the end, we work to live, we (hopefully) don’t live to work.
We try to impart our wisdom on our progeny and hope for the best. I’ve taught my kids to question authority, to doubt extremists at both ends, to trust science more than conjecture, and to honor their commitments. But their intelligence has far outstripped what I thought they would achieve, as has their kindness, their general goodness, and their talent for sarcasm.
They’ve taken what we’ve given them and done so much more. They will do much more with all this and go way beyond my paltry IAM efforts. In truth, I am not worthy.
I’m a lucky guy. I hope all of you are at least half as lucky.