The Value of Engagement and Reconnecting

Rick Posnick Dr. P

I left my St. Louis Park environment early as a senior in January 1975 and was happy to move on. I started traveling that January and returned in the spring to work long hours in the family business. I was thrilled to be detached from my time in school and more than ready to move on as I did not find high school to be my favorite environment. I knew many of you as acquaintances and very few as close friends. I bought my first house at age 19 and spent the next 8 years getting my undergrad and grad degrees from the University of Minnesota. I involved myself heavily with my grad school classmates who would become my peers and closest friends. As I finished grad school, I left for Colorado to build a new life and community that has defined my existence to this day. My patients taught me about community engagement and the need to understand the challenges of what it takes to provide for your family and friends. The cultural and financial diversity of my Boulder practice was truly an eye-opening experience for me. My patients had from less than a high school education to multiple PHDs. They could be unemployed, work multiple jobs, be college department heads, or CEOs of multinational corporations. These experiences taught me to become “the everyman” in life and be able to adapt as well as connect with the varied population of my practice. After 34 years of this existence, in 2018, I sold my practice and retired. During the years I was working I traveled the world, mostly remote less-traveled areas, exploring and immersing myself in the cultures and history of the places and people I encountered. These things would never have happened without the relationships developed with my clients and all that I learned from them along the way. These people helped me to understand the diversity of cultures in the world we live in as well as to respect how people live within their communities.

This hopefully brings me back to the premise of writing this history of my life since leaving high school and St. Louis Park. My volunteering to help with the 50th reunion is part of giving back to community. We all get wrapped up in our personal lives as we move through time. Those people you shared a moment with years ago have each had some good and bad experiences in their lives, and you may or may not have been a part of those. Much can be learned and appreciated from reaching out to those you may have known well or not at all. Each of these people has something to offer…. Contacting them through a text, email, phone call, or sharing a photo can develop into something of value and great meaning. It just takes a moment of your time…

As an example, while helping to gather information to locate all of you classmates from my distant past, I discovered that three of you lived just miles away from my wife’s hometown in north Chicago. We are back that way frequently checking up on her elderly mom so I decided I would make contact with those classmates and attempt to reconnect. These classmates were all in on short notice and made time in their personal lives to make this happen. A personal shout out to Robert Balick, Victor Rutstein, and Karen Gale!! Until seeing you guys’ last month while in Chicago, I’ve probably not had 10 minutes of conversation with any of you since January 1975. It was a mind-blowing experience, and we talked as if we had talked just the day before. I am so glad to have each of you back in my life and look forward to seeing each of you when I’m back in Chicago every 2-3 months.

So… with that said…. Take the time… Reach out, reconnect with each other, take the chance, you may be surprised… I hope to see you all in August and look forward to reconnecting.

Rick Posnick