Most of the desired goals I had seemed absurd, impossible and, at most, improbable at the time they were conceived.
At 45, as a gay man, I had an epiphany and wanted to have children.
At 47, my mother died and I woke up to a $678,000 inheritance tax that I had one year to pay. At the time I was unemployed, had a wife and two kids and a handicapped sister to support.
As a kid I always wanted to work on a feature film in Hollywood. I wanted to work in TV as well. I also wanted to be a published author. Since I was a small child I loved making beautiful books and writing and illustrating them. I was always an artist and wanted to see my work in galleries and on the walls of the rich and famous.
My parents took us traveling as kids and I knew I wanted to travel and even live in foreign cities — and I wanted to be paid for it.
I loved architecture and always wanted to design my dream house. It would have large open rooms with great light, have plenty of land with ponds and great views. I remember looking across at my ranch and the tiny house we lived in and imagining building my dream house in its place but it seemed unreasonable and impossible with the crushing inheritance tax and no job, but I knew any job would keep me enslaved to make nearly a million dollars and at nearly 50, there’s no way I was going to give the next thirty years of my life to simply pay a debt to the government, let alone make enough to support my family.
I refused.
You are not obliged to accept an inheritance.
I could capitulate and refuse the inheritance that was causing the problem, turn it over to the government and just continue my life as I had before.
But I saw my family’s future in it and decided to to figure out a way. I had no idea where to start, but I had made a decision.
I consulted everyone I could find to help me find a solution. Some suggestions were better than others, but if I had done what all the experts told me to do, I would have been broke long ago, but they did open my view and shine a light on the great potential that is around us everywhere every day. I sifted though the information I was gathering to the point of physical and emotional exhaustion and paid the price in my health — but I also discovered things along the way that turned my life around because I discovered my own potential in managing the impossible and persisting until I found the solutions that aligned with my heart.
I still wake up many days confronted with challenges that seem impossible — and then I remember that everything in my wishlist, all the things that seemed absurd and impossible, actually came to be.
Anton Uhl
April 19, 2021.
Boston
