by Linda Lattimore

I didn't connect the dots until a friend, taking stock of my life, pointed out I had never veered off the path. The scenery changed often, so it felt like one adventure after another - but my direction rarely varied.

I was conceived in the Philippines at Clark AFB. My grandfather sent my parents a jar of red dirt to make sure I was born on Texas soil. But my young mother boarded a hospital ship alone and I arrived not far from his house in Fort Worth, just in time. When my father, as a young med tech, returned from milking cobras to create antivenom, he entered international pharmaceutical sales, and we moved to Lima, Peru and then Mexico City.

Growing up abroad, I learned to appreciate other cultures and languages, and knew no strangers. But I also learned early on that some people had much while many had very little. I have clear memories of small children approaching me with their palms out, hungry, often with no parents in sight. I wanted to help them. I just didn't know how.

When I began thinking about college, I wanted to become a social worker. My father, concerned that I support myself, steered me toward business and law instead.

I was one of very few women in my college business school, later the only woman in the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Houston, where I was called "little lady" from the bench and pants were not an option, and frequently the only woman in the C-suite as I moved into General Counsel roles, including 15 years with Telmex. The jobs changed, but fairness and equal pay remained constant themes.

Then, after my children left the nest, a series of seemingly random circumstances led me into microfinance. I founded Women's Global Network and the WGN Global Fund, bringing professional women together to help women with far fewer resources build businesses through small loans. Hundreds were funded; children who had been unable to attend school suddenly had the resources for uniforms and transportation.

It felt like I was engaging with the mothers of the very children I had met as a five-year-old - only now I had a business degree, a law degree, languages, and my own memories of lying awake as a single mother with two children under the age of five uncertain about the road ahead. The difference between my dreams at 16 and my abilities at 50 was everything I had learned along the way.

We all have DNA that shapes our physical and emotional selves. But there is another kind, too. I call it Defining Your Natural Aptitude. It's created by our life experiences. It prepares us for the contribution only we can make.

Perhaps that is one reason San Miguel de Allende attracts so many interesting people. We arrive carrying entire lifetimes with us - careers, families, successes, failures, wisdom and stories. We may think we have come simply to retire or enjoy this extraordinary place. But perhaps we have also arrived with something San Miguel needs. Finding that requires looking backward before looking forward: What experiences shaped our values? What issues consistently pull at us?

It took me many years to understand why creating opportunities for others mattered so much to me. It started when I was five but did not manifest until my fifties. Looking back, it all made sense - hindsight is our greatest teacher, even as we spend most of our lives peering into the future instead.

We talk a lot about legacy as we get older, but legacy isn't simply what we leave behind. It is what we do with what life has given us while we are still here. Your lifetime of experiences may have led you to this moment, in this place, for a reason. After all, you hold answers no one else does. And the rest of us need your piece of the puzzle.

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Linda is the author of the bestselling Solutionaries - You Are the Answer! and Great-itude: Overcoming Loneliness in a Disconnected World. Through Solutionaries Academy, she now develops programs that help people and organizations strengthen human connection, emotional intelligence and communication, while helping individuals recognize how their own experiences, values and strengths can lead to meaningful opportunities and greater community impact.

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