The article presents the reflections on my own life-story from a set of positions: an impact on it of my 'big family', from viewpoint of unintended changes in global and national political context and my own oscillations between fine arts, urban studies, sociology and environmentalism. From early childhood I've a lucky chance to be in the midst of national and some global events and its creators and carriers.These events always hadbeen characterized by critical overtone and sudden risks. Being unconsciously globally oriented I'm at the same time had maintained my deepinclusion in local life of my country as a landscape painter and a permanent traveler. Later on, being an architect and urban theorist I suddenly opened for me a new research area: environmental sociology. I see Z. Bauman, U. Beck, M. Castells, R. Pahl and A. Touraine as well as V. Vernadsky, D. Lichachev, mygrandfather F. Yanitsky and my aunt V. Schmidt as my life-tutors. Throughout my life I'd been under the impact of my 'big family' very diversified one from the socialist-revolutionaries to charity activists, and from historians tomathematics and biologists. The lessons of my life-story are as following: the 'big family' as a part of a person's life-story should be protected by all means; the mean of its maintenance is a permanent one-to-one communication by any means; in the run of life-span its role is changing but remains important; the same should be said in relation of our small motherlands, otherwise a global community is at risk to become a Brownian movement; and a diversity has to be not only in the nature and social life, the diversity is an inseparable feature ofan individual experience.