I’m a geezer. I admit it. Aging happens to all of us. We are born, we live our lives, we get older. Along the way we may or may not accomplish things that will live on beyond us. We may or may not learn important lessons that we can pass on to our children. We may or may not gain relevance and recognition beyond our immediate family and career circles.
Getting older doesn't necessarily mean 'growing up' in the traditional sense. I may be an antique by virtue of my years on earth but I think of myself as much younger than my chronological age. I may be more responsible now than I was when I was a youth but I still love to have fun, to do new things and to raise hell. That is why I am here, writing this article. I may be goofy enough to get a kick out of having myself caricatured as a Family Guy cartoon character but I am also serious enough so that when I see things in our world that piss me off, I want to do everything I can to change them.
I don't know about you, but in terms of my life, I want to be in the driver's seat. I don't want to be anyone's puppet. I want to live my life on my terms. It has always amazed me that so many people are happy to let others think and act for them. Worse, these people appear to think that it is the way things must be.
Why?
Life is a series of steps, some small and insignificant, some major and life-changing. Prominent among them are the usual milestones of completing grade school, high school, college or university, landing your first full-time job, getting married, having children, sending them off to complete all the steps that you yourself completed and then eventually, retirement. Personally memorable experiences might be your first kiss, your first sexual experience, the first major career accomplishment that is truly your own and the birth of your children.
The steps in your life can be positive or negative, good or bad, or completely neutral. After each step you move on to the next one.
Life can be full of joy, it can be a series of disappointments, or it can be a mixture of both. How emotionally intact we will be, after we make it through these steps in our lives, depends in large part on our attitude.
I became a first-time father at age 47. By that time I had experienced successes large and small. I had experienced failures too, mostly in my personal life. I was determined to pass on what I had learned in the way of coping skills to my young son.
One conversation I had with him, probably around the time that he was just finishing grade school and getting interested in girls, was about all the challenges and disappointments he might face in his life and how to cope with them. As an entrepreneur myself, I wanted him to learn to take chances. Taking chances necessarily means risk of failure. Asking a cute classmate on a date might result in an answer of ‘no’. That would be a failure to obtain an objective but it would also be a necessary and helpful experience in how to deal with disappointment and to refine one's approach and then move on to try again.
Perhaps, years later, starting a first business might also have chance of failure. It is rarely possible to accomplish anything significant in life without taking a chance and risking a loss of money and sometimes years of unproductive time. If ‘Suzie’ says no your request for a date, or if your first business fails, what do you do? Do you immerse yourself in self-pity and whine to all and sundry that life isn’t fair? Or do you accept these things as the temporary disappointments they should be and move on? Do you take action to solve your problems yourself or do you wait for someone else to do it for you?
Everything disappointing in life should be considered a learning experience and a necessary, if painful, step towards something better in your future. That might mean a date with someone smarter and prettier than Suzie or starting a business better suited to your skills and experience.
That is what I told my son. You learn from your experiences. You accept personal responsibility for your failures. Then you move on. The most important word that you will ever use from your vocabulary, I told him, is ‘Next!’.
I believed it then. I believe it now.
We are facing dramatic change in our world as political and economic foolishness of the past come back to bite us in the butt. For too long, we have not accepted personal responsibility for our lives. By delegating governments to solve every perceived ill, we have been complicit in bankrupting our nations and in creating masses of people (and corporations and foundations and many special interest groups) with their collective hands out. These people aren't incompetent or stupid, they just think it is normal to accept handouts because that is the way things are done. And to pay for it all, we delegate governments to get 'them' to 'contribute their 'fair share'.
Them? Who are they? And why should they accept a larger responsibility than yours and mine? And what, exactly, is the 'fair share'?
Economies around the globe are in disarray. Political unrest threatens much of the world. How we deal with our lives in the months and years ahead will determine how well we make it through the troubled times. Our objectives should be to survive each challenge and to live a life of contentment and satisfaction despite any troubling and unwelcome annoyances along the way.
We all need to take responsibility for ourselves, to get government off our backs and to live our lives as free individuals, not cogs in some incredibly complex and inefficient political machine.
As the founder and publisher of the Next! Newsletter, I welcome everyone to our inaugural edition. I would like to thank my partner Mark Jeftovic for his invaluable help and support. I salute the writers who will be tasked with publishing useful and informative articles for our subscribers in the months ahead. I would also like to thank Phil Saunders, who will be our editor-in-chief, for making his experience and insights available to us.
Let's change the world!
So now, without further ado . . .
Next!
Sieg Pedde