Own your Happiness

“Men’s natures are alike, it is their habits that carry them far apart.” So said Confucius.

No one is responsible for your happiness: not your spouse, your boss, your lover, your parents or your history.

Ultimately happiness is an individual experience, something only YOU can decide on. Happiness is not a product of having enough money, enough acknowledgements, enough things. Happiness is not about how people treat you, who cares for you, who swears at you.

Happiness is YOU.

If you want to be.

Two people can look at the same facts and derive totally different feelings and emotions from it. Facts are only the raw data: our experience, our background, our points of reference, the moment we look at the facts and a myriad other, personal factors, determine the interpretation of those facts.

Think back on your own life:

• How things get worse and worse when you look at it during the course of a day when you are tired to the bone
• The fight with a spouse: how it spirals into an immanent divorce if you allow your emotions to run the race in your mind
• The feeling of dread when you wait for a potential negative phone call and how it mounts as time goes by.

I think expecting the worst may be hardwired into our DNA. When our ancestors had to fight or flee to survive, it made sense to worry about small things, to fear the dark, to read signs in the stars, to see broken branches as a forebear to invasion and death.

Our lives have changed, but not our default wiring. Most of the experiences elicit an automated response and more often than not that response is negative.

That is the reason why being and staying positive is hard work. Happiness is not for sissies or lazy bastards, happiness demands constant interaction with your default hardwiring.

You have to take responsibility for your happiness, sometimes against all odds.

The Annual World Happiness Report says in its 2015* document that well-being and happiness have an underlying neural base. Our brain and the way our synapses fire impact directly on our view of the world. They identify 4 “habits” or “positions” that define happiness:

• Sustained Positive emotion
• Recovery of negative emotions
• Empathy, Altruism and Prosocial behaviour
• Mind wondering, mindfulness or “emotion-captured” attention

The authors go on: “…the circuits we identify as underlying these four supports for well-being all exhibit plasticity, and therefore can be transformed through experience and training.”

You can work on your happiness. You can improve your well-being by focusing on your state of mind and by keeping your emotion and thoughts positive.

“… happiness and well-being are best regarded as skills that can be enhanced through training.” The World Happiness report again.

Obviously if you suffer from depression, just thinking about things in a new way, won’t do the trick. But I have often wondered if the chemical unbalance that usually underlies depression is not the result of years of negative emotions.

It is known that fear gives you wings when the fight or flight reaction kicks in and adrenaline gets released into your bloodstream to allow you to react quickly. Maybe depression’s chemical “unbalance” is created in the same way over sustained periods of time…. You can’t always fix what is broken, just by changing your mind, just as you can’t fix a ceased internal combustion engine just by adding oil. Sometimes you need outside specialized attention.

Years ago I worked with blind people. Years ago I worked with people who enjoyed the miracles of smell and touch and hearing. I cannot remember one grouping of people in my whole working career that laughed more readily. And they also laughed at their own “predicament”, because it was not an infliction, it was not a burden: it was something they lived with. And learned that sometimes the impact of their blindness left them in difficult situations.

Of course I am generalizing, obviously some of them were bitter. But by and large they understood one thing: blindness has very little to do with actual physical seeing. Many able-versioned people are blind to life around them.

You can choose if you want to roll, like a pig, in the mud of all your travails, bad relationships, shitty clients and bosses or if you want to experience every little miracle life offers daily. Do you stop to smell the roses? Look at a child’s smile? Thank people who are kind to you?

Are you kind to people without expecting anything back?

Those are the things that bring happiness because it opens your mind to the universe of possibilities out there.

When next that negative thoughts attack you: stand back and think about other good things.

It is not corny; in fact, it is not even easy.

But it is worth it.

 

A dear friend of me passed away last week. Doug Still was in body an old man of 85, riddled with cancer and his last months was a hell of pain. In the end he was hallucinating.

 But I haven’t known many more positive people.

 He had a tough life, born in the old Northern Rhodesia he moved to Southern Rhodesia, only to flee it years later with only what his wife and he could transport in a car. He started over, and failed, and started and failed. One of his sons lost his legs in a motorcycle accident; one was murdered in the South of Johannesburg. His wife died, he had a heart attack and a bypass. Septicemia set in where the vein was removed for the bypass and he lost a leg, well into his seventies. His life was one long list of misery, failure, unforeseen accidents and bad luck.

 

Except if you spoke to Doug Still. Always smiling, often singing in his thin, reedy voice (maybe the voice was just because of his age), always joking. And remembering the good things that happened to him. He was a mentor to many young people, worked hard in the Lions organization, supporting people and friends. According to Doug Still had a wonderful full happy life. And he did.

 We bid him a final goodbye today. There will be tears, but there will be more smiles. Laughter and fond memories. Doug transcended the “facts” of his life. He was an angel in, lately, an old broken body. He will not rest in peace. If there is a heaven it will reverberate with his laughter, passion and happiness.

 Go well my friend.

 

 

 

*Helliwel, John F., Richard Layal and Jeffrey Sachs, eds. 2015. World Happiness Report 2015. New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

Born under a bad sign

Everyone has stories to tell. Everyone. Often we tell those stories only to ourselves. At night, when an inner voice wakes us, while the world around us is fast asleep. In the car, stuck in traffic, waiting for an appointment…

We talk to ourselves when things work out differently than we thought it should have. We tell ourselves how life could have been better if this happened or that didn’t happen. We all have stories, some stories we share, certain stories we keep secret: some of those even to ourselves.

I was, unexpectedly, invited to address a conference of people at a company that I left five years ago. Unexpectedly because I moved away to a small rural farm far away from the city’s hustle and bustle. I didn’t keep contact with the people that invited me and only worked in a very small geographical area of the group that I was supposed to motivate; and even that, more than twenty years ago. It could only mean they were either scraping the barrel, or had big enough problems that only the resurrection of an old “can-do-er” may be able to impact on.

My brief was clear: do what you always do.

Obviously I couldn’t. My life took vastly different roads in the last five years, I knew very few, if any, of the audience and had only 5 year-old knowledge of a fast changing industry. I couldn’t do what I always did: be positive, share the facts and tell the normal motivational stories.

Haven’t we all sat through serious motivational talks? Emotions hyped into the stratosphere: You can DO this! You can BEAT that! You are GOOD!! Be the BEST you can be! Only to realise an hour, or a day, or a week later nothing has changed. My shit remained the same. The boss was as bad (maybe worse because he now expected me to actually act on something weird the speaker said), my wife remained fat (or too skinny, in case my wife reads this), my children lazy, my enemies still had in for me and the clients, oh the bloody clients were the same bad bunch from hell!

After mulling the situation over for a few days I decided to accept the invitation and tell my life story. As a (mostly) naturally positive person, that became a very dull story, very soon. Good news doesn’t sell newspapers. Positive stories may hype, but contains no meat.

I decided to relook my life, but from a different angle.

Born under a bad sign, Blues great Albert King wrote. And Clapton, Cream, BB King and others sang: “I been down since I began to crawl, If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all!”

Boy, oh boy! What an incredible experience: looking at your own life, your prehistory, your roots, the young you, the maturing you and the current you, from a different angle than usual.

I remembered stories long told, stories rather ignored, stories filled with bad memories, tears rather than laughter, pain rather than love.

Over a week it flooded back: an illiterate grandfather who killed 2 people, a depressed grandfather who committed suicide. An alcoholic grandmother who may have dabbled into prostitution, a timid father with an anger management problem, overbearingly religous mother, stupid teachers, bullies at school, a psychopathic schoolmate. Teachers who never (should have) taught, loves lost, slights remembered, ignorant bosses, untrustworthy colleagues, lying and thieving clients, friends who committed suicide, the impact of depression: the floodgates of my own private hell opened.

One day, whilst driving through one of the most picturesque towns in the world (Wilderness, South Africa, my closest town), I couldn’t see the sea, or the mountains. Because of the tears of remembrance. It was not joyful. I was in my own wilderness running away from the demons that made me.

“…for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the inequity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation.”

I was visited: not only for my sins, but those of my father, and his, and his and all of them ad infinitum.

I did the talk.

Last week I stood in front of lots of people and shared my story. I couldn’t share all of it, there was just too much. I never spoke of calling of an engagement because my future wife called my parents trash, I never spoke of the impact of child abuse and rape or the impact of those actions on those close to the survivors of such ordeals. I never mentioned how it felt to have the blood of a person who tried to commit suicide dripping on your shirt or how you really feel when you have to make the call to switch off your father’s life support system.

I saw people crying whilst I spoke, people frowning, not knowing what to do with this, the ultimate in non-motivational speaking. I saw the hosts who invited me shifting uncomfortably in their seats, faces turning red and pale and back to red again. I saw people, who thought they knew me, sitting back aghast. Shocked to their core.

Because they never knew, never suspected.

We all have stories. Good ones and bad ones, positive ones and eating-into-your-brain and marrow ones.

Our stories are important.

But what is more important is how we choose to react to them. Are you the victim of your stories, or the survivor in spite of them?

I decided as a child to survive and thrive on my history. I choose to have a happy life, to see the humour in situations, to fight back with sarcasm rather than fists. I decided to sing (although rather off-key) rather than to cry.

That decision saved me from the past, that choice saved me from the jealous gods that urged me to take responsibility for things I never had any control over. I didn’t choose my ancestors, or the things that happened in my life.

But I can choose the response. I can choose who to love and who to leave. I can choose who to spend time with and who to ignore. Sometimes the choice is made, but putting it into place can take months and years. I can even choose how to respond to that eventuality.

As a Bridge player (the card game, not the type you jump off), I know you can’t choose your hand, but Boy, oh Boy: you can decide how to play it.

Preparing and delivering the presentation last week, was one of the tougher things I have ever done. And I believe it changed someone.

Even if it was only me.

Note: Depression is an illness, a medical condition, similar to flu or breaking a leg: if you, or anyone you love, suffer from it; please seek medical assistance. Depression is nothing to be ashamed of and it can be treated.

A Mind Challenge

Life is not logical. Life is not fair. Something happens and some things not. Good things happen and bad things happen. Life spirals this way and cartwheels that way. We interact with one another and we leave one another. We say things we don’t mean and mean things we don’t say.

Some call it the grand plan of life, some providence. Some call it fate.

There are causal links, but more likely things just happen. Unforeseen events take place. Issues crop up out of nowhere. Ghosts of the past appear and mirages of the future slip away without explanation.

Some people can handle this duality, this uncertainty. Most can’t.

And because of the uncertainty we seek explanations. We try to force logic on life. You struggled because of this sin or succeeded because of that lucky break. It’s because you knew the right people, or were in the wrong place at the right time.

Through it all there is only one golden thread: how you frame the situation in your own mind. Life is what happens, but good and bad is based in your mind.

Your mind attaches meaning to your surroundings, your mind mixes the paints on the palette of your life and paints it as it wishes. If life is dark and brooding: thank your mind. If life is colourful and happy: it’s your mind.

I have known people who, from my point of view, had everything going for them. They were talented, beautiful, had good breaks and yet … their lives were misery, with few, if any, good moments. Lives of little pleasure and much pain and hardship. According to them. And so it was.

I have known people who had nothing going for them, troubles and problems beset the road of their existence and yet: happier people you would struggle to find. Their lives may have been tough, but it was good. Small things made them happy. And lots of small things made for a big happy life.

I wonder if the materialism of this and the last decades of the previous century are a symptom of the misunderstanding about how our minds work. Because we cannot find the happiness in ourselves, we try to buy it. If we accumulate enough things, have enough money, buy enough experiences, then we will be happier beings.

How much is enough?

Maybe that is the wrong question. If you measure “enough” in terms of things, of money: you may never have enough.

Money is not the enemy. Life is not the enemy. Often our minds are.

Are you in an unhappy relationship? First look at your own internal conversations. Do they focus on the small pleasures of your time together or the millions of things that go wrong: the misunderstandings, the cold shoulders and the disagreements? Obviously there are relationships that should be ended. But is yours a bad relationship because of your mindset or because it is really not the best place for either of you to be?

Bad job, cranky colleagues, stupid boss or crazy clients? Or is it you and your mind games?

If you are in a bad space, surrounded by fools, being laughed at by the gods: take time out and examine your mind: maybe the bad fools laughing are located there.

Remember: what is the good of a mind if you can’t change it?

Now: isn’t that a challenge worth living for?

The Quest for Respect

Funny how, nowadays, everyone demands respect. Governments, religious groupings, presidents, bosses, parents, children ….

We go to wars because we aren’t respected, we alienate friends and family, boycott church or mosque and school, argue with everyone who doesn’t show us the respect they should. Respect has become the goal.

Not long ago respect was something that was a byproduct. You did what you did, what you thought was right, or called for, or needed, and, if other people thought so too, they would respect you for what you stood for, or for your behaviours or your fairness. In short, you earned other’s respect, not because you wanted it, but because they considered you worthy. Respect was something other people bestowed on you.

Respect was a gift. Not a right.

But in the last twenty or thirty years everything became rights: and we DEMAND that other recognise our rights and do everything in their power to ensure that my rights are adhered to. In return I have to do nothing else, other than demand the fulfillment of my right. And if you don’t: I will argue and blame and fight and even kill.

Respect: Admiration, appreciation, deference, esteem, honour, regard, veneration…

Personally I think respect is overrated. Respect, as goal, is an unworthy goal. One should not aim for respect, work for admiration nor exert yourself for appreciation. One shouldn’t toil for deference, grind away for esteem, fight for honour or knock yourself out to gain other’s regard. And veneration: you just have to die for veneration.

The world must be full of bad people, because only the good ones die. Or so it sounds at funeral eulogies. Your funeral will be filled with veneration.

Respect may really not be worth the seven letters wasted on it.

Respectful, however, is worthy of every letter. Because respectful is something YOU do. Respectful is something you show to other people, other religions and other political affiliations. You can differ, you can comment and you can even counter the other’s point of view. But do it respectfully.

Not because the other opinion is better than yours, not because his effort is greater, or her attempt superior, but because you can.

Amazing how the least respectful often demands the most respect.

Amazing how the most rabid arguments are usually preceded with: “With respect, but… “And then respect never rears its head or even its shadow again in what follows.

It is not always easy to be respectful. In fact it can be downright difficult to live a life of respectfulness, because it shows in the small things. It shows in the promises you make and keep, the silences when you could have attacked, the words of appreciation when you could have remained quiet. It is about not passing judgment when you don’t know ALL the facts (and we seldom, if ever, do), not talking behind people’s backs, not sharing a revelation made in confidence. It is about saying “thank you” and “please” and “I am sorry” when you really are sorry. It is rarely about the big things, it is seldom about the limelight.

It is never about your own demand for respect.

Respect is a gift, respectfulness a life long quest.

Hating the Advertising

“Why do you hate advertising?” one of my friends asked. Oh, but I don’t. Hating and blaming advertising for our follies is like blaming TV or books for our shortcomings, or violence. Advertising, like movies and novels, like the evening news and newspapers are, if anything, just a mirror of our society as it is now.

Maybe the news focuses mainly on the bad (apparently good news doesn’t sell so well) and advertising focuses too much on the future. But in itself news, adverts, novels, TV programmes, Facebook ramblings and blogs (like this one) is neither good, nor bad. Neither fake, nor true.

If violent programs lead to violence, surely good programs should improve us all. Isn’t it funny that there were no increase in cannibalism after Robert Harris published his novels, nor did more of us took bites from our neighbours’ faces even after Hannibal Lector made it to the big screen?

These things are all external inputs and often only reflect society at a given stage.
Magazines looked differently 40 years ago, so did movies and books and adverts and the contents of news programmes.

Ad from 1967: You are too skinny, add some meat to your frame

Advertising’s only role is to entice us to use a product once. If the product is good enough, for enough consumers, then it will draw people back to it. Advertising only creates the expectation that you may like the product. If you don’t, don’t blame the advert, blame the product.

The “reality” of external stimuli is based on what we do with the message internally. Our response creates the reality. And therein lies the responsibility. This means that we should stop the “blame game”. Don’t blame others for your choices, your decisions and your reactions to what is happening around you.

It happens on many levels: On the one hand we love to blame government for not doing enough and on the other hand we hate them for creating a nanny state.

Your choices are influenced by a myriad of factors, of which current external inputs are but one. The choice is actually quite easy: you can spend your life blaming everything around you or spent it living every moment to it’s fullest. And yes, you may make mistakes, and sometimes you will be hard done by and now and again you may be the victim of someone else’s maliciousness: but that is only the advert.

Those negativities are just your blaming brain’s way of trying to entice you to become the victim, the perennially misunderstood, the everybody-hates-me-nobody-loves-me. You should decide if that brain advertisement compels you to a life of victimhood and “I-am-not-good-enough”.

Or you can decide to have a Katrina and the Waves life: Walking on Sunshine and it’s beginning to feel good! (Or, if you decided to live the blame game: your shoes will be melting – bloody Chinese manufacturers – and your feet will be burning.)

The curse of Expectation

This seems to be an age of expectation. We are forever awaiting something, hoping for better prospects. Large parts of our life revolve around these wishes, these hopes. We wait for rain and retirement. We hope that politicians will stick to their promises, that advertising will live up to mirages they create in print and on TV. We expect tomorrow to be better than today, next summer warmer.

By and large we live so much of our lives conjecturing, with bated breath, a magical future, and when the future becomes the “now” we are often disappointed. The advertising industry is in essence an industry of creating expectations. You should get this or that. This gizmo will improve your lifestyle and that product your life! You’re too thin, or too fat (although the former not often nowadays). If you can count to 50 you can have a seriously exciting (albeit somewhat sick) sex life!

Charles Dickens, nearly 155 years ago, in Great Expectations warned us: “Take nothing on its look, take everything on evidence. There is no better rule.” It is good to think about the future. It is wonderful to know your past. But life takes place NOW. The past you remember has already changed from the reality that it was and the future: oh the future is but a dream. Something that may never happen if a car runs you over, or death finds you in other, unexpected ways.

We are so filled with expectations that we don’t even realise it anymore. And life, unfortunately, seldom works to our rules. It seldom conforms to our needs and dreams and wants and expectations. And life doesn’t care if we are happy with the outcome or disappointed. Even advertising has its fine print. That wonder-cure skin product that will forever change your worthy life: It has been tested on 50 women of whom 30 showed improvement over two weeks. In laboratory conditions. Under a microscope. If you looked hard enough. That massive burger, my friend, the one that conquers your hunger, which oozes a taste-orgasm on the page: that was styled by food-stylists and cameramen. With lots of lights. And mirrors. And filters. And a disclaimer somewhere that says: “ The actual product may look slightly different to the photo.”

“The power of accurate observation,” George Bernard Shaw wrote, “is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.” Should we then lives of no hope, no yearning, no future? Cynical lives? Won’t it be better to have tempered expectations and surprising realities? Don’t expect the worst, but also not the world. R25, or R50, or a R100 can buy you only so much. Don’t expect to fork out R500 for a million dollar’s worth: It is not expectation; at best, it is gambling. Of course you have the right to be disappointed. You have the right to complain, to feel taken in, ripped off, hard done by.

But make sure it is the offer, the product, the meal that you got that created the disappointment, not your own impossible expectation. You also have the right to make a fool of yourself. Unfortunately this seems to be the right most people exercises most often.

And don’t expect “fairness”. What is “fair” for you may be “unfair” to me. “Life is not fair, get used to it,” intoned Bill Gates (how on earth he knows, one wonders). Fair is extremely subjective even if you surround yourself with cronies who share your subjectivity. Life is neither fair nor unfair: Life just is.

You make your life what it becomes: a life thwarted around every corner due to the unfairness of your fellow human beings, the starts, the gods or fate. A life of unfulfilled expectations becomes a life of apprehension. But a life full of everyday surprises, small miracles, happy beginnings and endings, good people and sublime destinations; that is an appreciative life. Because you don’t expect, you experience.

The Problem with Retirement…..

The problem with retirement is that you never get a day off. The wording on cards that often gets given to new retirees. And one laughs, shakes the head and look forward to it.

The problem with retirement is that the days can merge into a mirage of golf, lazing around, reading books, working in the garden, going on road trips with your new Harley (or BMW or whatever) … until one day you realise you are trapped in a labyrinth with no way out.

The problem with retirement is that it can become one long holiday from hell, with no chance to break the cycle. Oh, to do something else, to feel you add something back to society or just to your retain your own sanity!

The economically active population, especially after WW2, is a constant changing, evolving group. Those from the so-called “Silent Generation” born just before, during and just after the war had to rebuilt the world. They did so relatively quietly by the sweat of their brow and gave rise (pun intended?) to the Baby Boomers: the “World Changers”.

And both these generations are now retired (or very close to retiring).

If you are used to working, planning, inventing and changing the world around you, doing “nothing” for long periods of time is closer to a death sentence than a life dream. Except: for most of us, that is what we dreamt about. The vision of retirement became the “heaven” of the working masses, the annual holiday the “church service” that reminded us of one day when al this (hard work, time away from home, office politics, daily dreariness) comes to an end.

We planned up to retirement; we may have even planned for a retirement as we do for extended vacations. But we forgot: if your days look the same into forever: your future prospects become bleaker and bleaker. A quote from “The Incredibles” jumps to mind: “if everyone is special, no one is”. If every day is a holiday, soon you have no holidays.

It may have been easier if we, like the comic stereotype of old men in Mediterranean, could sit on a bench at the entrance to the town and watch the comings and goings of others. But we can’t: because we are so used to being busy, we are so used to belong, we are so used to make some kind of difference, that our minds won’t allow us. It is hard-wired into our brains, after years of work; we have to remain busy. Our brain’s wiring is set in certain pathways, forced into place over decades.

You are not stupid, lazy, worthless or any of those things your brain tells you subconsciously. You should not be a hostage to your memories and neural pathways, but the owner.

As owner you dictate the rules. You decide what do to and how and when. But you can only do it if you are aware of the challenge.

It doesn’t mean you have to do nothing for the rest of your life, just as it doesn’t mean you have to stay busy 24/7 for the rest of your life. Look at retirement as a new phase and an incredibly important one at that. How would you have excelled in your working life if you could have started off with the wisdom that you have at retirement.

Use that wisdom, use your experience and knowledge to forge a new you, a new direction. You may have had a “working life” of 30 or 40 years. With the advances of medical treatment and better nutrition you may have an additional 30 to 40 years ahead of you.

How will you spend it? Reminiscing about the past, a victim of and hostage to your memories or the owner of an incredible array of skills and wisdom to allow you to construct a future that you want to be part of?

Change the way you think, one thought at a time, and your world will change.

Superman at the Zebra Crossing

It is kind to assist old ladies at the zebra crossing. It can be fulfilling, really speak to your sense of community. To help those more frail than you, to make the automobile monsters wait while you and your charge walk across the road at a safe speed, can give you a purpose. It can make you feel wanted. Significant. Important even.

But if you were Superman before, if you saved planes in the sky, held buildings upright while the trapped escape, if you were used to battling aliens in the stratosphere: it may just not be enough. Kind, yes. Fulfilling, maybe. Wanted, yea. Significant? Important?

I got interesting feedback on last week’s blog, A Future of Memories. Someone said it was uplifting, someone else: sad. A good friend, a scholar and a gentleman weighed in with a reference to a (good) book Bob Buford’s “Half Time”.

Funny times these. In this age of personal achievement, of the quest to fulfillment, of be the best you can be, of if you can dream it, you can do it; in this age we forget that not every illness have a cure. We forget that reality sometimes interferes. We forget that planning only go so far; self-motivation only lasts so long. And self-help books (and blogs): there may be more of those than people on this planet…

Because a life of melancholy, apparently, is a life wasted.

In 1979 Neil Young sang the line: “It is better to burn out than to fade away”.* To some extent that became the Mantra of our times: burn bright to the end, rather than fizzle out. Die in glory, don’t wither with age. But most of us don’t die glorious deaths, we just get old. And infirm. And we forget things. And we whither away: shadows of our former self. We, once the centre of attention, are now the wallflowers in the shadows

Or so it seems.

Because we only remember our highs, our successes. We only remember ourselves burning brightly. If our memories are so selective, our future may not be what we would have selected.

Companies spend billions annually to “change manage” new directions, new ideas, or just the crazy thoughts of the latest CEO. They plan, strategise, theorise, prioritise and manage processes so complicated that it usually bamboozles everyone into thinking things have now changed. (More) Books get written and PhD’s completed on the back of these experiments: Look at us; this is how we did this!

But maybe the biggest change of all: “growing old”, never gets managed. There is no management team, no department of change, no discernible changeable culture to work with. Just this reality: whatever you do, things are changing and you have very little or no control over it. The older you get, the quicker these changes take place, in your body and your mind. You may still feel 24, but you just ain’t.

And you are just not important enough for anyone else really to care. Your spouse gives up on you and rolls their eyes when you rant and rage. Your children stay away. Your ex colleagues have their own worries and lifes. And your friends just die.

The only person that can walk away from this seemingly intractable reality is you. The only person that can change this future of memories, this “failure” of now, is you.

Don’t live in the past (or too far in the future). Live in the now. Cherish your memories, don’t idolise them. Be proud of your achievements but don’t dwell on them. And allow yourself the time for melancholy. But be kind to yourself. Be kind to who you are now.

Remember: you are because of where you were, who you were. And there is only one of precisely you.

And most of those who know you are extremely grateful about that, one way or the other.

* Neil Young: Hey, Hey, My My (Into the Black) from the album “Rust never sleeps”

A future of memories

His eyes were wet, melancholy played over his face. His voice quivering: “This is all I can do now, small things, close to inconsequential….”

One of the great things that inadvertently happened in my life, after retiring at the youthful age of fifty, is that I landed in an older community. But this is no ordinary community. It is filled with active older people. People who were highly successful in their prime, who scaled the heights of work and creative success.

Even today at ages of 70 and 80 and even older, they live lifestyles that many people can only dream about. Some travel the world, like swallows: three months here, six there, holidays in exotic locales. Others hike or cycle at levels most people half their age won’t be able to do. They can hold their own in any conversation, virtually on every topic under the sun. They rubbed shoulders with, or were in their own right, Captains of Industry, Creative Masters.

They were Masters of the Universe. People who impacted on their environment. People who changed the world they worked and played in. They are the epitome of a generation who made choices and followed them through.

I stand in awe of them on a regular basis. They are modest, happy in their own bodies. Self confident without the brashness of youth. The shining examples that are held up for the people who followed in their footsteps.

I often read about how much closer science is to extending the lifespan of human beings, on a regular basis, to 120 and beyond. Living forever is getting ever closer. Just two hundred years ago the median age of man was around 40 years. O yes, there was people who lived to 70 and a few who got to the 100 milestone. But by and large people were very old if they reached sixty, ancient when they got to seventy.

That changed over the last fifty years or so, most people, even sickly ones, are expected to live to 70 and beyond. Strides in medicine and treatment of an array of symptoms increased the quality of life for those lucky enough to have the money to live a “first world” life. And soon we may even life forever.

But seemingly our inner life hasn’t kept pace with our bodies. Although we are stronger, more physically and mentally fit, for a specific age, than ever. But somewhere in our future, the only things we have left are our memories of our grand past.

I look at my older friends: In awe of who they are and what they achieved.

I look at my older friends: Diminished by the melancholy of their memories.

It is not easy to become older. It is not easy to feel sidelined. It is not easy to feel that what you do doesn’t matter anymore. It is not easy to be the master of your household if once you were a Master of the Universe. After having been a Giant, it is not easy to be just another human being, albeit one with special memories.

When physical survival is not a problem, the continual urge for self-actualisation may be our biggest hurdle. What is the worth of a future if it only holds memories of a great past?

A New Normal

One often starts with a new venture: be it a business, a hobby or just an adventure, only to realise that it took your life over and changed virtually everything in it’s wake.

Sometimes change is necessary. Many of us, without even realizing it, quickly falls into the trap of just living every day in the same old way. Today is like yesterday and tomorrow will be very much the same. And then one day you stand back and think: is there all there is to life?

Change is therefore good… if it is a choice. If you are in survival mode and live a in a hand to mouth environment where subsistence only is the name of the game, you may not have the opportunity to effect any meaningful change. If you struggle to survive on the most basic level, change may not even be a consideration. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs may be a cliché, but if you are not busy with “self-actualisation”, change may not be an option with any appeal. Change in this scenario may just be another fight, another obstacle to survival.

Change. In today’s consuming society it becomes a mantra of action. If you don’t change quickly enough, you will die. A modern interpretation of “the quick and the dead” of the St. James Bible.

Change for change sake only, is often counterproductive. Big companies use change as a “revitaliser” to move the business forward. This often fails, as the reason for change or the mode of change is so trivial that it gets ignored or easily assimilated into the old rituals or old ways of doing business.

The life after change often looks like the life before change. But sometimes the better parts of the past are being discarded during this small transition to the new.  This leaves a new world that is somewhat worse than the past. Often this is a world filled with mistrust and yes men. And the funny thing is that the change agents seldom realise this. They seldom see that their brooking of no opposition plants the seed for future failure. If you don’t allow voices to ring out during change, the change may take place, but it will never be completed….until you are gone.

Sometimes change can be profound. Change can take you and your life on an unexpected journey, it can open new vistas, herald a new beginning. Change can make a new you. Change can create a New Normal. It can fashion a new equilibrium at a higher plane of existence than you ever thought possible.

Even then you should be wary of chucking out all that was old. Good things can easily be discarded with bad things. Great ideas can be lost, brilliant dreams can fade in the spotlight of this New Normal.

I saw a bit of this in action over the last few months. I started (with my wife and a good friend) a Farm-Bistro on a whim. Soon it took on a life of it’s own. And it is good. We made new friends, got good response, built up a loyal clientele. We prepare food that we like, serve it in good portions. Our house is filled with people and laughter, good wine and compliments. This change is good!

But it also took away some of the very things I hold dear: time to read a book; time to write a blog post. Friends that used to pop in for a cup of coffee and some homemade cake stopped coming (we are now a business after-all, even if only in their minds), time to tend my roses, just sit around with my wife, to regularly go on Friday hikes in the mountains. These longings are the voices I should listen to in this New Normal.

Because if I don’t pay attention to all that used to be important, my New Normal will just become another straitjacket, another cell of forgotten dreams and failed expectations.

Change is good, if it is a choice. But ensure that you keep the great and the brilliant of the past …. and an open mind.