Tag: adult life

Better than no plan

MONDAY, 16 JANUARY 2023

If a sensation of happiness is not a regular experience in your daily existence, or if a net positive consciousness is not something that characterises your life, some people might come to the conclusion that their daily existence is not worth the effort and the occasional hardship.

If your daily existence is not worth the effort and the occasional hardship, some people would argue that you might as well end your own life. Unless – your life-ending act will do too much harm to people you care about. In such a case, you simply must make the effort to survive and endure the occasional hardship.

If you are religious, you may have other reasons to continue with your life – even if you don’t think it’s worth it. You may believe that it is not your right to end your own life, or that the god you believe in has a plan for your life. That you simply must endure the hardship and the effort until the plan is revealed, or until the time comes for you to do what you were put on earth to do, so to speak.

Sounds bleak (especially for a first piece of text of the year), but this was also the idea behind a piece from a number of years ago: Life is sometimes hard and difficult. Experiencing happiness sometimes balances the hardships and struggles of daily existence. It’s also easy enough to end your own life. If, however, you don’t want to cause more hardship and misery for your loved ones, do what you can to make your life worthwhile. In this way, you may also facilitate your loved ones’ (and even strangers’) efforts to make their lives worthwhile, so that they don’t end their lives making your life more miserable.

In other words: I make myself happy so that my life is worth living, and in doing so I help you to be happy so that your life is also worth living.

Doesn’t always work, but it’s better than going through life with no plan at all.

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Everyone can do better

MONDAY, 19 DECEMBER 2022

Everyone has the ability to earn at least one million US dollars per year in ethical and legal ways. This is even more true if you live in a developed, industrialised country and have at least a high school diploma.

If you’re not making at least one million dollars a year ethically and legally, you’re not working hard or smart enough.

Of course, everyone has excuses, but the fact of the matter is, for every excuse you make, someone can stand up from the crowd and say that they were in a similar situation as you – or even worse, with fewer resources at their disposal – and they were able to achieve that type of income. (And, by the way, this wasn’t by winning the lottery either; we’re talking regular annual income.)

If, like most people, you don’t earn at least one million US dollars a year, you have no legs to stand on to criticise someone else who doesn’t either. Just because you make double, or triple, or ten times more money than your neighbour, or your brother, or your cousin, doesn’t mean you have license to criticise them for their failure to make more money. You yourself, after all, fail every year in earning the income that you are capable of!

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Set yourself up for opportunity and luck – even if you never become a superstar

WEDNESDAY, 5 JANUARY 2022

To build on a thought from last week or so: If you look at most people in their middle years or later, it’s clear that they never became superstars. They may be “superstars” to their families, but very few people end up with exceptional talents and achievements in any area, much less in more than one area – such as sports and art, or engineering and cooking.

The other part of the thought is that even people who achieve superstar status sometimes do more harm than good. Despite all their achievements and prizes and status.

So even though you never achieved superstar status, never won any prizes for your work, never achieved much in any field, but it can also be said that you did little harm to other people, to animals, and to the environment, I think it’s entirely appropriate to say that you can hold your head high – you’ve done well.

MONDAY, 24 JANUARY 2022

Point 1. As already mentioned, very few people become superstars. Only a select group of people achieve more than one or two of the things they once set out to do or hoped to achieve.

Point 2. One person criticises another for his unimpressive income and low contribution to a common cause. Asks the latter: “Are you making as much money as you possibly can? Are you doing everything in your power to get more done? Why don’t you make more money? Too busy enjoying life? Can’t figure out how? Tried but failed? Tried but didn’t try hard enough?”

Point 3. Few people create income opportunities out of thin air. Most people accept opportunities offered to them, and then they work hard to maintain these sources of income. But did they create the opportunity for themselves? No.

Point 4. What does happen is that people prepare to profit from existing opportunities by training in a certain field and by gaining certain knowledge.

* * *

I. Identify a good opportunity – for you. People’s needs and desires are all opportunities.

II. Get trained or gain experience in a particular opportunity field. Then set yourself up to profit from existing opportunities. (Training doesn’t happen overnight. If you’re twenty, you have the option to get trained for several things. If you’re fifty, you can still get trained or develop skills yourself, but you’re more likely to look at what you’re already trained for, or at what you’re already experienced in.)

III. I initially thought that 99% of all the money I made in my life came from opportunities that were presented to me – from people asking me if I was interested in a position in a gift shop when I was a student to people in Taiwan walking up to me or calling me at home or knocking on my door and asking me if I had time for another English class. Then about a minute ago I realised: I was set up for the opportunities, in the case of the latter examples, by coming to Taiwan and being contactable.

Another thing: Most people don’t hustle on a street corner for money. Strangely enough, the only people who do this, who make cold calls and ask people for money, are beggars – who are seen as being on the lowest rung of the economic hierarchy. I wanted to say that street vendors hustle too, but they also set themselves up for opportunity: people walking past them who happen to want, or need what they are selling – “I’m hungry, and here’s a guy selling hot dogs”.

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More notes on the adult life

MONDAY, 14 JUNE 2021

I wrote a piece in 2015 about the trifecta of adult life: married, two children, financial independence. I want to add two things:

1. Legacy – it matters what you leave behind. The film magnate, Harvey Weinstein, was married, had at least two children, and was very wealthy. But he was a scumbag who forced women to have sex with him – or confronted them with extremely difficult choices. This, not his marriage or his children or his money or dozens of movies, is his legacy.

2. Not a requirement, but it can make up for the absence of another item: Did you lead an interesting life? Did you visit interesting places? Did you meet people from different cultures and backgrounds? Did you take risks, even after you failed?

FRIDAY, 18 JUNE 2021

One man married in his late twenties, had three children, had a happy marriage, ran his own business, and enjoyed financial success – annual vacations, including trips abroad, with the whole family, and later with his grandchildren. At 68 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he died after two years of unsuccessful treatment.

Another man married in his late thirties. Their marriage is also happy but has produced no children. He invests time and money in various endeavours, but financial independence has eluded him thus far. Despite the fact that there is never money for extravagance, he and his wife live comfortably. At 68, he is still healthy, except for some arthritis in his knees, and in his one hand.

Now, the million-dollar question: Who’s the winner?

Or should both be grateful for their blessings?

WEDNESDAY, 23 JUNE 2021

Working on my own projects is an expression of my faith in a better future. If I stop believing my own projects could give me a better future … I would have to find something else to put my faith in. This is what has driven me since 2006 … since 2003 … since 1997/8 … to become financially independent. I have spent more time and energy on this than on anything else in my adult life.

That might be why I could never accept a position where I would have seen myself as just a cog in the machine. What would have driven me forward? That I could pay rent at the end of the month and buy groceries? That’s just survival! To work on something that can give me financial independence – financial independence! – is to have faith. It is to be pushed forward with a vision for the future.

Am I rather a poor believer – or a believer who can pay rent and buy groceries, and have some savings in the bank – than a comfortable cog in the machine who doesn’t believe my life is ever going to get much better?

Belief in something I cannot see is woven into my psyche. Working on something that can improve my life is a ritual that confirms my faith.

Plus, it increases the likelihood of success.

[Must add that there are certainly people who are “just cogs in the machine”, and if they don’t do it, someone else will, but after work and on weekends they also work on their own projects, which they also hope will give them a better future. I sometimes tend to think in black and white.]

MONDAY, 28 JUNE 2021

I believe in something.

When I work on what I believe in, I prove that my faith is genuine.

When I work on it, I am actively realising what I believe in.

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Advice about staying or coming back

Background to the texts “Advice about staying or coming back,” “Slave to the word” and “About friends and other personal reasons”: A good friend of mine who was also living in Kaohsiung at the time mentioned via email during her vacation in Cape Town that she felt like staying in South Africa. I suspected that this was only emotion speaking, but I nevertheless took the opportunity to say certain things.

——————–

TUESDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 2004

My friend

[…]

You know my feelings on the subject of going home. I believe, and have believed it ever since my second year in this country, that the lifestyle we lead here makes it easy for us to deceive ourselves. We buy coffee mugs and lounge sets, and teaspoons and motorcycles; we paint our walls in strange colours, and we start relationships with people who can’t even find Stellenbosch or Pretoria on a map.

We do all these things in part because it’s natural, and partly to compensate ourselves for what we don’t have here: a community of loved ones. Some of us do find love here, and in such cases, things work out. But many of us know that the people who have always mattered most to us are far away. Too far.

Time goes on. We constantly formulate new plans, and we talk about buying a house, and about better socio-economic situations when we finally get so far to shift our teaspoons and paintbrushes to the Republic of Our Birth. Meanwhile, our lives go on, and we get older. On the other side of the planet our loved ones’ lives also continue, and they also get older. We become aware of this every time we go home for a few weeks, to among other reasons blow our hard-earned cash, in ways that would tell everyone who wanted to know that we are doing well in the foreign land.

Is it bad to go abroad? No. Sometimes we need to get away from people and environments that are important to us. Some of us do it because we have “issues”. Others do it because they are bored. There are also those who don’t do it because they necessarily want to but because the socio-economic prospects in their own country are such that they simply have to consider alternatives. Some of us do it for all these reasons, and a few others.

Each of us must, after the lapse of a few months or a few years, decide where our priorities lie. We have to decide whether this temporary arrangement will become permanent, and whether we’re willing to pay the price for it. Or we get to the point where we realise that, despite our personal issues, despite our view of a so-called conventional life, and despite the harsh social reality that will welcome us together with the customs officer back into our own country, we have no choice but to return because we are no longer willing to pay the price for the benefits of a life in whatever other country we have spent a few years.

You must decide where you stand with this issue. Maybe you choose to send an empty seat on that plane back to Taiwan. Maybe you decide to come back, but only for a few months. Or maybe you come back to fulfil your initial plan of another two years. Everything, as you well know, has a price.

As your friend, I repeat my earlier comments: I will miss your company, but if you decide not to come back, I will wish you luck.

[…]

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