“Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.” Those are the words of David Bowie. A man who as he grew older, just became cooler. This is one of my favourite quotes and I will explain why.
Firstly, notice that David Bowie states that it is a process whereby you become the person you always should have been. This implies that as you grow up, you find more of yourself and become more of your true self. Because, the facts are that when we are young, we are pretty much controlled by everyone. Our teachers, pastors, and parents, control every aspect of our lives. They want to fit us into certain boxes and it is only when you grow up you realise that the life you’ve been living has never been your own.
The other day I was sitting by myself thinking. Thinking about my life and wondering why I am here. I am a firm believer that your choices will dictate the direction of your life and therefore, right now is not where I actually want to be in life. I had grander plans and I hate, I strongly hate the notion that “things take time”. Elon Musk said it perfectly when he said if you tell yourself you will complete a task in 6 months, you’ll complete it in 6 months. If you tell yourself you’ll complete a task in 5 years then you’ll complete it in 5 years. Therefore at the age of 27, I had pictured myself to be further in life. Anyway, back to the thought. As I was contemplating my life, I wondered why I am here. What are the choices that have led here? Then it struck me.
It struck me with something rather odd. My phone rang. As it rang, I held my phone in my hand and looked at the screen. I do not like phone calls but why is it that when my phone rings, one would leap and rush to get it? Phone calls are one of these things that are never at your convenience. When someone calls you, they not calling at your convenience. They are calling at their own and they are calling to ask for a favour or something of this particular nature. Even if someone calls to “catch up”, it’s primarily to spy on your life. It’s really not that the person is concerned about your wellbeing. I really do not like phone calls and yet, at this moment, I was bending to my phone. Why?
Simply because the influences around me made the phone call so important. My dad would throw a fit if you’d never answer your phone. As young entrepreneurs, we told this narrative that it’s important to have your phone close to you in case you get an important call. As you grow older and learn more, we learn that really successful people do not even have phones. Someone like Christopher Nolan is an example. CEOs of Fortune 500 companies limit themselves to an hour or 2 to their cell phones or emails. And this is not limited to Fortune 500 company CEOs. I have been around really successful SMME owners and they too limit their phone usage to the bare minimum hours in a day. This is a basic example but it illustrates how external influences, even as something mundane and rather routine as habits around how we use a cell phone, shape our habits.
The reason I touch on habits is quite crucial. Think about the habit of Sundays being the day for seven colours. Who initiated this tradition? That on a Sunday, a black family can go all out with their food? Think of the habit of going to church on Sunday mornings. If the Pope or some powerful authority were to decide that Church be held on a Monday morning, the church will lose a lot of followers. Not only because it will clash with work times, but because it will be clashing with habits established over generations.
Talking about the church, this is one area of my life where I realised that church was something instilled in me. It was never my own choice to go to church. And in growing up, one realises how the systematic institution of the church is not designed for people like me. Truth be told, there is nothing wrong with the church. There are people who are ready to die for their church leaders. There are people whoo church offers them solace and clarity to how life should be lived. To each his own. In my own journey, the church lost its significance. For some of us, “it’s in the Bible” is not a justifiable answer.
As we grow older, it is wise that we take the time to take inventory of ourselves. How much of our lives is our own and how much of our life is designed to please others? To a great degree, we will always be some type of way around certain people. The way you act around your brother or sister is not the same way you act around your friends. To a great degree, there is nothing wrong with this. You can't address someone like your brother or sister in the same way you would address your friends. It is a matter of respect for authority. True, in some instances, this is not always the case as I have friends who are so close with their siblings, you’d mistake their brother or sister as their friend. But the principle is pretty much the same in the sense that we do behave in a certain way around certain people. The question is, how far do you go to please these people or to be accepted by them?
I have never been a person to kiss up to anyone. Lucky for me, I had friends who were considered to be rebels. They would correct me the moment I was caught slipping. I love my friends for that. For the longest time, I secretly envied my friends because, from a young age, they lived life the way they wanted to. They were and still are fearless. They would go yo soccer practice and come back late at night. Fearless. They would stand to the teacher who would want to punish over nothing. Fearless. They would approach the girls they liked, and these girls were usually the hottest at school. Fearless. By association, I was part of this clique of the cool kids at school. This association saw me escape the clutches of being bullied, especially when my brother left high school. This association allowed to be in the courts of the socially accepted. By association, I never experienced the typical traumas experienced by the ‘nerd’ for I was a nerd indeed.
But it was by association. My life was still routine and what you would accept from a ‘nerd’. It was only when I changed high school that the reality hit me that I have to be my own man. That I no longer have my friends with me. I am alone and have started afresh. But the power of influence, the influences that my friends had on me stayed. I applied them and once again, I managed to worm out of being bullied. And this new school was pretty rough. Like it was gangs everywhere, drug lords and sketchy taxi drivers date the hottest girls at school rough. The first girlfriend I had at that school told me that she actually had a man who was an abusive prick who would kill me if he knew of my existence. I dumped her immediately fearing for my life.
It was at this school that the seeds of my independence were sowed. It was at this school that I realised people told me not to date not because they cared for me, but because they were scarred by their own heartbreaks. It was at this school I realised that real money is made through having a business and not slaving for a 9 – 5. When I went to university, I will never forget this one oke. This man drove a Maserati and would pick up the hottest girls in King Edward Street, Bloemfontein. As a man, slowly exiting puberty, I admired him. I asked around and they said that the man was an independent accountant who runs his own firm. He was 36 at the time. The girls we found attractive were being picked up by these guys driving BMW M3s and Golf GTIs.
Understand that I am from an area where the cool kid drove a Toyota Corrola with BBS rims. These kids were driving their father’s or mother’s G-wagons and C63s. The young men were driving BMW 335is and Audi RS3s they owned. I had a friend who was associated with some of these young guys. Whenever I sat with them and heard their conversations, money was always in the discussion. This was new to me because where I’m from, money is the root of evil. Money is this vice only corrupt politicians have. We should be happy with the little you have. It was in the church prayers I heard that the Lord should bless me with the little possible for I don’t deserve His mercy and grace. One prayer went further to acknowledge having more bills than assets. Yet these young men, none over 40 and none a political affiliate, were stressing the importance of making money by any means necessary. And they already living life like they were in Heaven.
It is these moments that laid the seeds for the forest that’s emerging in my life right now. Money is important and is imperative one understands this. Trying dating a girl with an empty pocket and watch your pride erode away as a man. Money is one of those areas in our lives where most of us have no idea how to handle it. Simply because the habits of those around us about money are not sound. People will say things like ‘you love money’ like it’s a sin. With the upbringing that money is the root of evil, of course to you it is a sin. Some will rephrase it correctly and say that the love of money is the root of evil that money in itself is not a problem. But if you do not love money, if you do not enjoy the happiness it brings to you, then you can never fully comprehend the power of money and its importance. Research has shown over and over again that having money does bring happiness. How can you be happy if you haven’t paid your rent? More accurately, can you be happy if you know you have to pay the rent but do not have the income to do so? Have you seen the despair in the eyes of those people who are head and shoulders deep in debt? The fallacy money doesn’t buy happiness was fabricated after the Great Depression. While the masses made do with government rations, the ones on top, with the money, continued to enjoy 5-course meals.
I am one of those who love money because money frees one from the clutches of the world’s ails. Again I say, trying dating a girl with an empty pocket. Remember, a man’s handsomeness is directly proportional to the depth of his pocket. Money is how a man can provide in today’s world. Research was conducted on a group of monkeys about societal hierarchy. One male monkey was given more resources than the other monkeys. The female monkeys all went to this one monkey with the most resources and did not spend time with the monkeys with the least resources. Don’t we see this with slay queens at clubs? They go to the guy popping bottles and not you with your friends sharing a bottle. The hottest girls on campus will date the campus SRC president or the rugby captain and not you Mr. Nobody. No girl will settle for a guy with nothing. Some girls will see potential in a guy and thus, settle with the guy only if the guy will see the potential himself. As Nicki Minaj once said, there’s no man who’s broke and handsome.
Research has shown that those who live in poverty are the ones that experience heart diseases, they are the ones whose life expectancy is reduced and who experience the greatest deal of the worst crimes. Money is a blanket that protects from the hell of this world. Therefore, by not loving money, you agree that the poverty of this world is justifiable and indeed you should be happy ‘with the little’ you have.
The reason I have gone the extra length talking about money is because money is that area where you only realise when you are old that you have no idea how it works. We grow up seeing how parents use money and think that’s the way money should be used. We see them open clothing accounts and the likes and believe that indeed that is how money should be used. When the influences change and one discovers more of life, we quickly see that our parents actually have no understanding of money and how it works. Their influences, unchecked, fall on us. And honestly, most of our parents' financial literacy is not on point and we wonder why some of our siblings always seem to suffer financially.
The woke would call it generational curses. But the rich will tell you that the sins of the father should not be passed down to the son. The rich, from an early age, already teach their children to be independent. I know Indians who at the age 19, their parents blessed them with their own businesses. I know Zulus who at the age 19, their parents blessed them with enough cattle for them to be independent. Some of us did not receive that pleasure. That pleasure of youthful freedom.
We were locked into what’s expected of you. It was expected that a ‘math genius' was to enter engineering. At the time I loved music and actually wanted to produce music. The irony being music and math are the closest of scientific relatives. The list will never end of the various situations in one’s life where the choices and decisions were imposed on me and they were not my own. It is only now that one has the confidence and belief in himself not to care what people will think about the decisions I make. It is still sickening that my parents want me to get a job when for the last 7 years I’ve preached I want to be an entrepreneur. One would reason and say that, well one understands. There aren’t that many entrepreneurs in my life so entrepreneurial success is a mythical wonder. This "understanding" placates you from living your life.
Taking ownership of your life requires being selfish about it. The rich do not answer their phones. They do not create the understanding that ‘people will try and reach them’ and compromise. Jeff Bezos once said that he deals with meetings before 10 am. After that, he takes no meetings. He does not carry an understanding that some people are busy during that time and extend his hours for meetings. These “understandings” we have around influences around our life make us vulnerable to weaknesses. In conversation, people discuss the most hideous crimes and we “understand” because that’s the way of the world. Yet the really successful people actively block out anything that’s negative. Warren Buffet once said that he only reads the business section of the newspaper because the rest of it is garbage. Christ, without flinching, reprimanded Peter when he tried to talk Him out of going to the cross. The cross was Christ’s purpose and He knew this. He did not “understand” that Peter is trying to encourage Him to think “positive”. Are we that selfish about our own goals? Or do we continue to “understand” and limit the potential resting in us to really be alive?
If you were given the opportunity to start afresh, who would you be? If you were given the opportunity to live in a new town where no one knows you, would you still be the person you are today? Are you living your life according to the tune of your own heartbeat or are you living life to the tune of the dead dreams or broken hearts of family and friends? Who you are, is it really you or a masquerade you've created to be accepted by those around you? Are you living life own terms or are you living life to the terms set for you? To answer these questions, take inventory of the simple things in your life. Once you have done so, ask the Five Whys.
Here’s a practical example that explains my love for money:
Why do I love money?
Money is the only tool to free you from the clutches of poverty and the hell of it.
Why do I think money can free me from poverty?
Poverty is the absence of money. Where there is money, there is less crime because money can afford the best security. There are fewer illnesses because money can afford the best food and the best medical aid.
Why do I sometimes feel bad about loving money?
Because I was raised to believe that money is the root of all evil. I was raised to believe that money is for greedy people who are only looking after themselves and no one less. I was raised to believe that loving money is a sin and that one should be happy with the little that he has (thinking about this makes me so angry because it is absolute nonsense).
Why is it hard to change your belief?
Because the influences around me still have the belief that money is evil. Therefore, it is a mission to mentally fight against these influences on a daily basis in order to embrace my love for money.
Why do you think it is important to change your belief around money?
The mind only achieves what it believes, therefore for me to become a millionaire and enjoy the freedoms of money, I must love money and not believe that money is a sin.
The beauty of this technique is that it aims to reach the root of whatever you are questioning. So instead of dealing with problems that are on the surface, this questioning technique drives deep to the root. This way, you will be better equipped to deal with the issue before planting new seeds into your mind.
In the famous song, “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”, there are lyrics that go:
“Help me to decide
Help me make the most of freedom, and of pleasure,
Nothing ever lasts forever”
How are you making the most of your freedom and of your pleasure? Is the life you live bringing you that freedom and those pleasures of life you desire? Freedoms such as traveling to wherever you want whenever you want? Pleasures like eating whatever you want whenever you want? Is the life you living truly your own or are you wearing a mask that has been created for you? Created by your church? Your work? Your social image and what people expect of you? Are you alive or are you just a breathing corpse dancing to the whims of others?
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