What I learnt today #9

Thursday 18 October 2012

Let me begin by saying this: I did not win the lottery.

Life has a funny way of correcting your behaviours. After becoming drunk with thoughts of wealth yesterday, I rose to the realisation that I am just another poor sod who has to toil for a meagre salary. And toil I did. Thanks life, you brought me back to earth.

Two site meetings, in North and South Trinidad respectively, broken up by a couple hours in between at the office pretty much had me beat by the time I got home. I’d say that I did pretty OK considering I woke up not wanting to even leave my bed.  

Shortly after my arrival at home, and my ritual of stripping down to my undies to relax, my phone chimed. It was a friend asking if I wanted to do anything later. Now, usually when I’m home and down to such a small amount of clothes, it would take fairly extreme circumstances for me to leave the house. And as far as I could tell, my house was not in an advanced stage of combustion at that exact moment. But on this occasion I decided to go against my usual action and spend some time with a friend since we haven’t seen each other for quite a while.

We caught up with each other’s life’s events and spoke about our future plans.

He relayed a story of a man who had abandoned his wife and family in pursuit of another woman. He eventually squandered his fortune, leaving nothing for the family he left behind. He had died some years after, and to this day his family are not sure under what circumstances he passed away, or where he is buried.

I thought to myself: “His friends have let him down”. I know that there are many things I don’t know about the story, but it made me think. If my friends saw me going down a path of self destruction, would they be strong enough to stop me? I understand fully that you can talk to someone ad infinitum and they will do as they choose, but when words do not work, how far would you go to save someone? If having learnt of a real friend’s demise, not only in terms of life or death, but moral and emotional destruction, would you feel satisfied knowing the furthest you went is forcefully speaking to them?

I would like to think that my friends would do what it takes to set me straight if I demonstrate that I am no longer of sound mind and have fallen under the influence of personified devastation.

How much can we actually do to change the minds of others?

Have you ever been witness to someone destroying themselves?

At what point must you let go without yourself being pulled down into the abyss?

My day today and time with friends tonight has taught me the following:

• When waking up, the faster I focus on getting off to a productive day the better. No use in wishing for more sleep, or contemplating going to the beach if you’re just going to go to work anyway. Either wake up, set your mindset for work and get on with it or go to the beach. No use in playing that wicked mind game.

• Even though I am not yet a wealthy man, I have a solid foundation upon which I can enjoy my future wealth, i.e. trustworthy network of friends and family.

With no winner yesterday, the lotto rolled over to $14M. Yes I bought multiple tickets today.