In Life, Experience is King, May 3, 2020
The title of this post could lead me in many directions. I read this recently, "The higher number of super-rich people in the world are people who flunked school. Of course, they all had some form of schooling but they knew when to quit school." The quotation comes from a writer who wants his readers to realize that higher learning does not necessarily lead one into 'wealthy circles.' The importance of wealth is not germane. In life, experience is king.
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| This gentleman is an artist painter from Tanzania |
So here I am at 78 years with face paint (see below) applied by local Zulu face painters who were invited to come on board the Azamara Quest January 2020. I digress. This photo is only meant to introduce this post on this website; it has nothing to do with my quotation in the first paragraph.
During my teenage years 1954 - 1960 every one of our male friends and relatives of similar vintage would not advance to University or College let alone graduate -- save one, my brother Richard. All of us left school to get a job. In my case the older generation (parents, teachers, and several others) criticized my decision. My father's latter advice was to be a tradesman now that I had decided to stunt my academic growth. "At least with a trade you'll have something worthwhile," he said. He didn't add that one could build a business on the knowledge and experience this function might yield on my sixteenth year in 1957.
The gifted Historian Yuval Noah Harari in 2020 when discussing the torrent of information available to our young people wrote, "The best advice I can give a 15-year-old is: don’t rely on the adults too much. Most of them mean well, but they just don’t understand the world." I have some difficulty with his assertion if he would apply it to youngsters who wished to work and discontinue formal education. No one would challenge the notion that the world is changing in ways that will have its share of surprises. However, much of the older wisdom is still relevant for today's guidance.
I am fortunate to have two sisters who have demonstrated quality of thought and action in their lives, So I asked the younger if she had any views on this subject. We have nicknames; hers is Weed and mine is McPope. Here's what Weed had to say, "Seniors will say you can do anything you put your mind to. They will also say choose your friends whose personality is complimentary to yours. They will tell you to just say no on countless occasions and that when things get tough ask for help because it's a sign of strength; they may even tell you to trust your gut, meaning that your intuition is strong and it will lead you to do the thing that's right for you." But perhaps most importantly they will tell you that there will always be a "Dimwit spouting stupid remarks that you should simply ignore." It appears that the Professor, the Weed and the McPope are flying in formation on this matter.
Stating the obvious: that manufacturers of horse drawn carriages and ice-box refrigerators are not employing people today. For tomorrow and beyond, some products and services used today will no longer be part of our GDP. We could identify some of these if we put our minds to it.
The world renowned investor Warren Buffett spoke at Berkshire Hathaway AGM yesterday. He's 89 years old and still going strong. He went beyond high school and took a course in accounting before he went to work. He makes statements like, 'Smartness does not necessarily equate to wisdom,' and his mentor Ben Graham. said, 'everyday I'd like to do something creative and then something generous and then something foolish,' 'IQ does not equate to rationality.' Graham wrote the book The Intelligent Investor in the late 1940s and Buffett has declared him to be the smartest person he ever met. Buffet himself was born at the beginning of the Great Depression when his father lost his job selling stock for a bank. That bank closed its doors permanently. I often think about my own father in 1929 at nineteen years of age and looking for work that didn't exist. The challenge that faced him and millions of others was something the next two generations would never experience. When Buffett was 39 WW11 was over, business was booming and he looked to investing meagre amounts of his own money with the help of Ben Graham when the Dow Jones was 903; when my father was 39 the Dow Jones was 200 and he was the father of five kids. When I was 39 the Dow Jones was 891, I had a trade, an incredible business partner in Duncan McGregor, two smart kids to educate and a booming business to feed and nurture. The vast majority of North American citizens, and our newly minted immigrants from the four corners of the earth, revelled in 40 years of the very best of times the world has ever seen. Sure we had a few ups and downs that looked serious but we survived and flourished until a Germ that knows no borders identified as (Coronavirus) Covid-19 spread like wildfire throughout our planet. The Dow stalled at 29,200 on February 12, 2020 and dropped 30% to 20,304 by March 18, 2020. Our leaders around the world closed everything except essential services such as food supply, essential transportation, first responders for emergencies and medical care. These are very difficult times with unemployment skyrocketing due to the lockdown and isolation necessary to curtail the spread of this Pandemic. As of this writing 3,562,259 people have been infected worldwide, 1,153,053 have recovered, and 248,093 have died. No one knows when this Germ will be eradicated; only a vaccine will do that, and the entire world is working on its invention.
Whose experience would you have preferred, my Father's or mine? If you said mine I wouldn't disagree.
On June 29, 2020 the death toll soon will be at 500,000 world wide. With confirmed cases at 10,014,377 with recovered cases at 3,976,809 and deaths at exactly 498,693. Has the world ever known a worst time? Absolutely. Is this an inexorable event? Certainly not. Time and the work of scientific research will create the vaccine to cure and prevent re-occurrence with thoughtful political leaders guiding safe measures and protocols for as long as needed. This has been an experience that most of us will live through and learn from in order to improve life on earth, just like it always has.
I am fortunate to have two sisters who have demonstrated quality of thought and action in their lives, So I asked the younger if she had any views on this subject. We have nicknames; hers is Weed and mine is McPope. Here's what Weed had to say, "Seniors will say you can do anything you put your mind to. They will also say choose your friends whose personality is complimentary to yours. They will tell you to just say no on countless occasions and that when things get tough ask for help because it's a sign of strength; they may even tell you to trust your gut, meaning that your intuition is strong and it will lead you to do the thing that's right for you." But perhaps most importantly they will tell you that there will always be a "Dimwit spouting stupid remarks that you should simply ignore." It appears that the Professor, the Weed and the McPope are flying in formation on this matter.
Stating the obvious: that manufacturers of horse drawn carriages and ice-box refrigerators are not employing people today. For tomorrow and beyond, some products and services used today will no longer be part of our GDP. We could identify some of these if we put our minds to it.
The world renowned investor Warren Buffett spoke at Berkshire Hathaway AGM yesterday. He's 89 years old and still going strong. He went beyond high school and took a course in accounting before he went to work. He makes statements like, 'Smartness does not necessarily equate to wisdom,' and his mentor Ben Graham. said, 'everyday I'd like to do something creative and then something generous and then something foolish,' 'IQ does not equate to rationality.' Graham wrote the book The Intelligent Investor in the late 1940s and Buffett has declared him to be the smartest person he ever met. Buffet himself was born at the beginning of the Great Depression when his father lost his job selling stock for a bank. That bank closed its doors permanently. I often think about my own father in 1929 at nineteen years of age and looking for work that didn't exist. The challenge that faced him and millions of others was something the next two generations would never experience. When Buffett was 39 WW11 was over, business was booming and he looked to investing meagre amounts of his own money with the help of Ben Graham when the Dow Jones was 903; when my father was 39 the Dow Jones was 200 and he was the father of five kids. When I was 39 the Dow Jones was 891, I had a trade, an incredible business partner in Duncan McGregor, two smart kids to educate and a booming business to feed and nurture. The vast majority of North American citizens, and our newly minted immigrants from the four corners of the earth, revelled in 40 years of the very best of times the world has ever seen. Sure we had a few ups and downs that looked serious but we survived and flourished until a Germ that knows no borders identified as (Coronavirus) Covid-19 spread like wildfire throughout our planet. The Dow stalled at 29,200 on February 12, 2020 and dropped 30% to 20,304 by March 18, 2020. Our leaders around the world closed everything except essential services such as food supply, essential transportation, first responders for emergencies and medical care. These are very difficult times with unemployment skyrocketing due to the lockdown and isolation necessary to curtail the spread of this Pandemic. As of this writing 3,562,259 people have been infected worldwide, 1,153,053 have recovered, and 248,093 have died. No one knows when this Germ will be eradicated; only a vaccine will do that, and the entire world is working on its invention.
Whose experience would you have preferred, my Father's or mine? If you said mine I wouldn't disagree.
On June 29, 2020 the death toll soon will be at 500,000 world wide. With confirmed cases at 10,014,377 with recovered cases at 3,976,809 and deaths at exactly 498,693. Has the world ever known a worst time? Absolutely. Is this an inexorable event? Certainly not. Time and the work of scientific research will create the vaccine to cure and prevent re-occurrence with thoughtful political leaders guiding safe measures and protocols for as long as needed. This has been an experience that most of us will live through and learn from in order to improve life on earth, just like it always has.
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| The Zulu face painter artistry and me |
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| Also a painter's work in South Africa January 2020 |
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