First of all, growing up in the 1950s I watched all sorts of people self destruct through overwork between the ages of 18 and 40 or 50. IN fact so many people I knew died before 50 that 50 seemed like 70 to me in the 1950s. Most people it seemed were gone by 50 UNLESS they had their health and finances in order. The rest tended to die pretty young.
Because I'm not stupid and my father was valedictorian of his senior high school class, watching everyone die made me afraid too but because I could ask good questions of myself and others I soon realized that the main reason people were dying of working was basically fear and ignorance.
In some ways one of the best things that happened to me was being betrayed by my religion I grew up in. This made me very different in that I realized that all the people I trusted could not be trusted. I realized that all the people I considered like my family were not my family and instead were pretty ignorant instead.
When you realize you cannot trust the people you loved and cared for and you watch them die all around you because they don't go to doctors or overwork until they die at 20, 30 or 40 years of age, what are you going to think?
My realization was: "Adults are pretty crazy and also pretty ignorant." This was a true statement for most people in the 1950s generally speaking. And most people who had lived through the Great Depression and World War II and the Korean War had serious PTSD and were in some ways dysfunctional as adults because of this too.
So, as I watched people die around me from not going to the doctor when they needed it and over working until they died I began to formulate my own plan for potential long term survival.
And at the top of one of my lists was "Efficiency and 'work smarter not harder'.
I looked around me and noticed that people worked 40 years for a gold watch and then died after that pretty soon. I didn't want to do this too. I didn't want to work for other people who stole money from me that I had earned them.
Instead I wanted to run my own businesses instead and have a good life by being very efficient and "Working Smarter not harder".
As a direct result of this kind of thinking I am still alive and relatively healthy at age 76 even though my health forced me to retire at age 50. Recently (the last year) my 50 year old son got Myasthenia Gravis from having Covid and so if he isn't careful he cannot breathe or at least his body will not breathe for him. So, if he is awake he can make himself breathe but if he is asleep he could die. So, like me, at age 50 he is having health problems too even though they are totally different than the heart virus I got at age 50 that forced me to retire too.
But, if I hadn't been very efficient before I was 50 I would be dead now and likely would have died at age 50 when I got sick with a heart virus.
So, I have been now retired 26 years since then because I had already worked on Efficiency and "Working smarter not harder".
Otherwise I would be dead now and likely would have been dead at 50.
So, I'm alive by God's Grace
There is a saying that helps keep people alive even though some don't like it:
"God helps those who help themselves."
Those who are not opportunists are mostly all dead now.
By God's Grace
Unfortunately, the law of "Survival of the Fittest" is always in place no matter what anyone does. So, learning to be a survivor and in my case a "Compassionate Survivor" is everything if you want to go on living past 20 or 30 years of age.
By God's Grace
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