Life Lessons from 2016

This additional End Of Year post highlights simple lessons learned during past months.

• If hard, dedicated, focused and intelligent work is unappreciated, or if supervisors try to undermine rather than support success – consider moving on. I did. Wonderful choice. Life is brief. New avenues appear when you are ready.

• Spend time with those who appreciate and support you.

• As explained in the book The Black Swan, unusual events are not as infrequent as we might expect in life. Brexit? Trump’s election? Perhaps surprising, but actually not so unusual.

• Home cooked food truly is better. Switch off the TV. Get dicing, slicing and buy a few liters of olive oil.

• There is a surprising lack of correlation between the cost and quality of wines. Trust me (or at least the regression analysis).

• Lessons learned from history are constantly applicable. Castles had walls and countries established borders for solid reasons.
• However, were walls built to keep others out or to keep people in? ‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall…’ wrote Robert Frost in his poem ‘Mending Wall.’ The dismantled Berlin wall is a physical manifestation – a potent reminder – of how insecure brutish characters tried – vainly, and ultimately in vain – to control not only the natural ebb and flow of neighbors, but their power to live freely.

• Respect your local cobbler and other artisans. The culture of disposability does not yet prevail.

• The future is taking place all around you. In California, the potentially hippest future wines have been developing for decades; China is 3-D printing houses; Amazon is building grocery stores without cash registers or checkouts.

• Establishing sensible laws takes courage in the face of massive, uneducated, emotional resistance. Each year about a thousand people are murdered in Pakistan in ‘honor killings.’ Fathers and brothers murder daughters who may have publicly displayed amorous eyes for another young man. That crime has gone unpunished, until a new law was passed this year. Bye Bye, Middle Age barbarity. Well done, Pakistan.

• Less can be more. No lawn means – no need to mow the lawn.

• Respect bold, audacious, daring individuals who dedicate their efforts to produce goods and systems that others desire.

• Consider quality in life.

• The less you have, the less you have to take care of.

• Enjoy nature. Frequently.

• When in doubt, explore. Unwind. Tap into greater universal wisdom. And when the road bends in unknown ways, consider this a magnificent opportunity.

Prepare for a powerful 2017…!

 

[Writing and photographs copyright Tom Mullen, 2016]