Tag: life path

SUNDAY, 19 OCTOBER 2025

Here’s a thought for middle-aged people, and for young people who may eventually become middle-aged.

For me, turning 50 was a shock. I was definitely not prepared for it. It was also in the middle of the so-called pandemic of 2020-2022, so everyone was a little nervous anyway.

At 54, I’ve had time to get used to the idea, and I can also see myself getting older by the day – and definitely looking older than when I was 48.

The point is, everyone gets their turn. One day you’re a kid, and a few years later it’s your turn to be a teenager. And a few short years later it’s your turn to be 21 or 22. Then 25 … and you realize time doesn’t stand still. Then it’s your turn to be in your thirties. And just as you get comfortable with what it means to be that age – how you’re no longer a teenager but still have decades to work towards a comfortable retirement, you hit 40. A new role again, and a slightly different identity than when you were 35.

And unless the train drops you off at an earlier station, you’re suddenly 50.

The fact is, someone has to be 50 while other people are 40 and other people are 30 and other people are 20 and other people are teenagers and children and toddlers. And after a few years, everyone moves on a few chairs while new people occupy the old positions.

And you accept it with dignity and a good sense of humour. And hopefully a little wisdom to share.

Only death can change that: Everyone gets their turn.

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MONDAY, 14 APRIL 2025

If I had to ask myself what my primary goal has been for the past … say, twenty years, I would say it’s to make money. Twenty years ago, I was suddenly no longer alone. A young woman had decided to take a chance on me, and I had to justify her incredibly optimistic hope.

The last thing I want to do is bore the reader again with a list of projects and schemes with which I have attempted to make money over the past two decades. Point is, plenty of the endeavours had nothing to do with gathering knowledge or insight, much less with sharing knowledge and insight with people who might have needed it.

Now, when I teach, I don’t just explain grammar or vocabulary – I use every opportunity I get to inject a little history. Or I try to give a slightly non-cliched opinion when the conversation is about relationships, or other aspects of human existence about which I may have had an intelligent thought in the past. Most of the material I have created so far for ESL students, and the social media material I publish these days, reveal the ambition of the person behind it to share knowledge. (Of course, I assume most people don’t already know what I have to say.)

Other personal projects, like Asian Histories of Listed History, and even Familiegeskiedenis (an Afrikaans site about family history), are not exactly supposed to make money. The ambition has always been more noble-minded.

My primary task – by default, although I don’t think of it that way every day – is to gather knowledge and insight. And when I have managed to obtain another kernel of knowledge or insight, to then share it in a way that is a little different from the next collector of knowledge and insight, in order to hopefully make it somewhat easier for the person receiving the knowledge and insight to lead a happier and more productive life.

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TUESDAY, 8 OCTOBER 2024

I frantically started taking notes in 1994. It was as if I sensed a calling to report on my life. For the past thirty years, I have reported on and off; sometimes every day and sometimes just a few paragraphs in one calendar year.

The point is still to say: Here I am. This is how I experience life.

* * *

Thirty years ago, I wanted to make money because I wanted to do what I wanted to do. I didn’t want people barking orders and expecting me to jump. I wanted to have money so I could travel and study (seriously, I was 23 years old, and I wanted to study).

Twenty years ago, I seriously wanted to improve my income because I wanted to create a better life for myself, and for the young woman I would later marry. I wanted to travel more, and I wanted to visit my family in South Africa more often.

Today I want to improve my income because I want to strengthen my financial security, especially considering that in perhaps two decades I will no longer feel like working, or may no longer be able to do everything I want to do.

Different desires, but the same path that leads to fulfilment. One difference is that I know what twenty and thirty years feel like under the soles of my feet, and I know how they slip through my fingers. And I know that twenty or thirty years from now – if I last that long – I will be officially old. Not necessarily decrepit, but definitely elderly. This meaningful snippet of knowledge was not part of my experience of existence twenty or thirty years ago.

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