I truly get so confused, you know. We live in a world we are told that lacks imagination, and we have to aspire to be more imaginative. The more imagination that we have, the more creative new ideas, the longer our life and the happier ultimately we will be. But as a child, I was always told, act my age. Act your age, Leon.
Act your age. You’re being foolish. You should be older in the way you’ve perceived that situation or how you’ve responded, Whatever it is. You know? And so okay.
So then you say to yourself, well, okay. I have to be more mature. I have to be more thoughtful. I can’t get so angry. I shouldn’t be so self centered.
Whatever it is. But you know what happens, you get older and you get kinda goofy sometimes. The one I really love is I take a shopping cart at Costco or Carrefour or one of these major stores and I pretend I’m a race car driver. Yeah. I’m racing.
And I take my shopping cart, my Porsche sports car, and I screamed down the aisles. But of course not really scream because I tried to be sedate and look normal. It’s kind of my inner joke and I pass people and you know that special turn that you have to make when it’s a special race, a unique race in the Formula 500 or whatever it is. Then if I relate that to someone, they look at me in a rather shocking way. Oh my god.
Leon, you’re old. You should act your age. So which one is true? I’m confused as I said earlier. Should I act like when I was 10 or 15 years old or should I act like when I’m 60 or 70 years old?
Like, which one is true? I think the truth is that you should act like yourself. Right? Like yourself. Because as we age biologically, all around us, people are telling us certain things.
You’re at a certain age, you should do this. You’re at another age, you should do that, etcetera, etcetera. But none of it’s true. None of it’s true at all. It’s how I perceive the world, you know, and you will find as the body ages that it doesn’t actually really change.
Now, there is a proviso, of course, if you get sick or perhaps you’re heavily overweight or certain things along this nature, but this doesn’t happen to the average human being. Hasn’t happened to me and I’ve been sick at times, but I’ve always somehow recovered and gone on. Because I think ultimately, as all of us should feel that I have a mission. I have to fulfill this task, this journey in my lifetime. It’s very very important, you know.
So go inside yourself and discover what age you you want to be. And then I think, if you possibly can, pick an optimum age. Pick a perfect age that stays with you at some point forever. The age I’ve chosen is 31. Now, why 31?
You may ask. Well, as I was growing up, I had a terrible fear of money. My father was a good man, but he most assuredly had a fear of money because my grandfather had gone bankrupt in 1929 and they lost everything. So for 9 years, my father and my father’s family lived in relative poverty. So he joined the army when he was 19 and that was another experience that went on for six and a half years or so.
And then after that, even though they had promised all the veterans that there was going to be work in Canada after the war, there wasn’t. And many people like my father didn’t have a job for almost a year. He told me once that he had to actually sell his military greatcoat just to have some cash. So you could see that when they got work, the men of this generation, the people that are probably going to vote for Donald Trump, to be honest, when they finally got work, my god, a job was precious. And luckily, in the late forties and fifties, sixties even, if you wanted the job, you could have one.
Literally, the people that didn’t have a job didn’t want one because the economies in North America in particular were sizzling hot and they were rebuilding the world for sure. You know? So my father passed that essentially that fear of money onto me. But of course, I always believe I’m the only person who accepts things and I did. I had a part time job when I was 14 but I was always afraid of money.
I was never going to have enough money. Always a lack of money. Things along this nature. So then eventually I got married, lack of money, you know, 2 children, lack of money. I had a second job but played the stock market.
All these things, but just not enough money. And then, fortunately, at 30, I started a business. And within a year, we had begun to make money. And then it dawned on me. Wait a moment.
Whether I have money in the future or not, who’s making me afraid of money? Myself. Me. Leon, you are no one else. I can’t blame my father, my grandfather, my friends, my situation.
It’s me. It’s my perception of the world changed my life. Truly changed my life. So the next time someone says to you, act your age, just think of the age that you’ve chosen. And I trust it’s an interesting age for you because the world, unfortunately or fortunately, is dominated by your thoughts.
Right? If you wake up in the morning and you think it’s going to be a good day, it will be barring the circumstances. If you think it’s going to be a bad day, like I’ve said many times, some days I decide it’s a bad day it’s going to be, but I choose. This reality, this god given reality that I occupy is of my own doing. And yes, we all have a cross.
Yes, we’re all of a certain race, certain ethnicity. We’re men. We’re women. We’re frustrated, we’re anxious, we’re in pain, we’re in joy. It’s up to me.
Up to me how I see this world. And I think through prayer, through introspection, I can get over the challenges and I can live a decent life. I truly can. And you know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is necessary if you’re going to act your age, And critical thinking is great. Truly great. God bless. Bye bye.