Chapter 1. Board Meeting
"What is the actual financial position as of today?" I asked.
“Well, we owe our suppliers £339K, VAT of £79K, £29K of PAYE and we also owe the Factoring company £120K”, said Monika Bassett, my Mum.
“So, we actually owe almost £600K?
Wow.” I said glumly.
Chapter 2. Early Years
My Dad taught me that if you see everyone running in one direction, then look at where they are coming from and consider running in that direction, as they may have all missed something.
The essence of this idea has come to define the person that I have become and for me, this started forming at a very early age.
Raised in North West London in 1968 from an immigrant family, it was never easy for me to fit in.
My Mum was the youngest of four sisters and born in Nuremberg in Northern Germany just after the war. Moving to London in her teens to work as an au pair, she had enrolled in a local college to improve her English and it was there that she met my Dad. Although she always meant well, her extremely matter of fact and blunt manner proclaimed that the world should take her as she was and this could come across as a bit abrasive.
Dad was the polar opposite. Born in Hyderabad in India, of Persian and Turkish parents, he was just five years old in 1947 when Pakistan was partitioned from India. Being Muslim, his entire family had to walk 1000 miles to Pakistan taking with them only what they could carry. I still can’t imagine what that was like - he always told me that he still remembered two lines of people walking in opposite directions separated by a few metres during partition. He loved England and we all considered him to be more English than real Brits were!
Dad immigrated to the UK in his early twenties with a strong American accent which he had developed from watching American films and worked really hard to blend-in when he arrived in London. Instead of joining a Pakistani diaspora, he preferred to adopt local customs and over time, his accent became so polished, that you would never have known that he wasn’t English. He was just a thoroughly nice guy and endeavoured to always be a perfect Gentlemen. Everyone who met him, loved him.
My parents had a pronounced laissez faire approach to parenting but the deep cultural differences between their Pakistani and Germanic backgrounds made for some interesting conflicts that would mould both me and my sister.
I think that Dad was embarrassed to be a Pakistani – remember that he arrived in the mid-1960s and there was a lot of racism in England. Consequently, he was always trying to be British and not stand out. When he and Mum first met, Dad was initially embarrassed to say that he couldn’t eat pork for religious reasons and instead, told Mum that he didn’t ‘like’ pork. Mum couldn’t understand how this was even possible, since as a German, she had been brought up eating vast quantities of pork (and Germans cook pork extremely well). The story goes that she prepared him a delicious meal which they both really enjoyed and then after they had finished eating, she asked him what he had thought of the food and of course, he complemented her on her cooking. Dad recalls that her face broke into a big smile when she said, “…and you thought that you didn’t like pork!”
It was obvious from the start that I would never fit in since everything that I saw of the world would be seen through the spectacles of both German and Pakistani values in 1970s Britain.
This was brought into sharp context some years later when I was 17 and an Uncle and Aunt came to stay for an extended period. My Aunt suffered a number of miscarriages in Karachi and had come to the UK with its better healthcare in order to complete her pregnancy. They stayed for several months and every day when Mum and Dad were at work, Auntie would cook wonderful curries and although her food was truly fantastic, I did eventually become fed-up of spicy food and learnt to cook for myself.
Every evening, Mum would serve the meal which Auntie had cooked and everyone would sit down to eat. After we had all finished, Mum would ask whether anyone would like any more and then, sensibly clear up when there were no takers for seconds.
Something very subtle was going on here but I would only find out several years later, that my Uncle was actually hungry after every meal but couldn’t bring himself to ask for seconds and it turns out that he was visiting a curry house every lunchtime to buy boiled rice to eat before dinner. His reasoning? He was too embarrassed to ask Mum for seconds and desperately didn’t want to make a fuss!
Judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement. Simon Bolivar
Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself. Eleanor Roosevelt
Chapter 3. Goatanomics
The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true.
Or the story of the man, his Mullah and a goat.
I read what I assume is an apocryphal story some years ago and I feel that the underlying message is so important, that I wanted to dedicate an entire chapter to it. A man visits his Mullah and laments that he is unhappy.
“My wife is unhappy, my children are crying and
I don’t have enough money. What do I do?”
“Buy a goat!”
“What!”
“Buy a goat.”
“…but…”
“Buy a goat.” (forcefully)
…and the man leaves the Mullah looking dejected.
He returns the next morning looking even more unhappy.
“My wife is unhappy, my children are crying, I don’t have enough money and that BLOODY goat is shitting everywhere! What do I do?”
“Sell the goat!”
“What!”
“Sell the goat.”
“…but you told me to buy a goat.”
“Sell the goat.” (forcefully)
…and the man once again leaves the Mullah, though this time looking even more dejected.
However, he returns the following morning but now looks a completely changed man and this time, he is actually smiling.
“I am SO HAPPY now that goat is gone!”
As I said earlier, I don’t really think that the man, his Mullah or the goat really existed but I often think that this story can teach us a really important key to happiness. My thought process goes like this.
We all live in our own bubbles and sometimes find ourselves entirely consumed by problems which we know are not really that important (pressing deadline; impossible target, too much to do; can’t afford a skiing holiday…) but these problems still manage to consume much of our thinking time and this influences how we feel and live. We stop enjoying our food, our families and may even start avoiding our friends. We may appear pensive, distant and stressed and although there may be so much that is good in our lives, at this specific moment, we can’t appreciate it.
All of those missed opportunities to have great experiences - what a tragedy!
Then, when something really serious happens (terminal diagnosis; immanent financial ruin, a shark suddenly appears who is about to eat you, etc.) all of your previous problems instantly evaporate in a puff of smoke, as you now totally concentrate all of your attention to solving this serious, new problem.
I love to deliberate on the joy which we would suddenly experience were this new problem suddenly to disappear (you were given the wrong diagnosis; the bill was in Zimbabwean dollars; the shark was a vegetarian, etc.)
The problem is that we often can’t appreciate the perspective and importance of these problems in the wider context of our everyday lives. When my wife presents me with a problem that she deems both serious and insoluble, she is never comforted when I tell her that at least she hasn’t just stood on a landmine (since that would be much worse, or something equally banal).
“That’s NOT very helpful,” she always replies to me.
However, I think this approach can really be helpful to develop a sense of perspective for our problems and it reminds me to regularly reappraise how great life is here on planet Earth.
I don’t think that we are particularly good at considering what is genuinely important to us.
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