This feels like a pretty strange question to ask, but I’m wondering if you have ever had a moment in your life where you’ve bumped into someone, or met someone, and thought – ***This is going to be me if I don’t get my shit together.***
I had this experience recently and it’s really been playing on mind these last few days. It was like a revelation or something. Seeing someone/something you don’t want to be, standing there, right in front of you.
I haven’t been feeling the best mentally these last few years. Perhaps my mind is just focused on a lot of the wrong things these days, and I’m making much of nothing. Have you guys ever had a moment like that in your life that jumps out at you?
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Yeah. I see many men absolutely penniless at 50 because of an expensive lifestyle.
Yep, my father.
67yo, never made any provisions for the future as ‘the future will sort itself out’. Healthwise he never looked after himself as ‘he will know if something is wrong’. There’s much much more I can say on this, but to answer the OP, yes, my father.
I basically do the exact opposite of what he would do in any given situation and take comfort that it’s absolutely the correct decision.
Interestingly, apparently I’ve been that for a few younger folks. Don’t really know how to feel about that.
As an ESL teacher teaching overseas these lads were/are sadly a dime a dozen. The broken angry man grumbling at the local expat watering hole long past the time he should have gone home but doesn’t because he has no idea what the hell he’ll do back home, the alcoholic with a massive gut who comes in to work everyday hung over or still drunk from a night of drinking, the bizarre racist who preaches the oddest of ideas, the list is endless. Teaching in China I met some of the COOLEST cats and the oddest ducks.
—
This guy in particular named Karl was for me the epitome of what I did NOT want to come. I was 27 starting my second year of ESL teaching and Karl was 38. I didn’t quite know what to do with life but seeing what and who Karl sadly was made me put in more of an effort to find out what the HELL I wanted because as much as I liked the man I did not want to become him.
Let me paint a picture of Karl.
Over the past 12 years he had lived in seven countries, saved practically nothing, seemingly learned nothing, drank everything, moved from one day to the next with at least a handful of embarrassing gaffes and blunders, had been fired at least a half dozen times, spoke only English even though he had lived his entire adult life in places where it wasn’t spoken by the masses and routinely screwed up classes.
As his supervisor I wanted to hate him for making things so hard for me but man to man he was a goofy gentle soul and I quickly realized that he was likely somewhere on the spectrum and/or had ADHD. As someone who grew up in and out of special education I saw a future reflection of myself in him had I not gotten the help I needed nor made the wonderful life changing friends and partners that I had met or dated. He was remarkably intelligent and well spoken in his own way, heck when I later applied to grad school he was happy to edit the hell out of my papers (I think myself and several of our friends/colleagues can thank him for getting us in to our programs).
But for every one day spent having good talks ranging from life, dating and history would be another day where I’d ask him where the hell he was for the mandatory meeting and he would tell me “sorry man, I had to masturbate.”
He pushed me to get into grad school and get my life on track and hope everyday that someday he can as well.
Yes I have: guy I worked with. He was 50, excellent at what he did. Every week begging the boss for money to top up his phone every week, moved back in with his Mom, and basically just took shit everyday of the week at work.
Decided I needed to get out of that environment and start my own business or I would end up like him.