THE TRUE FIRST INNINGS

Today (oops, a few days back) I turned forty. For most of the last decade I was sure that I only wanted to retire at 50, live until about 60. Today I am convinced that I have at least another 40 very exciting, productive and meaningful years to go.

It has sometimes helped that my personality is like dough, absorbing a lot of influences and molding my thoughts, words and actions in the manner of the person or thing that catches my fancy at that particular time. At times, that dough may have dried its water off, thus appearing a rigid impervious lump. But I’m delighted that the dough is again turning moist, permitting new learnings to creep in while strengthening / reinforcing old thoughts, deeds, and habits.

I only recently realized that my life has been reasonably successful, meaning I am reasonable and a qualitative definition of success could lead it to mean anything. The greatest skill I possessed is a fertile imagination, meaning that there was a series of tales of heroism and success with me as the central character. If I had the diligence to write them down, I’m sure a few would have sold as movie scripts. The second best skill I had was imitation. When combined with imagination, it helped me appreciate a lot of diverse elements and actually led me to believe that I excelled at a lot of things, something I was far from.

With skills like these, who needed shortcomings? I did and my inability to focus attention reached the limit of what one might call an ADHD syndrome. And I was intelligently lazy, both of which combined with my two skills above meant that I did not study anything deeply or rigorously enough to achieve mastery.
So what’s different in the second innings (or the “true first innings” as my dear friend, business partner and mentor called it).

I’m back to school, subjecting myself to serious study. What am I studying – Poker for instance. I can’t imagine why I did not learn Poker earlier. But perhaps just as Marcus Tullus Cicero (quoted by Charles T. Munger) extols old age, at a younger age in my life, I might not have fully appreciated that Poker is not about winning or losing, it’s about patience, tact, craft and playing the game well.

“Yes there are two paths you can go on, but in the long run, there’s still time to change the road you’re on” ~ Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin….. I’m not changing myself, mostly rediscovering and importantly resolving to only be myself hereon. So I’ve resolved to resume drumming, become again the voracious reader like I was born, smile more like I did as a child, write as well as I did in my youth, and speak my mind as I always did inside my head.

If you’ve reached here you are a) two of the three most important people in my life (the third will wonder what I was smoking when I wrote this), b) possibly a friend (my def.: someone whom I respect, admire and love and all of this is switched on all the time without necessarily meeting or talking to frequently or even once a year) or c) simply curious.

In any case, you will wonder why am I writing this? The earth has in excess of 6 billion people, can possibly hold upto 12, yet shows signs of collapse already. Why? I think it is the weight of the egos and the facades that people put up that results in about 12 billions’ worth of load. So this note is just to tell you where I am coming from. I will hopefully shed all my unproductive ego and break the façade and thereby reduce my burden on this earth.

Secondly, this note is to thank you, whether for being a friend, a significant associate or that bully who beat me up at school, thank you for helping shape my life and giving me experiences, the skills and the resources for the next forty.