Mentalechoes

The most insidious influence on the young is not violence, drugs, tobacco, drink or sexual perversion, but our pursuit of the trivial and our tolerance of the third rate. Eric Anderson

Every so often I go through these periods where I want to become a millionaire. I’ve got a head for crazy money making schemes, which I tell to the friends that will listen to them. Admittedly there aren’t many because most people can only take so much ranting of wild half-arsed ideas from an overexcited loon. The funny thing is that some of them weren’t half bad. Like my idea for a titty website called chernobylbigboobs.com that featured girls with radioactively enhanced breasts (meaning really really big) would have been a total winner. For sure at least a couple-a-hundred horny guys would have signed up to it just because of the intriguing - and catchy - name alone. Okay, in a quiet moment of personal reflection, I will admit that this is also a lame stupid half-arsed idea, but you can’t really criticise my enthusiasm; the way I see it, that’s the most important thing.

Which leads me to a serious thought of sorts. In life, it’s not really the people with the best education, or the best backgrounds, or the best looks, or the best clothes, or even the ones that work the hardest that make it big and enjoy consumate success. It’s the people that have the best enthusiasm and the brightest vision that do. I have seen this countless times in my life, from the people that I have met who live that kind of lifestyle. And there was something else that I saw one day that showed me this. About two years ago I was sitting at home watching BBC World when a half an hour show came on about the Forbes richest 10 people in the world. As you would expect the first one was Bill Gates, and the second was that guy who owns Ikea (who would have believed crappy furniture could make so much money). Then there was the guy who started ebay, and then there was this guy who I totally would not have expected. I can’t remember his name, but he started out his young life as a street theatre performer, you know, one of those folks that does a show out on in open that has a crowd woo-ing and gasping and laughing at his act. Well this guy was passionate about entertaining people, and so he turned his one man show slowly over the years into bigger and better shows in bigger and better venues, until at the time I saw him on BBC World, he owned the largest entertainment group in the world. They had a five minute interview with him, and what really impressed me was that not once did he even mention money, not even when he was asked about it. He spent the whole time talking about how happy he was to have realised his dream of making millions of people feel entertained. There was a real WOW factor about this man, he wasn’t someone that woke up each day and thought it was like the day before. No, he was a special someone that got out of bed really looking forward to making it a great day, and making great things happen.

For me, this is really how you make something of your life, but for so many of us (including myself) we get caught up in the day to day routine of everything and we sort of get pulled into the middle of mediocrity and stay there. It’s not like we lose our enthusiasm for life and the things we want to do, it’s just it gets put aside as we spend energy on other things like getting the bills paid at the end of the month and keeping ourselves going to jobs that are less than fabulous. This is where kids have totally got it better than adults, they truly get excited at everything. Everything is something to get excited about, and consequently you see them really enjoying even the most mundane activities. In that way, kids really show us the way forward.

I’ve always been a kid at heart and someone who really loses himself easily in crazy things. I never really saw it before, but perhaps it’s this easy enthusiasm for life that is really the one thing that will see me elevate myself out of this ordinary life I’m in, to the life I want where I’m swimming in money!

Padwanna!