www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvEiSa6_EPA

My life.
Your life.
Explained in 46 seconds.
Brilliant. Just brilliant.

It’s a story you heard before.

Two old gents, Merv & Fess, on the front porch, enjoying a quiet afternoon.
Merv’s in a ladder-back rocker, easing it back and forth,
Fess lounging in a sun-faded wicker contraption.

At Merv’s feet, but over to the side, just a bit, so that he’s blocking the porch steps, lies Duke, Merv’s haggard old dog.
Do the math. At 12 years old, Duke’s an old mutt. Way older—in dog years—than the two old-timers he’s sharing the porch with.
He’s not barricading the steps either. Not really.
Duke’s not guarding the family homestead, or keeping watch for pesky cats, rabbits or letter carriers.
No, Duke’s there because that’s where his tired legs brought him.
And then they stopped, dropping him down on the rough, worn boards.
Scratchy, paint-peeled boards that make up the porch’s landing, and therefore showing more wear and tear, more abuse, than the rest of the porch.
That’s where Duke’s lying.
Oh, That’s where the sun is too. So there is that.
Sometimes your present situation is both a blessing and a curse…

Later, maybe an hour into not talking, Fess looks over at Merv,
“What’s wrong with your dog?”
Merv’s reply takes forever, like he’s trying to remember something real important, an alibi, maybe, “Dunno. Why?”
“He’s moaning, like something hurts.”

Merv shrugs, “Those floorboards are worn down, bet a nail’s sticking up, poking his skin.”
Fess nods, “Gotta hurt, though.”
“I suppose.”
“Why don’t he move?”
Merv again considers his reply. Then says, “Don’t hurt enough.”

So, there’s the story. Like I said, a story everyone’s heard.
OK, maybe embellished a bit.
And it’s here that the narrator usually goes on to paint Duke as a metaphor for your life—the pain in your life.
Maybe your job sucks. Maybe your relationship stinks.
Maybe your life hurts, but it doesn’t hurt enough for you to do anything about it.

But. Guess what.
I don’t buy that metaphor.
Why not?

Because I don’t think our dog, Duke, is a lazy, dumb mutt.
I think Duke perceives a net benefit in lying on that nail.
What I mean is, sure, the nail hurts.
But then again, that’s where the sun is.
And maybe Duke instinctively finds that the glow of the warm sun outweighs the pain of the nail.

Which, sort of makes sense.

Until you stop to realize that Duke’s missing something.
Something elemental. Simple, really.
And that is that the sun’s rays aren’t just beaming down on that one corner of the world.
And if Duke just looked around, a bit, he’d find another warm, sunny spot.
Without the nail.

Here’s a short 30 year-old interview with Milton Friedman.
Take a look. Tell me what you think.
In a later post I’ll give you my two cents.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A

People often ask, “What’s your book about?”
And I stumble and stutter and mumble and sputter.
It’s no easy task, making it sound interesting.
It’s no easy task, being to-the-point and concise.
It’s no easy task, capturing in a few short words the essence of an idea.

Just the other day, someone said, “Michael, did you see this quote by the Dalai Lama? It reminds me of your book.”
I read it.
And smiled.
“Yeah,” I thought, “That is what my book’s about!”

I was too young for the Cuban missile crisis.
Too young to grasp the catatonic fear that lay behind those already scary words.
I remember the grownups though; my parents talking in hushed tones, the news anchor with his stern expression and his even more grave, more urgent, voice, recounting the latest nerve-wracking developments.
I remember, one night, my dad walking me to the corner store—dépanneurs we called them.
I remember men patrolling our neighbourhood. I remember barricades at each end of our road, and more men standing guard, one of them wearing a helmet. A World War II helmet. A German one.
“What are they doing?” I asked my dad.
“Keeping us safe son,” He said.
And I squeezed his hand a little harder as we walked by. Past people, people everywhere. Nervous people, apprehensive people. People completely terrified; nervous wrecks, chain-smoking Sweet Caporals, glancing skyward, expecting the worst. Praying for the best.

Okay. Okay.
Maybe I exaggerated that last bit.
Alright already. So maybe I made it up.
Yeah, the whole thing.
There were no men. No patrols. No late night walks past sentries and uniformed guards.
But there might have been.
I mean, what did I know about a missile crisis? I was only seven years old for crying out loud.
And even if I don’t remember that particular potential crise de coeur, I’m sure, to grownups, it was a scary time.
But to a seven year old? Pfft…

But, you know, the years unwind, and life, as per its own design and desire (if not necessarily mine), suddenly (or so it seemed) made me a grownup too.
And on my way to adulthood, I, all too often, stopped to snivel in my own generation’s versions of scary moments. Big ones, hyperbolic ones, end-of-the-world ones.
There was the Soviet Union; those big bad communists chafing at the bit, ever ready to fire their warheads in our direction. And then send the infantry in to finish off what the ICBMs failed to fry.
There was, too, my home turf—the province of Quebec—with its seventies version of home-spun terrorism.
We had the FLQ crisis, the Cross kidnapping and the Laporte murder.
We had the scourge of separatism and the threatened rampage of its evil stepchildren–unemployment, recession, civil war, and, as the final coup de grace, the potential invasion (or was it annexation?) by our friendly neighbour to the south.
We were warned too. Warned that the fall of a proud nation weighed upon us, should we do the unthinkable and vote for Monsieur Levesque and his Harvard-educated, British-sounding cronies (an irony that bemuses me still—separatists who spoke better English than federalists).

And the fear didn’t end there either.
The eighties brought double-digit inflation, and lending rates that gave orgasms to bankers.
We were, once again, headed for damnation; financial ruin, if the experts were to be believed, that is.
And, through it all, I believed.
Through it all, I was afraid.

Funny though.
Looking back, those scary events, most of them anyway, resulted in… nothing really.
There were dark moments, yes. They were dark episodes, true. And people—unfortunate innocent people—suffered.
But where was the cataclysm? Where was the destruction—to nationhood, to property and to freedom—that the experts had so gravely foreshadowed?
The PQ won the election, the helicopters were piloted out of Saigon, interest rates spiked, and Brezhnev sprouted his rhetoric.
And through it all, life went on. And the world didn’t come to an end.

I learned something though. Something important.
What I learned is that media and politicians are like little Skippy next door. The actual bark is always way worse than the threatened bite.
Let’s face it, fear sells. We all know that.
And no matter how much we remind ourselves of that fact, when something scary happens (or is about to) we’re attracted like moths to a hot, burning light. And we all know what happens to those moths.
So, for the sake of my own sanity and self-preservation, I perfected the fine art of skepticism. I learned to assume a yeah, right attitude.
Killer Bees? Y2K? SARS? H1N1? Yeah, right.

And now, and now…
We face another crisis.
One of a financial kind.
And even though I got damn good at ignoring so many other tales of impending doom; and even though I managed to, in the past, tune out those doomsayers—those Chicken Littles with credentials—here I am, today, wondering about this latest debt crisis.

In case you haven’t heard…
We have experts, journalists mostly, telling us things are going to get bad.
These experts are using serious words. Scary words.
Words like Default, and Bankruptcy and Depression.
And, in the other corner, we have opposing experts, politicians essentially, smoothing things over, assuring us in soothing voices that everything will be fine. Just a hiccup. A wee glitch, you see.

And here we are, those of us paying attention anyway, stuck in the middle, wondering what to make of this mess.
The question, therefore, is… Why am I telling you this?
Simple, really.
My theory is that people shouldn’t save for retirement. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know my views on what I call The Retirement Myth.
Part II of my theory is that, rather than retirement, we should all actually be saving for a rainy day.

Which brings us to the point of this blogpost.
My point is, is this it? Are these the rainy days?
Well, if you listen to some experts, then yes, the rains will soon be upon us. Hard rain. Driving rain.
Two more things, then.
Are these experts right?
I don’t know. No one does, really.
Second thing.
If they are right, what should we do about it?
In my case, I’ve been reading up on what’s brought us to this threatened—this potential—abyss.
And over the next few weeks, I’d like to share with you some of what I’ve learned.
I believe you will find it interesting.

In the meantime, please tell me…
What do you think about all this? Are you worried? Are you paying it no mind?
Please let me know, I’d love to hear your views.

For those wondering why I’m not posting as often.
I’ve been busy. Busy with stuff. I have these workshops teed-up and happening. And I have another one in the planning phase, this one’s on cash-flow, cash-management. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’ll find it interesting and useful. It’ll be fun too. I’m making it creative. Gonna keep it lively. Yeah, I think you’ll like it.
Then, of course, there’s my latest book.
It’s in the works. It’s coming along.
The dead guy? The one I told you about who dies in Chapter One? He’s giving me a hard time; hesitant to divulge information, refusing to cooperate. Which, I guess is no surprise, given he’s dead and all.

In the meantime, if you’d like to read something par moi. Well, there’s always this book. If you haven’t read it, why not buy a copy.
If you have read it… uh, why not buy a second copy?
Okay, okay.
I’ll take my salesrep hat off.