Dying a Rich Man

I want to die a rich man. Fortunately it’s not in accumulated assets. Retirement has been putting a real crimp on that quest. Collecting assets has never been a goal of mine. I respect those folks who have in a more stealth mode built up a nice nest. My son calls it the “Millionaire Next Door” syndrome. I guess he might be on to something there. But when the time comes to count up credits, accumulated wealth by itself can be real a distraction from the more important things in life.

Every Millionaire I’ve known was rich one moment and penniless with their last breath. The slate had been wiped clean and their assets counted for nothing in the greater scheme of things. At my age, death is slowly becoming a more common occurrence among friends, associates, casual acquaintances or names once remembered. It’s called The Circle of Life.

The greatest lesson I’ve learned from wealthy folks is simply that there has to be more to life than collecting assets to make the entire journey worthwhile. Despite those U-hauls I’ve seen in some funeral processions, you really can’t take it with you.

Unfortunately, for some folks net worth seems to be the ultimate goal. There’s just one problem with that supposition. The most valuable asset one can accumulate in life has nothing to do with any assets collected. Instead it’s a common equalizer that shares its influence on all of us.

The ultimate asset in life is knowing that you’ve been able to influence others in a positive way and made a difference when you could. A worthwhile life is one well lived. It makes for a more fitting epitaph and no amount of money can guarantee that ultimate headstone.

Whether as a brother, a husband, a father, a grandfather or simply as a friend, it’s being there when that made a difference in someone else’s life. Simply stated, it’s trying to live a ‘good’ life.

My own life has been one heck of a ride thus far but to be honest is still a work in progress. There are no end-of-life regrets and I doubt there will be when the time comes. In the end, I can truly say that I did what I wanted to do. I loved whom I loved and still harbor many fond memories there. I did my best as a husband and father and friend. I was lucky with my kids. They’ve become solid respectable citizens of the world. I expect nothing less of my grandchildren and they seem to be well on their way to meeting those expectations of them.

I’ve traveled a lot and lived abroad. I’ve had a ton of experiences and saved them in blogs once my memory bank grows foggy. I’ve made up stories and bottled them in print and bytes for my grandkids and anyone else to read.

With no foresight other than a desire to do something meaningful with my life, I worked hard, ran my own business, managed properties and made investments. Some panned out. Others didn’t.

The grandkids keep me young as if I need them as an excuse. Collecting friendships when I was growing up was a challenge for me but I’m a younger man now. Old friends, new friends, I’m not picky. Renewing friendships or garnering new ones is a coup. But realistically it’s still a work in progress.

My new passion is writing, having surpassed running, over the last couple of years. Living in those fictional worlds with my favorite characters has kept me moving into the twilight years. The heck with retirement. I don’t have the time or inclination for that distraction.

I’ve already succeed in the great game of life. But I still want more winnings with the time I have left…and gold, silver and paper don’t count.

Three Strikes - I'm Getting Closer

Failure can wrap itself in a cloak of many different colors. Unexpected job loss and life-changing events can become pivotal points in one’s life. It’s that water-shed event where what was once present is now past and the future is nothing more than a dim hope or vapid expectation on the horizon.

In her new book entitled: ‘The Up Side of Down,’ author Megan McArdle says that: “Getting to the upside of down often means letting go of your instincts, ignoring conventional wisdom and leaping for something no one has done before.” It’s changing course in mid-stream and forging ahead despite the uncertainty of what might lie ahead.

Ed Catmull is one of the founders of Pixar along with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter. In his new book ‘Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration’ Catmull says that the ultimate goal here is to uncouple fear and failure. It’s changing that stigma that failure is bad and a sign of weakness. We must recognize that mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. Instead they are an inevitable consequence of doing something new. Echoing the mantra of many forward-thinking ventures: “If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t taking enough risks.”

I’ve been there many times in my life; three in particular stand out. Yet in each instance I never knew just how fortuitous my failure would turn out to be. I never planned to fail so there was never some grand plan to deal with my stumble. Instead some innate survival instinct kicked in and pushed me forward. At the time I didn’t see it as a failure as much as a minor distraction like a toe-stumble off the starting line.

                                   

The first failure was running out of money at a private college and transferring to the University of Minnesota. While a large University may work for a lot of other students, it was an unmitigated disaster for me. Beginning with 2500 students in the Introduction to Psychology class to the smallest class of 300 in Economics, I was lost before I stepped foot on campus. I lasted two quarters and was politely asked to ‘take a break’ by the Admissions Office.

           

Two weeks after dropping out, I got my draft notice and spent the next two years in this man’s army. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. It was two years of learning to live on my own, continuing my focus on education, writing, travel and the beginning of collecting a lifetime of writing material (only I didn’t know it at the time.)

                                               

My second failure came in my boss’s office at precisely 8:34 a.m. on July 23^rd, 1993…but who’s counting. It began with the usual pleasantries and then quickly evolved into “…(blah-blah-blah)…so we’re going to have to let you go.” And with that non-descriptive lame-ass explanation I was out of my job of 13 years in public television.

Office politics aside, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. In reality it became a clean break from the old and mundane and political to a forced self-reliance on my own skills to survive in the marketplace. It made me focus on my business and real estate investments instead of five year forecasts just to satisfy my CFOs love of graphs and charts. And again I never looked back.

My third and final failure (thus far) came in the form of an obnoxious e-mail from an ego-inflated anal pretentious individual who didn’t like the video programs I was producing for local community television broadcast. His criticisms were ripe with subjective opinions and self-induced visions of grander. It was at that point that I declared to my computer that “I don’t need this _____ anymore” and with that eloquent announcement, I folded up my video production and distribution business and focused my energies on my writing.

Yet in retrospect each stumble, loss, rejection, distraction and life-changing event in my past has nudged me toward this stage of my life where storytelling in multiple disciplines has become my new passion. 

Catmull reminds us that: ‘we must think of the cost of failure as an investment in the future.’

DenisJLacomb.com

Some folks are much quicker at failing their way to success. It took me fifty plus years and a life-time of learning just to get where I am now. Slow and steady with a couple of stumbles along the way…just like my writing. I’d love to say it’s all part of some grand plan but it’s not. Just one more attempt at doing what I love best and stumbling every couple of steps on the way to success.

An Elephant without Class

It’s like the elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge. We’d all like to believe that this is not jolly old England. We don’t have class in America. Yet over the decades we’ve managed to graph out class divisions through economic indicators such as a lower socio-economic demographic which 2008 helped exasperate, all those rich folks we love read about or watch on TV and a shrinking middle class. Of course over the years, even that equation is being challenged by roller coaster economics and other factors. Hedrick Smith did a great job of chronicling the Death of the middle Class in his book 'Who Stole the American Dream?'.

Social class in America has always been a controversial issue. We don’t want to admit that it’s there and yet we can’t help but judge ourselves by the fortunes or misfortunes of others. Secretly we wonder where we stand in the great social order of America? Where do we fit in the model of social class?

Strictly speaking, the simplest definition is the three class model that includes the rich, the middle class and the poor. But to muddy the waters even more, some sociologists have upped the ante with a class division made up of six distinct social classes; capitalist class, an upper middle class, a middle class, a lower middle class and so on.

But in all this wrangling to define social class and economic standing in America, I think they’re missing a more appropriate definition of the word. To be true, there are different economic dividers in this country. There always have been and probably always will be. But true class is not driven by economics.

The mistake here is not in the classification of folks based on their economic place in our society. Rather it’s the naïve assumption that rich folks have got all the class because they’ve got the money and the rest of us must somehow look up to them and their ‘Downton Abbey’ lifestyle.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Class has nothing to do with accumulated wealth or inherited pedigree. It has everything to do with the way a person lives his or her life.

I’ve been fortunate to know a number of men and women who are some of the classiest folks around. They exude confidence and class seemingly without even trying.

And it has nothing…nothing to do with money or education or travel or life experiences. I know several women in particular. They are congenial and pleasant to everyone and I mean everyone they meet. They like most people and enjoy their company. They can make an old curmudgeon smile and a snob warm up. Their wit and intelligence can warm the coldest of hearts and break through most defensive facades. They exude class in their every action.

On the other side of the spectrum, I know a fellow who inherited his father’s business and is a pillar in his own little world of church and community and his profession. He is educated, rich, well-traveled and yet has less class than my three year old granddaughter. 

This fellow has mistakenly assumed that he hit a home-run and is a winner in the game of life. The fact of the matter is that he was born on third base and has never made an effort to do anything meaningful on his own. He has been coasting all of his life and will probably continue to do so for the rest of his life. He’s a nice enough fellow except for his mistaken assumption that he’s somehow better than the rest of his siblings and everyone else simply because of where Daddy’s money put him in life.

You can’t buy class. It doesn’t come from blue blood coursing through your veins or an Ivy League diploma on your wall. It isn’t defined by your bank account or your second or third home. It comes from within and you either have it or you don’t.

I made a point of examining these phenomena in “Love in the A Shau” because it’s a topic I find absolutely fascinating. In my novel, Colleen’s boyfriend Bradley is rich and successful and destined for great things in his old money east coast world. Colleen's old boyfriend Daniel comes from a broken home, has no money and is struggling to get an education.

Yet Colleen is able to recognize the focus and determination and self-reliance that is the essence of Daniel verses the easy soft lifestyle that defines her boyfriend. It is a clear and startling difference that causes Colleen to examine her own priorities in life.

You know class when you see it. It’s the candidate who loses the election but holds his or her head up high and perhaps tries again. It’s the team that loses but is quick to praise their opponents. I’ve seen wrestlers beat themselves up even though they knew they didn’t stand a chance of defeating their opponent. They did it for the team. It’s the author who collects rejections slips but keeps pounding away on the keyboard because that's what he or she ‘has’ to do.

If there’s one thing I want to teach my grandchildren; like there’s only one?...it would be to show class in everything they do. From school to work to interacting with others. Class is a mantra you want to acquire in life even if it isn’t always easily defined. I hope to do my best to help my grandkids become ‘classy’ little people.