Well, John, you've sure set me to thinking about the stages of my life over the past 8 decades. And there was a time when I was a working single mother who wished to be a stay-at-home mom with a husband who worked to support us--but, alas, I had to put my head down and stay the course. I don't have any serious regrets, although I've outlived all those in my immediate family, including two of my three precious sons. I'm in the twilight stage of my life, trying to enjoy what's left for another bit. Keep up your thought-provoking posts on issues that need to be in the public arena. You do it well, John.
1. Hawkns said: "The older you get, the more the decisions you made when you were younger are going to accumulate and shape your life. That’s when having a spouse, kids, long-time friends, your health, and some money saved up are going to really matter."
Exactly so. I regret that at 78 I have no wife or children and that most of my family are either dead or remote and out of touch. I accept that I will die alone and no one will mourn my death. So be it.
On the brighter side, at age 78 I am so grateful that I realized in my 20s that financal resources did not grow on trees, did not fall from the heavens like manna and diidn't just come along with the gray hair.
I know so many frends of mne who are boomers and never seemed to grasp this. If I were in their siituation, I think I would be suicidal.
See comments 2 and 3 below on this thread.
2. The factor that most strongly predicts ultimate success in life is not intelligence, not hard work and not even living below one's means...although all of these are virtues.
The most important factor for success is LONG TERM PLANNING. Ths is true both for individuals and institutions and movements. I adhere to a much despised and margnalized faction in our society variously labelled "the far riight" (although I'm a liberal on more iissues than I am a "conservatiive" on), "White racists", "zenophones" and so on. I have spent almost all of my life working in these vineyards. And I note that there is zero long term planning among us. (What a relief this will be to "progressive", "well-informed" people who get their information and ideas from "authoritative sources" like NPR and The NY Times!)
Even a person of lower and moderate intelligence, not so great industriousness, etc. will find that his life will turn out better than people more intelligent and harder working than he is.
3. A WARNNG that Mr. Hawkins might include in the future:
If you reach old age (early 60s and above) and have planned, invested, etc. and are financially successful, be prepared for an unpleasant aspect of old age.
Most of your friends and relatives will NOT have taken care of their finances. Most of them will be paupers....maybe genteel paupers but paupers all the same.
Prepare yourself. You will have friends and relatives who will approach you because they seem to expect that they are entitled to have you solve their problems.
They will want "loans" (that will never be repaid), hand outs., etc.
You must steel yourself. You will want to help out.
But you CANNOT.
You will not have sufficient resources to be the substitute for the pension or the stock portfolio they did not acquire because they they made a voluntary choice to spend their lives indulging themselves in expensive cars, skiing trips to Vail, trips to Europe and so on.
And when you refuse, they will be unashamedly angry that you are so "selfiish."
Accept it.
When a friend or relative comes to you to hit you up for a bail out "because you are rich" and you refuse, you will lose that friend or relative.
A biitter pill but one you must man it up about and take your medicine.
4. One last point...about women:
[I am not a misogynist. My father taught us gallantry and chivalry toward women to whom we were told to be loving and protective. This is the bright side of being a male chauvinist pig.]
I'm sorry if it insults women but it's a fact of life that women as a group are more obedient to authority than guys are.
Even when women rebel, they do so as directed by authority figures...it's just that the authority figures have changed and in my generation were Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug who poisoned the lives of tens of millions of women with their nasty, destructive advice.
My grandmother gave my female cousins good advice about finding a husband while you were young and goodlooking, having him get you will child and getting HIM with child.
Very few women in my generation got good advice from someone like my grandmother.
Instead, they got advice that could only lead to a life of loneliness and a bitter end.
Wow, I have not yet had the grasshoppers descend on me, the little ant that I am. OTOH, I am not rich or ostentatious, but also my friends are 98 percent conservative and have saved their money and planned ahead. I'm not sure if I will want to resist Christian charity, but for leftists who have spent recklessly, that will be no problem because they were unlikely to be believers anyways.
WheelHorseman: I think many of us stress ourselves out fretting about people - like your liberal spendthrifts you mention here - whom we feel we ought to save.
Some do deserve saving. I don't often publicize possibly virtuous deeds but I will say that I made significant financial gifts to Sam Francis and Joe Sobran, both of blessed memory, after they were axed by The Washington Times and National Review.
But I have often made the point that there are many fellow European Americans whose plight should leave us unaffected.
It's not going to happen that I would risk myself going to the aid of one of the people in my neighborhood of rich, leftwing Whites who has virtue-signalled by bedecking their lawns wth signs reading "Black Lives Matter", "Regulate Guns Not Women" or "In This House We Believe..." if I am ever standing at my window with a revover at hand and I see one of these people being attacked by the "urban youths" they so admire.
As the old saying goes, these people have made their beds. Let them lie in them.
What limited years I have left and what limited resources I have to spare will go to help people like Sam and Joe.
Good essay, John, it's instructive to see the outline of the whole map we will travel should we survive. "Failure to plan is planning to fail," most people hear this saying but many (apparently) don't think it applies to them. I frittered away many years in my 20's doing the college and law school thing, then chased a career in my 30's. I never prioritized marriage and kids, which may have been a mistake. I do not despair, however, because I have long believed that God has a plan for my life, death, and eternity. I'm excited when I think about living forever in an ageless body after the resurrection. If we look at life as a marathon and that we are lucky if we get to stagger over the finish line cause we've worn out our mortal body, it's good to know the Lord will be waiting there, with love, to welcome us home, yes? It's sure important to remember that He's looking over our shoulder and keeping His eye on us- tempers my reactions, that's for sure!
So, if you didn't make all the right decisions - and mistakes, let's be honest - when you were 19, and only realized it when you were 45, you're out of luck and should what? Just lay down and die?
Somewhere between your parents' obsession with Consequences when you were 15 and the Carpe Diem idiocy of your friends at 21 was the winding line of the truth, but how would you have seen it? Especially when you were young and didn't know what to look for?
Nearly half-a-century of life has taught me that the biggest deciding factor in success is LUCK. Oh, you can plan, you can work hard, you can think. But success goes to the person with the right idea in the right place at the right time, or the guy who accidentally chooses the right career, or the guy who, against all odds, manages to find a good woman and marry her at 25.
If you want to captain an aircraft carrier at 45, you have to make that decision at age 10, knowing that any one of a thousand factors beyond your control can & will keep you from that goal. Hell, if you fail the eye exam at the academy, you have to find another dream. It's that easy to lose, through no fault of your own.
So you want brutal honesty? Fine. The vicissitudes of life mean more than your drive, energy or good choices combined.
Well, John, you've sure set me to thinking about the stages of my life over the past 8 decades. And there was a time when I was a working single mother who wished to be a stay-at-home mom with a husband who worked to support us--but, alas, I had to put my head down and stay the course. I don't have any serious regrets, although I've outlived all those in my immediate family, including two of my three precious sons. I'm in the twilight stage of my life, trying to enjoy what's left for another bit. Keep up your thought-provoking posts on issues that need to be in the public arena. You do it well, John.
Another splendid and wiise essay by Mr. Hawkns.
Here's some lowly and respectful input:
1. Hawkns said: "The older you get, the more the decisions you made when you were younger are going to accumulate and shape your life. That’s when having a spouse, kids, long-time friends, your health, and some money saved up are going to really matter."
Exactly so. I regret that at 78 I have no wife or children and that most of my family are either dead or remote and out of touch. I accept that I will die alone and no one will mourn my death. So be it.
On the brighter side, at age 78 I am so grateful that I realized in my 20s that financal resources did not grow on trees, did not fall from the heavens like manna and diidn't just come along with the gray hair.
I know so many frends of mne who are boomers and never seemed to grasp this. If I were in their siituation, I think I would be suicidal.
See comments 2 and 3 below on this thread.
2. The factor that most strongly predicts ultimate success in life is not intelligence, not hard work and not even living below one's means...although all of these are virtues.
The most important factor for success is LONG TERM PLANNING. Ths is true both for individuals and institutions and movements. I adhere to a much despised and margnalized faction in our society variously labelled "the far riight" (although I'm a liberal on more iissues than I am a "conservatiive" on), "White racists", "zenophones" and so on. I have spent almost all of my life working in these vineyards. And I note that there is zero long term planning among us. (What a relief this will be to "progressive", "well-informed" people who get their information and ideas from "authoritative sources" like NPR and The NY Times!)
Even a person of lower and moderate intelligence, not so great industriousness, etc. will find that his life will turn out better than people more intelligent and harder working than he is.
3. A WARNNG that Mr. Hawkins might include in the future:
If you reach old age (early 60s and above) and have planned, invested, etc. and are financially successful, be prepared for an unpleasant aspect of old age.
Most of your friends and relatives will NOT have taken care of their finances. Most of them will be paupers....maybe genteel paupers but paupers all the same.
Prepare yourself. You will have friends and relatives who will approach you because they seem to expect that they are entitled to have you solve their problems.
They will want "loans" (that will never be repaid), hand outs., etc.
You must steel yourself. You will want to help out.
But you CANNOT.
You will not have sufficient resources to be the substitute for the pension or the stock portfolio they did not acquire because they they made a voluntary choice to spend their lives indulging themselves in expensive cars, skiing trips to Vail, trips to Europe and so on.
And when you refuse, they will be unashamedly angry that you are so "selfiish."
Accept it.
When a friend or relative comes to you to hit you up for a bail out "because you are rich" and you refuse, you will lose that friend or relative.
A biitter pill but one you must man it up about and take your medicine.
4. One last point...about women:
[I am not a misogynist. My father taught us gallantry and chivalry toward women to whom we were told to be loving and protective. This is the bright side of being a male chauvinist pig.]
I'm sorry if it insults women but it's a fact of life that women as a group are more obedient to authority than guys are.
Even when women rebel, they do so as directed by authority figures...it's just that the authority figures have changed and in my generation were Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug who poisoned the lives of tens of millions of women with their nasty, destructive advice.
My grandmother gave my female cousins good advice about finding a husband while you were young and goodlooking, having him get you will child and getting HIM with child.
Very few women in my generation got good advice from someone like my grandmother.
Instead, they got advice that could only lead to a life of loneliness and a bitter end.
Here endeth the lesson!
Wow, I have not yet had the grasshoppers descend on me, the little ant that I am. OTOH, I am not rich or ostentatious, but also my friends are 98 percent conservative and have saved their money and planned ahead. I'm not sure if I will want to resist Christian charity, but for leftists who have spent recklessly, that will be no problem because they were unlikely to be believers anyways.
WheelHorseman: I think many of us stress ourselves out fretting about people - like your liberal spendthrifts you mention here - whom we feel we ought to save.
Some do deserve saving. I don't often publicize possibly virtuous deeds but I will say that I made significant financial gifts to Sam Francis and Joe Sobran, both of blessed memory, after they were axed by The Washington Times and National Review.
But I have often made the point that there are many fellow European Americans whose plight should leave us unaffected.
It's not going to happen that I would risk myself going to the aid of one of the people in my neighborhood of rich, leftwing Whites who has virtue-signalled by bedecking their lawns wth signs reading "Black Lives Matter", "Regulate Guns Not Women" or "In This House We Believe..." if I am ever standing at my window with a revover at hand and I see one of these people being attacked by the "urban youths" they so admire.
As the old saying goes, these people have made their beds. Let them lie in them.
What limited years I have left and what limited resources I have to spare will go to help people like Sam and Joe.
And I feel guiltless about the matter.
Good essay, John, it's instructive to see the outline of the whole map we will travel should we survive. "Failure to plan is planning to fail," most people hear this saying but many (apparently) don't think it applies to them. I frittered away many years in my 20's doing the college and law school thing, then chased a career in my 30's. I never prioritized marriage and kids, which may have been a mistake. I do not despair, however, because I have long believed that God has a plan for my life, death, and eternity. I'm excited when I think about living forever in an ageless body after the resurrection. If we look at life as a marathon and that we are lucky if we get to stagger over the finish line cause we've worn out our mortal body, it's good to know the Lord will be waiting there, with love, to welcome us home, yes? It's sure important to remember that He's looking over our shoulder and keeping His eye on us- tempers my reactions, that's for sure!
Well said.
So, if you didn't make all the right decisions - and mistakes, let's be honest - when you were 19, and only realized it when you were 45, you're out of luck and should what? Just lay down and die?
Somewhere between your parents' obsession with Consequences when you were 15 and the Carpe Diem idiocy of your friends at 21 was the winding line of the truth, but how would you have seen it? Especially when you were young and didn't know what to look for?
Nearly half-a-century of life has taught me that the biggest deciding factor in success is LUCK. Oh, you can plan, you can work hard, you can think. But success goes to the person with the right idea in the right place at the right time, or the guy who accidentally chooses the right career, or the guy who, against all odds, manages to find a good woman and marry her at 25.
If you want to captain an aircraft carrier at 45, you have to make that decision at age 10, knowing that any one of a thousand factors beyond your control can & will keep you from that goal. Hell, if you fail the eye exam at the academy, you have to find another dream. It's that easy to lose, through no fault of your own.
So you want brutal honesty? Fine. The vicissitudes of life mean more than your drive, energy or good choices combined.