No B.S Friday: I feel sorry for young people these days…
Ok, I’ve got some marriage advice for you.
No, I know you didn’t ask for it. But neither did that guy on the internet, and here we are.
I’m not sure why I feel qualified to dish out relationship advice now and then. I guess I am ‘successfully’ married – Connie and I are happily racking up the years. Most marriages don’t last as long as ours has these days.
So you know, don’t take wealth advice from someone who’s poor. Don’t take marriage advice from someone living alone in a flat above a shop.
And I also feel like it’s pretty obvious where I’m coming from. I’m not sitting in a mumu on top of a mountain pretending to be some mumu guru, with some dazzling insight into the ultimate nature of reality.
I’m a guy in a baseball cap and a Merc. It should be obvious what you’re getting.
And so here’s my advice.
Stick with it.
Just stick it out.
In a way I feel sorry for our younger generations. They just have so much choice. Total personalisation is the norm. Every app, every consumer good should be totally customisable. Of course you should choose the colour that matches your distinct personality (provided your distinct personality gels with one of these six pastels.)
We’re taught to cut the cloth to fit the man, change the good to fit the consumer. This is the way it works. If the things not working, the thing needs to change.
And this is great if you’re buying a phone, but not if you’re choosing a life partner.
And a life partner is a journey, it’s a road. It’s not a one-off consumer good.
Sometimes the road will lead through sunny vistas and pleasant breezes. Sometimes it will lead through shady bogs that skirt the sewage treatment plant.
That doesn’t mean the road is wrong. Maybe it just means ‘keep going’.
Because the instinct to ‘find the perfect thing’, when applied to a life partner, can have us chasing our tails looking for that “perfect” partner.
It can have us thinking the thing needs to change, when what needs to change is our relationship to the thing – our relationship.
And a relationship is something that builds over time. Every year you spend shopping around is a year you didn’t spend cultivating and building your relationship into something beautiful.
And I think everything is like this. Don’t spend your whole life shopping around for a career, when the more time you spend in a career the higher up the tree you go. Don’t spend your whole life shopping around for the right investment strategy, when time on the tools is the best way to learn how to get great results, no matter what you choose.
Time is an incredible tool. Just ask old mate compound interest.
So that’s my advice to young people. Stick it out. There’s limits to that idea of course. But stick it out. Give it a crack. Put in the time.
Because time is the great creator of all things.
And you need it on your side.
JG.