Start planning ahead now

“When you were born you cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries, while you rejoice.” – Rabindranath Tagoe

I asked a 68-year-old man who was playing lottery what he would do if he was to win R10-million. He really looked puzzled and devastated by my question, he looked at me and said, “Well there are many things I would do. “Give me an example,” I asked. He then said, “I would take R2-million and give it to the poor in my village and keep the remaining eight million. He really didn’t know what he would do, I caught him off-guard, and he had no plan at all. To him a poor person is the one without money, not the one who has no plan like him.

I spoke to a second lotto player on Thursday this past week. This 65-year-old doctor has a PHD and told me he was retiring at the end of August, which is next month. I asked him a question as well, “How do you feel now that you are retiring?” He said: “I have mixed emotions about it, to be honest with you Veli, I am very stressed about it.” He has worked for 40 years and still has no clear and tangible idea of life after retirement. He was once 30 years old and 65 looked very far and he procrastinated his plans.

This shows that our education system only prepares you to be an employee and nothing else. I hope you start planning for your later years now and be of value instead of being devalued by the system. You have gifts, talents, abilities and potential far beyond your imagination. Please, don’t let it go to waste by listening to common consciousness.

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