Do It Now, While You Still Know Everything

Some were around the age I am now. Others were well into their sixties.

I’d tell them about my ambitions, my ideas, what I was going to do and how I was going to do it.

And I remember their eyes lighting up.

There was a warmth in their expressions. A sense of wonder, almost.

Some treated me as an equal. Others seemed to delight in my enthusiasm. A few managed both.

What I don’t remember is them telling me about all the things that were going to go wrong.

The debt. The heartbreak. The responsibilities. The thousand little compromises that life would eventually introduce.

They didn’t seem particularly interested in correcting me.

They just enjoyed the conversation.

And I’ve never forgotten that.

I’ve been thinking about those men recently because I now find myself on the other side of that exchange.

There are a couple of younger blokes I know, both building their careers, establishing themselves and figuring out where they fit in the world.

And occasionally, one of them will express an opinion with such absolute certainty that I can feel something stirring inside me.

Hang on, mate.

Have you considered this?

What about that?

And what happens when the thing you’re absolutely certain about turns out to be complete bollocks?

I generally try to approach it with humour. A little sarcasm, perhaps. Just enough to get them laughing at themselves rather than putting their defences up.

Because I’ve learned that arguing directly with someone who is absolutely certain of something generally achieves one thing.

They become even more certain.

Which is bloody annoying.

But there’s a complication.

I’ve had to check myself on this.

The world these young blokes are entering is not the world I entered.

I came from a generation where the idea that you could work hard, get yourself a decent job, demonstrate some loyalty and reasonably expect your employer to look after you still held some truth.

Not universally, of course. But enough that it shaped how I understood the world.

That bargain has been eroding for decades.

These young blokes don’t need me to explain that to them. They’re the ones living with it.

And yet I’ve caught myself occasionally reaching for assumptions that belong to a different time.

Which is particularly amusing when I consider my own working life.

I’ve changed careers four or five times.

I started out as an electronics technician.

Then people stopped fixing their appliances.

I became an analogue audio engineer.

Then people stopped using tape.

I was a radio DJ before computers came along and changed the way radio worked.

In the late nineties, when IT was sweeping into schools, I found myself teaching teachers how to use computers.

Some were less enthusiastic than others.

More recently, I made a living doing audio post-production.

Then the world opened up. People could get the work done overseas for a fraction of the price, or someone could set themselves up with a laptop, an audio interface and a pair of speakers and start offering services that once required a fairly substantial studio.

And now, AI.

Here I am integrating it into my video production workflow, automating processes I was doing manually not very long ago.

I’ve practically spent my working life waving goodbye to industries.

The funny thing is, I’ve actually enjoyed the change.

I’ve never really been married to a particular craft as an identity.

I’ve always respected the craft. Still do. In some ways, perhaps even more now.

I’ve watched extraordinarily talented craftsmen remain committed to their work as the world changed around them.

They knew what good work looked and sounded like. They’d spent years mastering it, and they weren’t about to compromise.

I understood that.

But the world didn’t necessarily care as much about the craft as they did.

That’s a difficult thing to reconcile.

You can be absolutely right about the quality of your work and still find yourself without a market for it.

The craftsmanship hasn’t suddenly become worthless.

The market has changed.

I’ve generally been quite happy to change with it.

And I suspect that’s one of the reasons I’ve managed to remain relevant.

Or employable, at least.

Let’s not get carried away.

But here’s the thing.

Having adapted to change throughout my working life doesn’t mean I’ve somehow acquired a complete understanding of the world these younger men are navigating.

Some of the things I learned through experience were true for the world I was experiencing.

They may not carry quite the same weight anymore.

You’d like to think that after spending a lifetime accumulating experience, the bloody stuff appreciates in value.

Apparently, some of it has an expiry date.

And perhaps that’s another form of certitude worth watching out for.

Mine.

Which brings me back to those older men.

I wonder what they saw when I stood in front of them, full of confidence, explaining how I was going to conquer the world.

Did they see the blind spots?

Did they recognize the assumptions I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to test?

Were they sitting there thinking, Good grief, this young bugger hasn’t got a clue?

Quite possibly.

But they didn’t feel compelled to tell me.

And I don’t think their warmth was simply a performance of encouragement.

I think some of them were genuinely delighted by my optimism.

Perhaps there was something in the exchange for them, too.

Maybe they were enjoying being around someone who still saw the world that way.

I don’t know.

I wish I could ask them.

But I do remember how they made me feel.

They took me seriously. They enjoyed my enthusiasm. They didn’t seem to need me to arrive at the same conclusions they had.

And now, when I find myself listening to a younger man express an opinion with absolute certainty, I wonder whether I might offer him something similar.

Not agreement.

Not necessarily silence, either.

Just enough room to discover things for himself.

After all, I’ve had fifty-eight years to arrive at some of my conclusions, and I’m still revising the bloody things.

Perhaps he deserves a little time with his.

The older men I remember seemed to understand that.