Call the Midlife (19 page)

But hang on, you numpty! You promised yourself not to make any more gleaming errors, no more avoidable mistakes, no more hedonistic passions over what makes sense for the piggy bank. Say it again, and slowly this time.

Six million – that’s a lot of broken biscuits.

‘We need to look at the numbers,’ said my pal, who is also one of my gurus.

I have several father figures whom I go to for advice, my friend Ian being right at the top of the list. He started life as an optician in Hampstead with just one shop. While he was asking his patients, ‘Is it better with lens A, or now with lens B?’ his more garrulous brother was out cutting his teeth in the London property market. Individually they were all pina but no colada, but when the two of them got together they were unstoppable.

Apply a couple of half-decent minds to a business run in the majority by wide boys and fly-by-nights and watch them clean up. I’ve seen it so many times. It happens a lot with ex-Formula 1 drivers. They often make five times in the commercial world what they ever made driving a racing car, thanks to their almost autistic ability for analysis, especially when it comes to figures. Suffice to say Ian & Co. now own their own real-life Monopoly board as well as several significant parts of South America. Ian had more advice to quell my trigger-happy enthusiasm:

‘Stick to what you know, and even if you can’t do that – do anything but invest in a restaurant. Food always tastes better in someone else’s.’

He was right on the money again, as wise and as astute as ever. But he could see I was crestfallen.

‘What the heck, we’ll look at the numbers anyway, if you like.’

I knew he was only humouring me and I should have bowed out, but I so wanted this deal to happen. But then there was the issue of the exit plan.

I learned a few years ago that the thing about going into a business is in fact not the going in at all but the coming out. The exit strategy is King. It’s quite bizarre if you think about it. Going in to get out – and the sooner the better – for as much profit as possible.

Transient and short-term, hard-nosed business, dressed up as long-term commitment cut short by an offer ‘too good to refuse’. Like always going into a relationship thinking how and when
you’re going to break up because it’s probably just a matter of time, so what’s the point in taking the risk to find out otherwise. Perhaps that’s why so many businessmen have trouble holding down marriages, because ‘long term’ per se is simply not in their nature. Just as many of the greatest companies in the world, which have been built up over decades by a single individual with a clear vision and total commitment, are scooped up by a titanic corporate fund the moment that same individual cashes in his chips at life’s ultimate cashier’s kiosk, and then broken up and sold off.

As I speak, that’s where Langan’s is, I suppose. I want to commit to twenty years or more of proprietorship, but everyone around me is talking of buy, increase value, sell, which is just not what I’m interested in anyway.

So what’s the point?

The truth is, there isn’t any.

Me buying Langan’s would be yet another square peg in a round hole for the universe to pop out again when I wasn’t looking.

For me, nothing’s about the dosh alone any more.

It’s about having a good time in the process, something the balance sheet has trouble highlighting. It’s the happy pounds I’m after.

Pounds are like human years and dog years, as far as I’m concerned. There are different types. There are angry pounds, sad pounds, bad pounds, stressed pounds, shallow pounds, deep pounds but the best of all are the happy pounds.

Never buy somebody else’s passion – unless the passion comes with the package. True passion is a whites-of-the-eyes thing, you have to stare deep into someone’s soul and hope to see a sign that tells you they mean it.

So many people contacted me with regards to buying Langan’s to see if they could get involved. Raising the money would not be an issue. But! I couldn’t look them in the eye and tell them I really meant it. Not at the price that was being asked. Whenever other people’s money is involved, I think the best policy is to treat it with even more respect than if it was your own. Otherwise you will never care enough to make it work.

Langan’s would have to wait: no matter how special and unique it is, it’s still just a business and a building and I’m only going to get out of it what I put in. My family needs me much more than any restaurant does and I need my family way more than that.

Life is family. Family is life. That’s it. That’s the formula. End of story. And anyone who spends a second of their life doing anything else unless they absolutely have to is a fool. Relevance is important but the ultimate relevance is the one we have to our loved ones. Lose that and in the end whatever else you have will be empty and worthless by comparison.

The golfer Sam Torrance was once asked what epitaph he would like his family to inscribe on his headstone. In a heartbeat he replied quietly and succinctly:

He was a great dad
.

What could be more relevant than that?

Happiness

The Monk

Matthieu was a young scientist at the start of a promising career when he became disillusioned with life. This drove him to abandon his native Paris and spend the next quarter of a century searching for wisdom and meaning. This he found, like many before him, in the sanctuary of various isolated hermitages situated high up in the Himalayas, famed for their peace and tranquillity. After over two decades of deep contemplation, apprenticeship and meditation, Matthieu was then called back into public life following a challenge for him to take on his own father, as a renowned academic, in a recorded debate. The subject? The meaning of life both here on earth and wherever else it might come into play in the known.

Their exchanges were chronicled and eventually became the subject of a worldwide bestseller:
The Monk and the Philosopher
.

Since then Matthieu has continued to accept his calling to spend the majority of his remaining days – he’s now almost seventy – travelling around the world lecturing anyone who cares to listen about the various thoughts and theories he has developed as a result of thousands of hours of meditation. One such talk I was lucky enough to attend earlier this year, as part of my own ongoing research for answers to the midlife questions ‘Who am I?’, ‘What am I?’, ‘Why are we here?’ ‘What should I be doing?’

The talk was entitled ‘Altruism’.

This was of particular interest at the time because only two hours earlier I had arrived home after attending one of our Children in Need charity events. The event in question was a lavish trip to the Monaco Grand Prix with six couples who had donated almost £1.2 million to the BBC’s children’s charity for the privilege. I had no
doubt that the couples had been sincerely altruistic in their giving. Or was the charity benefiting more from a vicarious side effect than from a genuine selfless act of proactive benevolence? A sentiment that just so happened to be the very crux of what Matthieu had to say.

He claims altruism is a vital quality the human race needs to acquire if it is to stand any chance of survival. By 2030, 300 million of the existing 1.2 billion species currently inhabiting the Earth will have become extinct. The knock-on effect of which will be astounding and irreversible on our planet’s diversity. By 2050, Matthieu says, if we continue to carry on consuming the world’s resources at the rate we are now, without any increase – which is highly unlikely – we will require two more planet Earths to sustain the supply of everything we need. As that is not an option, Matthieu wonders what the hell we expect is going to happen.

‘Of course, it is not in our nature to jump out of the way of a car until it’s about to run us over. This is understandable. However, the problem becomes much more issue when the cars eventually keep coming one after the other until there is no longer anything we can do to avoid getting hit.’

He is convinced that’s where we’re heading, and is confounded by anyone who sees the situation differently. He is in no doubt that they are deluding themselves and anyone else who listens to them. He is on a mission to get us to realize that we have to save ourselves and we need to do it yesterday, not today or tomorrow – by then it will already be too late. He believes if you’re not doing something to secure the future within twenty-four hours of reading this, you are accepting the fact that it’s OK for our children to witness the beginning of the end of humanity as we know it.

He’s also of the opinion there’s never been a better world to save.

‘Notwithstanding what we are told on the news every day, there has never been less conflict – as long as man and woman have been on the earth. The atrocity of the last two world wars put paid to that. Thanks to radio and television we were shown how horrible, how unheroic, how unwinnable war is, regardless of whichever side
claims victory on any given day. There have never been fewer murders, with murder rates globally falling a hundred fold compared to a thousand years ago. The perception is we live in a more violent age, but the truth is that this is not at all the case.’

He is desparate for us to realize we have that ability and means to be happier than ever before. At the heart of this is altruism. So, can we ever become truly altruistic without considering what’s in it for us? Even if what we end up doing is for the good of others, will this element of self-interest ultimately negate any positive effects it might have?

Thankfully, yes.

Phew.

Matthieu cites footage of a man caught on CCTV jumping off the platform of an underground station to rescue a man who has fainted and fallen into the path of an oncoming train. The footage shows the man dragging both himself and the unconscious individual to safety with less than a hundredth of a second to spare. Given the time frame, one would assume this has to be an unconscious reflex action and therefore an act of genuinely selfless altrutism.

‘Almost but not quite,’ says Matthieu. ‘It was indeed argued by some that this was an automatic innate reflex action from one human being with regards to saving another. Good news for the individual about to get pulped by the 8.10 from Waterloo, but not good news in that case for altruism. This is because to be truly altruistic, all action must first be considered and then acted upon. Unfortunately, from a purely academic point of view, automatic altruism does not count!

‘However, the good news is, I argue that our hero did make a selfless decision, just an unbelievably quick one. Perhaps the quickest decision of his life, almost definitely so. In which case, it was truly altruistic. Otherwise, how come everyone who witnesses such potential tragedies doesn’t put themselves in the line of fire to save the life of a relative stranger?’

I can’t tell you how life-affirming this was to hear first-hand from such a softly spoken man, respected around the world for his vast
insight into caring love and compassion.

Now, the other amazing thing about Matthieu is that he has also been declared ‘the happiest man on Earth’. This was the conclusion following a series of neurological tests he underwent over twenty years ago. During which his brain patterns were recorded in various states of conscious meditation for up to twelve hours within the confines of an MRI scanner. The results were literally off the charts, way beyond anything ever witnessed before, proving beyond any doubt that Matthieu had an unprecedented ability to control his brain mind. As opposed to his mind controlling him, which is the case for most of us.

Similar results were recorded when he was asked to meditate on compassion, with the parts of his hippocampus now ‘known’ to be responsible for the emotion of compassion lighting up like a firework display. In fact, regardless of what emotion he was asked to evoke, Matthieu could deliver jaw-dropping consistency time after time.

With similar calm focus, throughout his talk he continued to guide us through why he was optimistic rather than pessimistic over our future and our potential for collective conscious altruism.

‘It’s what we humans do. We take or make whaever we need to survive and if altruism is currently the thing, that’s what we’ll end up turning to. It will become part of our evolution. We move as one because we are one.’

And the evidence for what Matthieu was saying could be seen in the room that night. The venue, Camden Hall – a place I’d visited only once before, to get married to my first wife, bizarrely – was packed to the rafters, a complete and utter sell-out; whereas a couple of years before, the same guy with the exact same message had stood in front of a mere handful of people.

Of course, many people have issues with Buddhism and I can understand why. Retreating to a beautiful mountain for as long as it takes to find yourself is an inherently selfish and self-centred thing to do. While the rest of the world is having to get on with life the best it can, monks are never seen again: what use is that to mankind
as a whole? And talking of ‘man’ kind, women aren’t exactly high up in the pecking order in the Buddhist world. A friend of mine’s wife and young daughter had to wait outside a Buddhist temple while he and his eldest son were free to enter and see what all the fuss was about.

And as much as I am a huge fan of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, no wonder he’s always grinning from ear to ear considering all the gorgeous hotels he gets to stay in free of charge courtesy of all the billionaires and Hollywood superstars who love him so much.

Still, the message that elemental balance is good for each of us and the world as one, is important to get across however that may be achieved. So I’m happy to turn a blind eye to that anomaly if you are. Plus, I did get to meditate with Matthieu, which was wonderful.

‘Anyone can meditate, ten seconds a day to start will do,’ he purred. ‘Think of each session like taking the stopper out of a bottle of perfume, then as the stopper is removed for longer, the more prevalent the smell becomes.’

Our energy during meditation should be directed towards compassion first and foremost, for the world, our fellow humans and ourselves. This is the key to happiness, the kind of happiness that has been proven to be infectious, as opposed to sadness which can affect us all but cannot be taught. This is the defining difference between the two.