Pride - In the name of love
I think it was the great Hannibal that said "I love it when a plan comes together", probably just before he cannibalised an elephant. Or something along those lines.
It's also what I'd be saying if I was the friend I was speaking to at lunchtime.
About 3 or 4 years ago there was a fashionable financial advisor among my friends, those who could afford him anyway, (that's 2 of them) who told them to start "buying to let" flats, for some reason particularly in the Reading area.
It was also around this time a few more of us embraced something called "The Landmark Forum", a weekend of tearing apart every notion you have about who you are and putting yourself back together filled with truth and self-belief. Not an easy process granted, but well worth every sobbing "I'm sorry and I love you".
So here are my friends, all pumped up on love and confidence with a financial advisor telling them to get, literally, millions on debt.
A recipe for disaster I hear you mutter with your shaking head. At least, looking back at it now, that's what my shaking head is muttering.
But no! this is not the case for, as I said, the plan has come together.
I remember many conversations with these shining lights of derring-do. Intoxicating they were, "you just taken some of the capital growth from the house your in, buy another one on an interest-only mortgage, and let the growth and rent on it pay for itself and give you a little cream on top".
The economics are so glaringly simple it's hard to understand why I didn't just chuck in my lot with them and watch the pounds mount, until I remember, now as with then, these people know what they're doing.
These guys have got Cambridge education and engineering degrees, and more importantly great, big balls of steel. I on the other hand, educational plaudits put aside, am more often than not blinded into stupidity by the smell of victory, as anyone who's almost lost to me at pool can testify (just pot the black... go on, get in the hole... oh, you bastard!).
Clearly, know what they're doing, they did. Spending like lunatics on 2 or 3 flats at a time, tapping furiously at spreadsheets and sitting tight through the next couple of years when any idiot could go to a bank with a tenner in their pocket and buy a terrace street in Hull.
Finally, now that the world's sane again, they can look at the empires they've created and smile.
Not the huge Cheshire Cat smile that says "Oh, you've probably just noticed how absolutely incredible I am" but a much more attractive eye smile, with a hint of upward movement at the corners.
This is the kind of smile that says, "I rather suspected that would work, but for a couple of moments there I did crap myself a little bit".
He's managed to sort it so that his missus can give up work for a bit, have time with the baby and give some real thought to what she wants to do next. Not only that, but when his contract runs out he;ll have bought himself a nice bit of time to do the same.
All of this, in the end, gives me a rather toothy grin of pride and a re-newed belief in having the courage of your convictions.
Here's to you fella, may your hare-brained scheme's long be fruitful.
It's also what I'd be saying if I was the friend I was speaking to at lunchtime.
About 3 or 4 years ago there was a fashionable financial advisor among my friends, those who could afford him anyway, (that's 2 of them) who told them to start "buying to let" flats, for some reason particularly in the Reading area.
It was also around this time a few more of us embraced something called "The Landmark Forum", a weekend of tearing apart every notion you have about who you are and putting yourself back together filled with truth and self-belief. Not an easy process granted, but well worth every sobbing "I'm sorry and I love you".
So here are my friends, all pumped up on love and confidence with a financial advisor telling them to get, literally, millions on debt.
A recipe for disaster I hear you mutter with your shaking head. At least, looking back at it now, that's what my shaking head is muttering.
But no! this is not the case for, as I said, the plan has come together.
I remember many conversations with these shining lights of derring-do. Intoxicating they were, "you just taken some of the capital growth from the house your in, buy another one on an interest-only mortgage, and let the growth and rent on it pay for itself and give you a little cream on top".
The economics are so glaringly simple it's hard to understand why I didn't just chuck in my lot with them and watch the pounds mount, until I remember, now as with then, these people know what they're doing.
These guys have got Cambridge education and engineering degrees, and more importantly great, big balls of steel. I on the other hand, educational plaudits put aside, am more often than not blinded into stupidity by the smell of victory, as anyone who's almost lost to me at pool can testify (just pot the black... go on, get in the hole... oh, you bastard!).
Clearly, know what they're doing, they did. Spending like lunatics on 2 or 3 flats at a time, tapping furiously at spreadsheets and sitting tight through the next couple of years when any idiot could go to a bank with a tenner in their pocket and buy a terrace street in Hull.
Finally, now that the world's sane again, they can look at the empires they've created and smile.
Not the huge Cheshire Cat smile that says "Oh, you've probably just noticed how absolutely incredible I am" but a much more attractive eye smile, with a hint of upward movement at the corners.
This is the kind of smile that says, "I rather suspected that would work, but for a couple of moments there I did crap myself a little bit".
He's managed to sort it so that his missus can give up work for a bit, have time with the baby and give some real thought to what she wants to do next. Not only that, but when his contract runs out he;ll have bought himself a nice bit of time to do the same.
All of this, in the end, gives me a rather toothy grin of pride and a re-newed belief in having the courage of your convictions.
Here's to you fella, may your hare-brained scheme's long be fruitful.
posted by Paul Seymour at 11:43 AM
2 Comments:
It is nice that you feel you have gained something positive out of "The Forum", a controversial course in which some have had psychotic episodes afterwards, or worse. Also a controversial company with a very litigious nature.
I am curious to hear what your opinion is of the various events currently unfolding regarding the documentary video, Voyage to the Land of the New Gurus. After the airing of this film to 1.5 million people in France, Landmark Education was investigated for unpaid-labor practices and left all of France one month later in June 2004. Landmark Education is currently attempting to suppress Freedom of Speech and abuse the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to get this film removed from the internet. There is more about this at Landmark Education wants to make French news report a “forbidden video” on the Net and at Why did Landmark Education leave France?, as well as reported in The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, as carried from Reuters in Google faces legal challenges over video service, and at the Electronic Frontier Foundation at Landmark and the Internet Archive.
More information about other controversial Large Group Awareness Training organizations, at :
The Truth about Human Potential Seminars
Unfortunately I'm on a dial-up connection today, so I can't download the video, but I certainly will when I get home.
Having had such a positive outcome myself, and knowing several people who've all come through the weekend without ill effect, I can't really understand what could have happened to create psychotic episodes in anyone, unless the potential was already there, and if I remember rightly, at the very beginning of the weekend each participant is told without ambiguity, that if they have current or a history of mental illness they are required to reveal it to a member of staff and then with that memeber of staff discuss their suitability.
As far as surpressing freedom of speech goes, a rather easy to cite outrage in my opinion, I do feel the secrecy with which they strive to protect the content of the course can border on the sinister, but they are so clear with their rules about recording an part of the course, i.e. that you don't, (to protect the identities of people who may want to share very private insights) and that to publish any specific content from the course is to violate the contract you signed when you started, that they are well within their rights to persue anyone who has broken that contract.
I'm certain a very clever and self-serving privacy structure they've created, which can't help but appear duplicitious as it's maganaimous gesture of identity protection is coupled with the "happy" side effect of not allowing anyone to give a true review of the course.
This duplicity however is mirrored in the critics of the course and the education structure, as I wouldn't be surprised to find that most of it's loudest critics have only second or perhaps even third hand knowledge of teh full process.
I'm all for free speech, and having the voice and ability to criticise any oragnisation is a luxury sadly not seen all over the world, so viva la revolution, long may the documentary live in the world, and I think you can rest assured it will, and I hope if gives people cause to think about something beyond the minutaie of their everyday lives, but understand that it's publications violates a contract and that they are allowed to try and protect their interests.
Good luck with you search for truth, mine is that I got a lot from my participation in the landmark forum, and that I wouldn't have the inner peace I currently enjoy without having learnt some of their basic tenets.
I'll let you know what I think of the vid.
Cheers for the comment too, it really excited me to think of someone other than my Mum reading what I wrote!
Paul
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