As we travel through life we all learn lessons which should inform the rest of our time on the planet – and the longer we live the more we learn. To assist the younger members of the audience check out this list of ‘16 things it takes most of us 50 years to learn‘. Read and inwardly digest it or as Jordan recommends, have it tatooed on your body somewhere…Here are my favourite nuggets:
3. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests you think she’s pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.6. There is a very fine line between “hobby” and “mental illness.”8. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be “meetings.”10. If there really is a God who created the entire universe with all of its glories, and he decides to deliver a message to humanity, he will NOT use as his messenger a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle or in some cases, really bad make-up too.13. No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.
As good as the above advice may be, I have to take issue with one item on the list. In my experience, the following advice is not true:
16. Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.
When God put me together I was not blessed with the ‘dancing gene‘. The last time I danced publicly (except for increasingly vigorous foot-tapping when I went clubbing) was at my sister’s wedding almost 8 years ago. I was very drunk at the time, but I don’t think that detracted from the quality of the dancing. In fact the drink simply provided the ‘dutch courage’ required to dance at all. Anyway, the advice that nobody cares if you dance well – just get up and dance – is nonsense. People were laughing at me on the night and have continued to laugh whenever the occasion is discussed. The next time I dance publicly will be at my own wedding (five weeks today!), and it will be restricted to the romantic holding onto each other and shuffling in a circle in the centre of the room.