Know your place and we can have a conversation

Many years ago, the great General Yeo wrote in his blog. You must know your place…only then can a meaningful conversation take place. At that time, I had not gone into business yet, so this came across as full frontal and even slightly arrogantly misplaced.

But now it all makes perfect sense….as after so many years of running my own enterprise I can see it all coming together perfectly.

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‘Yesterday I met a fuck who thinks I owe him a living – this fellow is literally a zero with just two tic tacs in his pocket and he wants to make something out of his miserable lot. But since he can’t even hold a conversation in a respectable way to demonstrate that he isn’t his worst enemy.

He screwed it up lah. Epic fail – he actually mentioned in passing, if you want respect, you should earn my respect! Can you imagine that! Me. The equivalent of the Großkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes a seasoned veteran farmer who has seen the passing and coming of more harvest than this fuck will ever see in ten life times. And I have to earn his respect!

I told this fuck to go eat more salt and come back to me in ten years!

Meanwhile he should remove himself from my sight as firearms laws are lax in the kampung.

Some people do not seem to understand. The facts of life lah. I don’t need to earn their respect as much as they need to earn mine!

Where did they even get that ridiculous idea from? Who put it in their brain?

The very notion that equality is an idea that one just grabs from thin air like a magician. Why can’t these people cultivate a working understanding of their place in society to manage themselves and others effectively. In the way – my workers regularly accord me the respect and courtesy befitting a landowner. Or if I walk into a shop retailing clothes the sales person treats me like a valued customer.

It is not in my opinion an unreasonable proposition to expect to be treated with the respect and courtesy one deserves. If I don’t get it or the line is crossed….I have absolutely no problems walking right out of the door.

This brings me to the importance for a man to invest in the idea to build a strong foundation early on in life, so that he may be able to leverage on it later on – but how does one even go about this task? When all the raw material to construct that foundation resides in men who have a wealth of experience and character. The answer is humility. As before one can command. One must first learn to obey – to me this is just a round about way of saying, one would do well to know ones place.

The problem as I see it is simply this. There exist some people who actually believe something can actually come out of nothing. That’s to say they never once consciously invested any thinking in the whole idea of building a strong foundation in life – by foundation. I do not mean skill per se. Sure that is certainly a very important component. But more importantly, they should invest in the idea of character building. It could be something like keeping time, being cool under pressure, honoring ones word, developing the ease and confidence to say No!, seeing a difficult thing thru right to the very end or just knowing when to shut up and sit down before one falls down.

It is only when a man stands on the bedrock of a solid foundation of character that he can truly be confident and assured of what he can and cannot do – There are no short cuts in life – not when it comes to this chapter. As a lack in character due to a failure to work on one’s weaknesses diligently will definitely show up….and when that happens people who may open doors and opportunities for you may very well say to you, ‘this conversation is over,’ just because they don’t believe you’re worth their time – and when that happens again and again, rest assured, you will just go around in big and small circles – you will go nowhere!’