The BBC is running a series called “Defining Moments” where they ask several leading personalities about a defining moment in their lives. I like the defining moment described by Ahmed Zaki Yamani, long time Oil Minister for Saudi Arabia, here’s an excerpt:
I was not really so scared of death as much as I was concerned about what I hadn’t done in my life, and those I was leaving behind – my children, my wife, my mother, and so on.
This was in response to his abduction by the notorious Carlos the Jackal where he threatened to kill Yamani if the Austrian authorities did not broadcast a statement from his group.
I’ve been having a lot of morbid thoughts lately and I am continuously concerned about the fate of my family on my death. Apart from the normal concerns like how will my children grow up without me, how will my wife fair, will they stay in Bahrain or go to Scotland, will they finish school, university, have a good and safe life. I think most of these thoughts stem from financial insecurity. I wonder if my thoughts would be the same if I was more financially secure? Or is it that now I have passed 40 that I am subconsciously thinking that it’s down-hill from here? I feel that a turning point is coming up once again. Time to re-invent myself. I’ve gone through this process several times in my life so far. From being an engineer to a pilot to a businessman. Tremendous change between one career and another. I’m not going to give up being a business man, I just feel that I can probably do better adopting another career. This time I’m turning to film and television production. I’ve been toying with this idea a lot and from what I see from the customers I come in contact with through my job that I can do a lot better. But knowing me, I will go after excellence rather than financial gain. So will this change in direction be beneficial? I don’t know. I have to think about this much more before I make the switch. Maybe one way is carry on what I’m doing now and start a small production house on the side. But small has never figured that highly in my vocabulary. That’s the problem. I have a driving need to do better. Better than anyone else around me and that requires money. So we’re back to square one: financial stability. We have a saying in Bahraini culture: “hold on to your crazy person before someone even crazier comes to you!” This loosely translates to “a bird in the hand is better than 10 in the bush”/ Ok. Thinking cap back on. How do I achieve financial sufficiency?
