Contemporary Retirement

Michael Gerber, author of small business bible, The E-Myth Revisited, visited the UK last week for a workshop on his latest concept, The Dreaming Room, and this was his inspirational blog entry written from his hotel room in Leeds last Friday morning:

I have so much to say and so little time to say it.

Have you ever felt that way?

The truth is I’m 70 going on 13, and I think my soul is turned around.

According to all the rules of this game – this life thing, this whatever it is thing, this first you are born and then you do all of the things you do and feel all of the things you feel and make all those stupid mistakes and have children and more mistakes and get married and more mistakes and work and work and work and so forth and so on which nobody prepared you for, not at the beginning or anywhere along the line – according to all the rules of the game I shouldn’t be feeling this way.

At 70 I should be more sedate, ready to settle down into my wise years, my mellow years, my thoughtful years, my settling down years, my getting ready for the end years.

But no, not me. And I wonder, is there something seriously wrong with me? Is this never ending overwhelming rush of juice simply the symptom of something gone seriously awry in my peripatetic system? Or is it something else altogether? And why, Dear God, am I sitting here at 7:26 in the morning in Leeds, UK, having this solitary conversation with you wherever you are? Am I possessed?

Well, let me say this: there is something very seriously exciting going on in my life and I simply have to share it with you.

I am creating an entirely new world.

Yes, I am.

I am creating an entirely new world, the world I call dreaming. And it is growing every second of every day. It is growing in me and it is growing in the people who come to me. It is growing in the people they touch. The juice is flowing wherever this dreaming thing, which has come to me like a gift from heaven, is planted. It begins to grow. It begins to grow in little green shoots, and then it sprouts up like a great green something or other, and there are smiles everywhere I look, and I can’t help smiling when I see them, and my heart feels warm and it fills my chest and throat, and I am a hopeless romantic, yes, but when everyone around me who is reachable at all, begins to talk and act like a 13 year old, something, something, something inexpressibly joyful is taking place. And that’s what pulled me to my laptop at now 7:40 in the a.m. in Leeds, UK…I had to tell it to someone!

And it’s beastly outside!

Can they see the bright light glaring behind the shades of my hotel room, glaring, glaring, like a small sun, behind the shades of my hotel room in Leeds, UK, can the people walking down the street in Leeds, UK in their cold weather morning clothes, looking so tired and grumpy and stuck in their early morning gear going to the job routine, can they see the bright light looking as if it might explode from my window, as they walk sullenly resignedly past, wearily past my sixth story hotel window down there on the everyday street, can they feel what’s going on in here?

Can you?

Are you ready to strip off your cold weather gear, strip off your wet weather gear, strip down to shorts, to flowered shirts, to the hot weather stuff that speaks of romance, and play, and just plain sexy thought?

Are you ready to reinvent your entire life?!

Then come play with me.

I’m 70 and I’m dangerous and I’m not to be repressed!

And all manner of green things are growing in here!

I’m Michael Gerber.
Chief Dreamer
In The Dreaming Room®
Come dream with me!

posted by Annie Harrison  # 7:57 AM