We recently heard on the grapevine of the passing of another participant in the wider building materials industry, at the much-too-young age of 46. Whenever we hear news like this, which is all-too-frequently, we always loosen our collars and wonder at our own mortality. We will all die - that is a certainty - but we all hope to spend a reasonable amount of time on this Earth before we go, and to depart with dignity and without pain. Ideally, we will leave the planet a better place, through our actions, than when we first arrived. How many of us can say that?
My younger daughter Jemima is 17 on the day that I write this. She seems to have been a small child very recently, but now I find that she is practically an adult (albeit still small - she has small people as parents). She is anxious to be grown up, to be an adult, to do adult things, and to flee the home. What I think that she does not yet realise is that you are an adult for a very long time, and that you are young for such a short time. To flee your youth seems to me to be unseemly and ill-advised, especially since most of us eventually wish somehow to regain it, to re-live it, or to endlessly repeat it. She is a fan of Korean ‘K-pop’ and has realised that one of the members of a newly-formed band is younger than her. Well, Jemima, get used to it. I was for several years the youngest person at the Global Gypsum Conference (and at various other industry events), but those days are behind me now. New people get to be the youngest, but again, not for long. It’s like an inexorable conveyor belt, forever being fed with new people, new inductees into the industry.
Jemima will soon leave home, leaving myself and my wife blinking and slightly regretful that the time with our children went by so fast. We may yearn for those days again. I have no doubt though, that Jemima will leave and will not even look back. Like Andy in Toy Story 3 (sniff), she must move on to the next stage, no matter the wrench (for us). Such is the circle of life.
In my early days in the industry, many people were kind to me, taking the time to teach me the basics of gypsum and insulation. As I’ve passed through into middle age, I think that people presume that you know what needs to be known, but I still greatly appreciate advice and teaching from everyone. Only through accepting the incompleteness of your own knowledge can you remain open to further learning. A few years ago we helped to run a course in the gypsum industry on the ‘basics of gypsum’ and one 50-year veteran of the industry emerged at the end and told us that he had still learned new things. One useful approach to learning, I think, is to be very open when you do not understand something. People are generally very pleased to help you to learn something new. Oddly enough, asking someone for help is said to endear the person asking for help to the person being asked for help. So, make a friend by asking for help!
In some ways I feel that I am in the middle of ‘Middle Age,’ but at the age of 51, I’m probably past it. However, I hope that the best is yet to come. After all, having been around for all this time, I have learned a few things: how to read and write, how to drive a car and ride a unicycle, how to work a computer and how to cook some tasty dishes and some other stuff besides. I’ve met a lot of people over the years at many industry events, and in industrial plants all over the world. Now, with all of that behind me, even though I might be starting to forget some names and faces and facts, I hope that my usefulness to the industry is coming to its peak. That is one of the reasons why a death at an early age is such a loss to the world: in our 40s and 50s, we’re only just getting going!
On the other hand, we have to recognise that once we’re at the top of the hill, the only way forward is down. I have recently heard that in life, it is the preparation for the end that counts most. Perhaps critical knowledge and advice needs to be passed on to the next generation. Mark Twain recounts in ‘Life on the Mississippi’ how a senior captain would give a running commentary on sandbars and channels, and how Twain had ignored it since he thought that the captain was just doing it to amuse himself. Eventually he wised-up and started to listen - and got his riverboat pilot’s licence. Being a teacher or mentor might be one of the most significant things we ever do with our lives. Everyone remembers their teachers, after all. It used to be that our advice would go to youthful inductees - although now it might go into a machine-learning algorithm. In either case, it’s immortality, of a sort.
Tidying one’s affairs, saying proper good-byes, ticking whichever boxes that most need to be ticked. That applies not only as we approach the end of our working lives but also for the final exit from life. This is not maudlin: This is just a fact. As we leave, others will take our place. Perhaps they will make a better job of it than we have. In any case, let’s raise the bar as high as we can, do what we can today and tomorrow, and leave this world a better place than when we found it.
