Doom!

(Click here to read this article in Afrikaans)

There are once again a lot of people who are dusting off old ghosts and conjuring up new ones at the moment. The Prophets of Doom are always out in full force!

I can imagine the prophets of doom preaching their predictions of disaster all through the centuries, after every catastrophe that has struck the world. They predict all sorts of bad things for the earth and the economy, and they support their claims by pointing to recent events like the Dubai Collapse, the Credit Crunch, the Icelandic Volcano or the Greek Bankruptcy. Today let me give you the best and only truthful prediction you’ve ever heard in your life – which is that no-one can predict the future! History is full of people who’ve tried. Even Nostradamus and Siener van Rensburg’s predictions only get “deciphered” after something has happened that was supposedly predicted in just that way. It makes me think of palm readers and people who see the “other side”. All absolute nonsense.

But the problem is that many people believe this nonsense and live their lives according to it. This brings them enormous personal misery. And has been doing so for centuries already! Why would it be any different this time? Why would the predictions be on the mark this time, for the first time in mankind’s history?

We are living now. Do now what you have to do now, and then you won’t have to worry about what’s coming tomorrow. As they say, “We will cross that bridge when we get there.” All that we can be certain of is “death and taxes”, and so it’s around those two things that I plan my life. Not around the predictions of thousands of “prophets”.

I am making sure that I will be taken care of in my old age. If the prophets are once again wrong, then I’ll be taken care of. And if they’re right for the first time in the history of humankind, it won’t matter and I will be at peace with my fate.

I definitely can’t arrange my life to account for every possible occurrence on earth. If you wanted to do that, you’d have to do the following:

Never again leave your house, because a car could hit you.
Never save, because .........................

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