LEARN
Something Worth SharingLosses and Beginnings While listening to the news yesterday, I learned something new. The report stated that South Koreans are to become a year or two younger than they currently are. ‘How marvellous’, I instantly thought; the ability to lose a year or two from your age sounded great, but is it? In the case of Koreans, I discovered that yes, they will now be regarded younger than they have been as they will change to the universal ‘birthday and age’ construct. South Koreans have had a “Korean age”, in which a person is one at birth and then gains a year on the first day of each new calendar year. If someone was born in December, within 2 months they would be two (one at birth and when the new year began they gained a year). This led me to really think about the idea of losing a year or two. In the first instance, when I think of which year I’d be willing to lose from my life to be one year younger, there isn’t one. I’m happy to say that even the years of my life that included terrible events - such as losses, business failures, divorce etc - provided sufficient value, learnings and opportunities that I wouldn’t want to lose the year. Even 2020 which we lost to Covid, wouldn’t be on a list to lose as a year. I got to spend more time with my family, we created funny memories and experienced something (hopefully) unique to our lifetime. It also got me considering the issue of what is classed as ‘the start’. If Koreans regarded time in the womb as the start, that would explain birth as being ‘one’. I think we can often be fooled into believing the start or beginning of something is an obvious point - but when we look deeper, we can see that things began before we realised. The end of a business is a classic example; a demise rarely just ‘begins’, it may have stemmed from years before. A sprinter doesn’t just show up and win Olympic gold; the beginning of the race isn’t the start of that journey to champion, it probably began at school and when inspired by someone else.
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