Can we Resurrect Paul the Octopus? Please.

A friend of mine asked me the other day – what is success? It is a tough question to answer because even failing is success, in some instances - especially when you are discovering what you can and can’t do. When this happens, you succeed in not repeating the failure again!

I ran 100 meters when I was 16 years old at an athletic event where I won the Individual Championship. I did the distance in an impressive 14 seconds. Given the state of stop clocks at that time it was probably 17 seconds. Who knows!

I knew, at the time, that Jimmy Hines had run the distance in 9.9 seconds so while I succeeded in winning a medal my failure to beat Jimmy’s record was a huge success in a way because I decided on that day I could never become an competitive athlete. [In Berlin, 2009, Usain Bolt showed the world he could do the 100m distance in 9.58 seconds. In the same year, in Manchester, he ran 150m in 14.23 seconds but the last 100 m of that race at 8.7 seconds. That’s basically the speed at which a normal bird flies, 25 mph! I would not be surprised if this superhuman starts to teleport one day].

Humans are supposedly limitless but if The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) can get a triple hernia throwing people around, you realize that we chase limitless goals until we hit a wall and then change our goals and the chase continues. I am not suggesting that if you fail once you give up but deep down you will know if you want to try again. Always listen to “deep down”.

Successful people know themselves and avoid putting themselves in places where they know they will almost surely fail. But politicians do not seem to know this. Or news anchors! Let me explain.

It’s that time again, when things across the world are not so OK but Americans head to the polls to pick a President, faced with two imperfect choices, in an atmosphere full of acerbic fumes that are close to flash point and media channels with ill-read, poorly informed and massively opinionated anchors. If you switched from a left leaning channel to a right legged one, you would need more than Dramamine to survive the day, unless you are someone like me – hugely amused by these news pundits who take themselves ever so seriously and assume all of us do too!

Paul the Octopus, the great animal psychic correctly predicted 12 out of 14 epic soccer matches died in 2010 so we can’t ask him to guide us. His human counterparts Allan Lichtman and Nate Silver have opposing predictions, and they are super bright, so we mortals are in a real quandary.

In the sixteenth century, Thomas Hobson had 40 horses in his stable and when people came to ride them, they would pick the best mounts, overworking the few good ones. So, Hobson decided that riders had to simply pick the horse closest to the stable door. In short, he was giving people a choice – this one or none.

On the 60th quadrennial election of this nation, Hobson’s choice is back, with each party giving us one candidate (and a back up if something terrible were to happen to the lead) when all of are thinking – in a country with 350m people is this the best we could do?

But it is what it is so here’s my advice:

1) Don’t abstain (the “none” in Hobson’s choice is not a good pick).

2) Vote for the party you like best, if not the person.

3) Have faith that no elected leader in this country can go entirely loco. We have good checks and balances.

4) Don’t listen to the news anchors who spew vitriol. Tune off these channels.

Martin Van Buren was the first natural-born American president. He is also the person who started the Democratic Party. In 1840 his campaign slogan was “Vote for OK” which meant Vote for Old Kinderhook, Martin's town. It appears this boosted the use of OK across America making it a household word.

So, while we head to the polls let’s mutter Buren’s election-cry and say, OK, let’s vote.

Your fearless follower