Use the past as a springboard, not a hammock

The year was 1990 and I was still a teenager. I would spend my evenings studying, playing Nintendo or out with friends. Life seemed simpler back then.

Recently Spotify played a song that propelled me right back to that time, a time when I was in a small bar dancing to a song called Sit Down, played by the band James. Newcastle Brown Ale was flying through the air and everyone was sitting down and standing up, it was hilarious, fun, innocent, and definitely better than parts of modern life where Zoom and Google Docs seem endless.

Music is love in search of a word

It's funny how powerful music can be. How it can transport you to a different time and place.

Have you ever heard a song and been transported back to a time you'd forgotten?

In the early '90s, my friends and I were in Land rovers most weekends, driving to see bands like The Charlatans, The Farm, Stone Roses, James, and Blur. Crowd surfing, alcohol and 24 hour days were pretty common back then.

I couldn't do it now.

What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly

It can be easy to forget life doesn't end when you work for a living, have kids and go to bed before 11 pm each night.

Being in Denmark has shown me this.

Truth be told, coming to Denmark has been a little like going back in time. It's a place much like the UK in the early 1990s, only with the internet.

It still has that innocent charm about it. You know the stuff… Garden hedges instead of fences, not so many cars on the roads or parked on streets, lack of boarded-up shops on the high street, and no Amazon.

Life is simpler here, people aren't grinding at work or in life for a higher status, young kids spend days outside the home with their friends without parents worrying about stranger danger, and politics...politicians are highly trusted (something I still struggle with a little).

Even though I'm enjoying this simple life, I'm still moving forward. It's not that Denmark is trapped back in time, it's that it's been able to keep a simpler way of life, one so many of us no longer have. At the same time, Danes are moving forward where it matters, it's quite incredible really.

I can see a struggle though. A new generation of teenagers on their smartphones where TikTok and Youtubers around the world are showing them a different way of life, one that's more commercial and status-based. I hope the upbringing people have in Denmark is strong enough to balance this. We need the future, yet we can also keep the best of the past alongside it.

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with

I'm doing my part to utilise the balance of past and future in my life by choosing 5 people to shape me in 2021.

I've chosen some people I want to learn from and become more like. I'm not able to spend actual time with them and they don't even know me, though I'm going to be a better person because they share so much goodness.

Using podcasts, books, blogs, and social media I can draw from their expertise, knowledge and life advice. I've chosen the 5 below.

1. Tim Ferriss (makes my list every year)

2. Naval Ravikant (genius investor)

3. Dax Shepard (host of Armchair Expert podcast)

4. Matt Mullenweg (founding dev of WordPress)

5. Malcolm Gladwell (Author and podcaster)

I have another list of people I'm building to challenge my thinking - people like Cheryl Sandberg, who's amazing in many ways, though when she says something it's not instantly my new religion (which kinda happens to me when I hear from any of the 5 people above).

Your future is as bright as your faith

2021 will still have more lockdowns, it will still have social distancing, it will still have masks, it will still have chunks of distance learning instead of school, it will still have work from home for many. 2021 will be hugely challenging compared to the norms we were used to before our Covid19 world.

So why not take the best of the past and move forward to the future?

It's what I'm trying to learn here in Denmark, and I'm going to update you on my journey in this newsletter. A newsletter where you can read the ups and downs and sometimes funny (hopefully) trials and tribulations of getting to a bright future while living with what's good from the past.

So here's to a simple life, one with the power of the internet, but perhaps not the power of status and anxiety-driven purchases with 1-click.

We can do this! It's a happiness cake with the icing on top and candles that don't blow out.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Notes from a Small Country? I'd love feedback directly or in the comments. Which part was your favourite? What do you want to see more or less of? Other suggestions? Let me know!

If you subscribe to this article, you'll get a notification and email each time a new one appears.

See you next time for Episode 23.

Want previous episodes, you can view them here: LinkedIn

If you like daily musings about life and work them follow me here on LinkedIn https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/marcuspurvis