"Do it now, do it while you can..."
That’s what he said to me. I won’t say his name only because I don’t want to blow his identity wide open, but his story reminds me why circumstances should never be accepted at face value.
I couldn’t help but ask why he had left the agency. Apparently, he had left the agency as a supervisor to pursue his dream of becoming the next hot-shot CPA. That lasted five years, and when he came back, they gave him employment, but severely cut the pension he might have been eligible for when he retired. Relegated to the confines of being a wage-earner, again, he reminisced and I was lucky enough to hear it.
“Oscar, did you know I was almost ZZ Top’s CPA?”
They apparently were unhappy with their current CPA and were in the market. They approached him and told him that they were looking to hire someone new. Sadly, they brushed him off as being too small a company to trust. He also had been approached by a Saudi Arabian Sheikh and thought he had struck gold as the Sheikh was an oil magnate who was bringing 7 corporations with him. My friend worked a total of one month before he up and left, corporations and all, back to Saudi Arabia. He had so much money that he had furnished the entire office suite with state of the art technology and fine furniture and simply left it there. My friend’s only response to this was “well, it sure enough made the landlord happy”. He ends his stories of being a CPA by telling me about one of his last clients. This man asked him to "cook the books" so that he could receive a higher tax return. My friend, in order to keep the integrity of his business, declines, and processes his taxes correctly. Years pass, and he later finds out that after he closed his business, his client had gone to another tax preparer and this person was able to give him a $25000.00 tax rebate and an additional $50000.00 for the amended applications (the ones my friend did in the past for him). His now former client then bumps into him at a local Krogers and proceeds to tell him that after amending his taxes, he almost sued my friend for malfeasance, fraud, and other charges. The only reason he didn't was because he had been audited by the IRS and they charged him with tax fraud. He had to return all the fraudulent rebates, his 'new' tax preparer was sent to jail, and the IRS changed his tax filings, mimicking to the 'T', the returns my friend had done for him in the past. He defined this as his greatest moment as a CPA.
“Oscar, there are two different work worlds out there.”
He went on to explain that as a wage-earner, life can certainly be mundane, but at least you’re being paid. Being self-employed, he said he met all kinds of people from all walks of life. He wasn’t making any money, but the day-to-day excitement was enough to keep him going. That is, until his wife threatened to leave him and take the kids with her. “Back to being a wage-earner”. He said that with the stoicism of a cow in the rain with no shelter in sight. He mourned the death of his small business until the year 2000. (Why 2000 is beyond me, I didn’t ask him what happened to him in 2000 for him to finally let it go).
“I came back here and they offered me the opportunity to be a supervisor again. I declined. I just didn’t have the desire nor ambition to do it anymore. My depression had consumed me.”
He said he’s now content spending the last years of his life here in the agency as a mid-level worker. He now wishes that he had not passed up the offer because he does have the ambition now to move up, he just simply lacks the energy to do so. “I’m too close to retirement to mess with it.” I couldn’t help but feel like I needed to cheer him up, so I told him, “well, the world is a different place now. There is so much you can still do.” He didn’t doubt me about that, but said that there are things he wants to do still, but that his failing health prevents him from doing any of them.
Walking back to our desks from work I start in, “I tell my co-workers all the time that they need to live those dreams now and stop waiting for the ‘big payoff’ of retirement to do so. We let our hobbies and interests atrophy to such a point that once we get to the ‘pay-off’ day we don’t know what to do with ourselves.”
With a smile on his face, and a voice choking up, he tells me...
“Do it now...do it while you can.” And walks back to his desk.
When I started working at the place I’m at now, I met my friend and thought that he was a very funny, but very ineffective and unintelligent man. I harped cruelly about how slow he worked. I grew frustrated with his inability to learn new systems, and how work was passed off from him to me in attempts to help him catch up. I was cruel...
Two lessons I learned from him and I thought I’d share with you:
*Never judge someone until you know them*
He had tried to make his bones out in the world. He failed. He had dreams and aspirations only to see them come crumbling down. Instead of being cruel, I could have sat down and gotten to know him and known that he’s not simply a creature manifested from the depths of sloth, no, he’s someone who is defeated and I was pushing someone who was knocked down even farther.
*Don’t let your dreams atrophy*
We’re young only once. To wait until the day we “retire” to “do what we want” is a fools errand. You’re alive, now, so there’s no reason to wait to live. Seek your ambitions, whatever they may be. Your health is not promised, a pay-off in the end is not promised, retirement funds can dry up (as is evidenced by our failing economy), not even your job is promised. You’re promised to do what you can, today, and only today. That’s it.
I’ll end this with a recommendation. His life thus far reminds me of two Jimmy Buffett songs and I ask that you listen to them:
A Pirate Looks at Forty & He Went To Paris