TIME, TIME, TIME

I do not believe very much in the idea that a human being should ever become finished. Society, however, often seems to be built around that exact idea. First you educate yourself, then you work, build a career, establish yourself, reach some kind of peak, and after that you are expected to slowly begin dismantling your life. Eventually retirement arrives, almost as if the main task from then on is to look back at what has already happened.

It is a strange construction.

Why should I become less interested in the world simply because I have lived in it longer?

I have had time to do many different things. I have worked with graphics, productions, concerts, festivals, film, logistics, scenography, technology, project management, people, problems, and systems. I have stood in the middle of situations where hundreds of things can go wrong at the same time and someone still has to see the whole picture. I have seen large productions work almost perfectly, and I have seen tiny mistakes grow into complete chaos. I have seen people perform far beyond what they believed they were capable of, and I have seen organisations collapse for the most banal reasons.

All of that is experience, but experience is really only valuable if it can be used forward.

I am far more interested in what I have not yet done than in what I have already done.

DON’T LET THE OLD MAN IN

That is where Clint Eastwood’s phrase reaches me.

Don’t let the old man in.

It is not about pretending to be young. That would be almost pathetic. The body ages. Energy changes. Eyesight changes. Hearing changes. Recovery changes. You begin to notice that people around you disappear. The calendar cannot be argued with.

But there is a difference between the body becoming older and a person beginning to define themselves as finished.

I have no need to be twenty-five again. I was twenty-five when I was twenty-five. That is enough. What interests me is being exactly where I am now, with what I know now, while still keeping the ability to step into something new without already knowing the answer.

That is where the old man comes in.

He does not necessarily arrive with a walking stick and grey hair. He arrives through sentences.

“That is not for me anymore.”

“I am too old for that.”

“Let the younger people do it.”

“There is no point starting now.”

“We have never done it that way.”

That is how the door opens.

Perhaps real ageing does not begin when the body grows old, but when curiosity is replaced by defence. When what you already know becomes more important than what you might still discover.

TIME. TIME. TIME.

Henry Rollins comes from a very different place. His thoughts about time grew out of something far more brutal. His friend Joe Cole died. Suddenly, the difference between a living human being and a dead one was no longer philosophical. It was physical. It was right in front of him. That is where the almost obsessive return to time comes from.

Time. Time. Time.

There is something merciless in that realization. We talk about the future as if we own it. Next week. Next year. Later. Someday.

Later is a strange word.

That is where all the projects we have not started are stored. All the journeys we are going to take. All the people we are going to call. All the texts we are going to write. All the ideas we are going to deal with when we have more time.

But later is not a place. It is an assumption.

The only thing we really know is that we are here now.

That does not mean you should live every day as if it were your last. I do not even think that is particularly wise. If I truly knew I would die tonight, I would probably make quite a few decisions that would look incredibly stupid if I happened to wake up tomorrow morning.

The point is something else.

Do not live as if you had an unlimited number of days.

That is a far more useful philosophy.

I BELIEVE IN DOING

I believe strongly in doing. Not just thinking, planning, analysing, and discussing, but actually doing. I like ideas, but an idea that never meets reality is still only a thought. A festival must eventually leave the presentation and meet the ground. A product must leave the drawing board. A text must be published. A business must meet a customer. A concept must be tested against reality.

I have never required the entire road to be visible before I start walking.

Often it is enough to see the first ten metres.

Then the terrain changes.

And you change with it.

To me, that is not poor planning. It is an understanding of how reality works. Almost nothing becomes exactly what you imagined. That is true of projects, businesses, relationships, and life itself. Anyone who builds their entire identity around the idea that the plan must hold will eventually be disappointed.

I believe more in another model: do something, see what happens, learn, adjust, and do it again.

It may not sound very romantic, but it works.

FAILURE IS INFORMATION

The same applies to failure. I think people often become more cautious with age because they feel they are no longer allowed to fail. When you are young, you are allowed to start over. When you are older, you are apparently expected to have understood everything.

I think the opposite.

If I have lived a long time, I should at least have learned that failure is rarely the end.

It is information.

Something did not work. Why? What did I miss? What can be changed? What needs to be removed? What needs to be done differently?

That is roughly how I would look at a problem in a production. I would never stand on a festival site after a bad solution and say that we should never organise another festival again. You analyse what went wrong. Then you build a better solution next time.

Why should life be treated differently?

WORK LESS AND LIVE MORE

That does not mean I believe in glorifying hard work. I have never understood why stress became some kind of status symbol. Being busy is not the same as being important. Working twelve hours a day does not automatically mean you create more value than someone working four.

I have moved increasingly closer to another idea: work less and live more.

But I do not mean doing less.

That is an important difference.

I mean using time better.

I want to spend less of my life on things that do not matter and more on things that make me curious, create freedom, or lead somewhere. I like being able to sit down in the middle of the day and write. To walk through a city without being on my way to a meeting. To have an idea in the morning and a few hours later have made it visible. To be able to say no to something simply because I do not want to spend my time on it.

That is a form of wealth that interests me far more than many traditional measures of success.

Freedom over my own time.

Because if Henry Rollins is right about one thing, it is this: time passes regardless of what we do with it.

CURIOSITY IS A DEFENCE AGAINST AGEING

That is why curiosity has become so important to me. I genuinely believe curiosity is one of the best ways not to grow old in the mind. Not by trying to look younger or pretending to belong to another generation, but by continuing to ask questions.

How does that work?

Why do people do it that way?

What happens if we do the opposite?

Can this be combined with something completely different?

Is there a better way?

I have never felt particularly comfortable inside a single box. I prefer the area between the boxes. Between technology and people. Between creativity and logistics. Between physical reality and digital tools. Between idea and execution.

It is often in those spaces that something new appears.

And perhaps that is where I still feel most alive.

I AM NOT COMPETING WITH YOUNGER PEOPLE

I am not competing with younger people either. That would be pointless. They have their advantages and I have mine. A younger person may have enormous energy, new perspectives, and an effortless relationship with technology that I had to learn later in life. Good. At the same time, I may have decades of pattern recognition, experience of people, problems, organisations, and situations that cannot simply be learned from a book.

The interesting question is not who wins.

The interesting question is what happens when those forms of knowledge meet.

Experience without curiosity becomes conservatism. Curiosity without experience can become naivety. Together they can become something far stronger.

EXPERIENCE SHOULD BE USED

I do not want to use my history as a museum of myself either. It is easy to start talking about what you did twenty or thirty years ago as proof that you were once relevant. I understand the temptation, but it does not interest me very much.

What I did in the past should preferably be raw material for what I do now.

Experience should be used.

Not polished.

THE MORNING IS STILL OPEN

I like the morning for exactly that reason. When the day begins, it is still open. It has not yet decided what it will become. Something that did not exist yesterday can exist before lunch.

That still fascinates me.

A thought can become words. Words can become a concept. A concept can meet another person. Suddenly, something is on its way to becoming real.

It almost always begins when someone decides to start.

Perhaps that is why I find it difficult to understand people who say they are bored. The world is full of things that do not yet work. Problems that have not been solved. Stories that have not been written. Places that can be improved. Businesses that can be created. Systems that can be changed. People you have not yet met.

I will probably run out of time long before I run out of ideas.

MY PHILOSOPHY

And perhaps that is where Henry Rollins and Clint Eastwood finally meet in my own philosophy.

One says that time is brutal because it runs out.

The other says age does not have to decide when you stop living.

I cannot stop time, and I cannot stop my body from growing older. I cannot promise myself that life will become easy either. It will not. People disappear. Projects fail. Relationships change. Plans break. Things happen that we never expected.

But I can still choose what I do with the day I actually have.

I can create.

I can remain curious.

I can change.

I can learn something today that I did not know yesterday.

I can begin something without knowing exactly how it will end.

I can use my experience without becoming a prisoner of it.

And I can try to keep the door closed for one more day.

Because somewhere out there, the old man is standing.

I know he is there.

He will come when he comes.

But I do not have to invite him in.

Not today.

Time. Time. Time.

I am still breathing.

That is enough.