ONE LIFETIME By David Biondolillo

ONE LIFETIME

       By David Biondolillo 

It is amazing what can happen in one lifetime.  

My grandmother was born in the late 1880’s.  She had to travel by boat because the airplane hadn't been invented yet.  And before she died a man had walked on the moon.  

For hundreds of thousands of years people lived and died within a circle with a small radius.  I am sure we all had relatives that never traveled more than 30 miles from where they were born,unless you are descended from someone like Marco Polo.

When I was younger and car odometers where mechanical, my friends and I would like to watch the numbers turn to something cool, like the change from 9,999 to 10,000.  We are fast approaching the time when the wheels that keep track of the world’s population turn from 6,999,999,999 to 7,000,000,000. Seven billion people on the planet earth.  A number that is hard to fathom.

Here is a way to think about how big a billion is.  If I were to give you a dollar a second, how long would it take to give you a million dollars?  Answer:  11 days. Now if I were to give you a dollar a second, how long wouldit take to give you a billion dollars? Answer: 32 years.  So there is abig difference between a million and a billion. 

When I was young I don’t remember ever hearing the word billion like I do now.  And today the word trillion is used all the time every day. Can you imagine how big that number is? I can’t.  What a different world. 

And the world’s population is being made up of a very different demographic than any time in history. With countries controlling births, like China has a one child rule,there are less people being born.  And with the medical industry helping people to live longer we are seeing a very different stratification of the population. There are fewer young people and a lot more old people than ever before.  

We are just living longer. And because of that we are experiencing many shifts in the way the world has to adjust to this phenomenon. One big concern is how the older group is going to pay its way until they die.  People in their eighties were born in the third decade of the 20^th Century.   Not many people born then believed that they would live so long and did not prepare for what is happening in today’s world.  If you were born in 1920 you could expect to live into your mid fifties.

There are a lot of people that don’t have a pension or money saved for their old age that are wondering what they are going to do.  And it is not just the octogenarians (the eighty somethings) that are having these problems.  People in their forties on up are not prepared for extended living and the economic crisis that is going on now in the world.

I heard someone say as they were addressing the graduating class of a California University, “you are all presidents of your own companies.  Everyone on earth is too.  How is your company doing?”  What a profound statement.  Imagine a world where everyone took charge of their own future and worked to building their own companies that could sustain themselves.  Where every transaction was a “Win-Win-Win”.  The three “Wins” are where both parties and the planet all won. It could happen in one lifetime.

Are you ready to become the president of your own company? If the answer is "YES" then you and I need to talk.