Your Perfect Year(77)
Go on a media diet!
A media diet? What on earth was that? He read on with interest.
Our energy is fueled by mindfulness. So don’t be distracted by bad news: no newspapers, no TV, no radio (not forever; just for a while). You know that the news in the media is mostly negative, so don’t have anything more to do with it!
Your task instead is to think about how you would like your life to be. Make a list of everything, big and small, that you wish for. Success, money, love, a new hobby, ten children . . . Look for pictures in magazines, cut them out, and stick them on some posterboard. Then hang it up where you can easily see it. This is your “vision board.” Lay your tracks into the future. The images will help your subconscious make all your dreams come true! Because: “If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.” (Seneca). And another: “Wishes are things that we can make come true.” (Johann Wolfgang Goethe).
Ah. Making something. That had been absent from his life for even longer than tennis. He vaguely remembered fiddling with colored paper and scissors in nursery school. Never mind; it sounded amusing enough. And he liked the Goethe quote, of course. Even if the writer of the diary had carelessly left out the von. Jonathan picked up a pencil and squeezed a v. in after Wolfgang. The author had been given his title in 1782 by Emperor Josef II, so people should be used to it by now!
He turned his attention to the vision board. He knew full well where this was supposed to lead. He wasn’t stupid. This exercise was obviously designed to make him more aware of the things that were truly important to him, and to keep them in mind—in sharp focus, so to speak—by means of the images.
A familiar theme: once you began thinking about something, you suddenly bumped into it around every corner, just as pregnant women suddenly saw nothing but baby carriages and babies. That kind of thing. Jonathan had never been pregnant, but his imagination could stretch that far.
He found himself thinking of another Wolfgang: his father. How had Wolfgang Grief parried suggestions from employees who’d been so bold as to offer “new visions” for the publishing house? He’d parried them with that famous quote from the late chancellor Helmut Schmidt: “People with visions should go see a doctor.” Wolfgang Grief had liked this and had trotted it out frequently, preferably in public and in front of a gathered workforce. Then he would roar with smug laughter.
Whenever Jonathan had been present, he had always found himself in a dilemma, caught between pride in and awe of his omnipotent father, and a sense of secret shame about the man’s overpowering authoritarian airs.
Jonathan gave himself a mental shake. He had inherited none of his father’s manner. On the contrary, as his nanny had put it, he had no gumption. Wolfgang Grief had taken it as a personal insult, but Jonathan had never been able to change it. He simply lacked the Grief family’s alpha gene; it must have been the Italian blood running through his veins. At least, that was what he supposed—he had no idea what his Italian family was actually like.
What would his father have to say about Markus Bode’s proposal to make the press a bit more “popular”? Jonathan could just imagine it. And for that reason alone it made no sense to expend even a single thought more in that direction. Let people say what they liked about his father’s interpersonal skills, he certainly knew how to run a successful publishing house! Though on paper Jonathan was now in charge, since Wolfgang Grief was only partially compos mentis, he nevertheless considered it his duty to continue the business along the lines of proven tradition.
He had no doubt about Markus Bode’s competence—in fact, he had a very high opinion of his CEO’s abilities. But . . . but . . . but . . . A small rebellious thought popped into his head. Harry Potter was one instance where his father had been wrong; the young wizard had certainly encouraged more young people to read than Grief & Son’s educational but loss-making line of children’s books, a sector that he had already shed on Bode’s advice. Hubertus Krull, valued so highly by Wolfgang Grief, had not even been his discovery but that of Grandmother Emilie. And if Jonathan were being honest, he didn’t find Bode’s suggestion so utterly lacking in appeal.
He squared his shoulders. What he was thinking of here was . . . was mental patricide! How could he take sole responsibility for the business? Could he? Should he? Or would it not be much better to leave everything exactly as it was? Such a far-reaching decision as the complete overturn of the Grief & Son Books portfolio couldn’t be made in passing.
Before risking becoming more deeply submerged in these ruminations, Jonathan decided to take a shower, get dressed, and devote himself to today’s task set by the diary. He’d make himself a vision board, though not with scissors and paper—he wasn’t so behind the times! No, he would prepare a highly professional document on his laptop. A PDF with images of all the things he dreamed about and wished for.
For example . . . a really good tennis racket. Ha! He had the first image already. This was child’s play! And if he searched the internet, he was bound to find a photo of the tennis club where he had played yesterday with Markus Bode. He ought to become a member, or at least book a few lessons. Laying tracks into the future—that was how it was done! And after that, Jonathan would at last terminate his membership at the golf club, which he had kept up for decades without once darkening the door. Although he could never tell his father.