| Untagged | 14 Feb 2010 |
| Give chance a chance while there’s time by agkennedy |
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It is almost perverse that the less I write about the confectionery industry, the more you seem to enjoy reading. Pilate did not want to execute Jesus, the crowds did, and I think about that parable when I write in general now...
I can’t help thinking that the more I try to write in the way that a trade magazine should be expected to be written, the more you raise your arms and demand that I deliver from the soul.
Subsequently, the more irreverently and out of mind I do write, the more you seem to enjoy the experience. Well, so be it. Why is it that Candid has become the most popular section? You are confectioners and captains of the industry, and surely you must read about the latest release of an ink jet coder…. you must, you will, we demand it! Or is it that cynicism, on the face of it, is precisely what the world thirsts for and there are few people that pull it off in a few lines in the same way as Rembrandt did in a single brush stroke.
So be it. So, I wrote another book (well, more of an airport lounge read). It was for you and all about the seemingly two most important things in life - money and love. It’s about how we think we need one for the other, and believe they are both a result of each other. So I would like to thank you (those who already read it) for sending me your messages of how much you actually liked it. How odd, rather terrible even. I was of course completely choked by it all and quietly moved, I wrote it for fun and realised it bought pleasure. Job done, fulfilment.
Now things are happening so fast that they are clearly out of my control; how refreshing that is, to feel out of control. And things can go out of control in a positive way too. My name was printed in The Times Newspaper last week; there they are, my interviews all over YouTube; and now The Sun newspaper calls me up today for my take (view) on chocolate. Me, of all people! Of course my wisdom tells me that I know nothing about chocolate, compared to you erudite readers, I am a mere embryo. So I keep going back to that odd feeling that fatalism has its roots firmly in my life, after years of trying my hardest to ignore the success of chance. It appears that the world wants a chocolate guru, and it also seems that there is not a lot that I can do about this.
“Man plans, God laughs”, do you remember that? For 20 years, I planned with relative success and wrote about it. Now I still have a basic plan, but I believe that if you want to be a true artist (and therefore very happy and possibly uncontrollably wealthy) then you must give fate or chance, or whatever you call it, a chance! I am not religious, but I have to say that 45 years tell me that we are all faced with opportunity, all the time. But we often do not believe we can be so happy, and our agenda and our plans actually prevent us from believing it could be so good. So in January 2010, I set out to – not plan – but let life happen, just to open the doors and let the lioness in. And things are happening that are not in my control. It’s very exciting. So I have some books left and if you would like one, I have saved one for you. Email me and I will send one out, you must read it.
See you next month, if we get the chance!
Best wishes,
Angus
