Around ten years ago I got fed up with the corporate world and resigned overnight \u2013 to the utter horror of my dad, who worked six days a week for the same company for almost thirty years.<\/p>\n
He was a product of hard times and merely letting go of a job because one no longer enjoyed it, did not sit well with him. And not having a plan while having a bond amused him even less.<\/p>\n
Safe to say, my entrepreneurial genes were not inherited from him. What I did get from him, however, was a very black and white perspective on life.<\/p>\n
In his world there are no greys, nor shades of it \u2013 especially where morals are concerned.<\/p>\n
He once got fined for stopping on the line of a stop street instead of behind it and was so embarrassed that he headed straight to the traffic department to write out a cheque.<\/p>\n
Another time, when a camera caught me for speeding in his car, he hounded me for days until he had made sure that I had paid the fine. Apart from the transgression, it drove him crazy that any payment was shown to be outstanding on his record.<\/p>\n
But, for me, the best example of what defines my dad is his view on giving and lending.<\/p>\n
If someone asks him for money, and had a valid reason for doing so, he will gladly give away his last cent without expecting it back. But don\u2019t ask to borrow ten bucks and then sit on the money.<\/p>\n
Lending is lending and giving is giving.<\/p>\n
So my character was put to the test the year that I became \u201cjobless\u201d. The best short-term plan that I could come up with was pedalling my bike and so I headed off to Kimberley for the nationals of that year.<\/p>\n
About hundred and forty kilometres in, the peloton snapped in two after a crash and I found myself in the chase group.<\/p>\n
Our numbers got whittled away as the gutter took its toll and soon there were two of us in no-man\u2019s-land around two hundred metres behind the leaders.<\/p>\n
My partner in crime was a pro, who had just made his return to racing after serving a suspension for doping.<\/p>\n
Every lull upfront led to us gaining a hundred metres and every attack to an equal loss. For thirty kilometres we were unable to bridge the gap.<\/p>\n
One of the team cars eventually took pity on us and offered to pull us back to the front and, just like that, I was faced with a moral dilemma.<\/p>\n
Do I hang on and get back into the race? Or do I keep fighting the honourable fight and almost certainly never see the front again?<\/p>\n
The pro clearly had no moral issues and, with one last look back at me, he grabbed hold of the vehicle and disappeared off into the distance. The next time I saw him was indeed at the finish.<\/p>\n
Afterwards, I had many sleepless nights as my decision to waive outside assistance tormented me. I could\u2019ve turned a mediocre day into an awesome one and no one that mattered would\u2019ve known.<\/p>\n
And with us losing ground as a result of a racing incident, it arguably would not even have been cheating. I still don\u2019t have the answer, but feel satisfied that I had not taken the easy way out when my chase partner did.<\/p>\n
With his ethics proven to be questionable, I\u2019m happy that my instinct led me in the opposite direction. My dad would\u2019ve been proud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Around ten years ago I got fed up with the corporate world and resigned overnight \u2013 to the utter horror of my dad, who worked six days a week for the same company for almost thirty years. He was a product of hard times and merely letting go of a job because one no longer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[3258,830,885],"class_list":{"0":"post-17950","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-mysport","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-sport","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17950\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}