Back in the 1990s, we were holding a business convention in Central Europe with Nicolas Hayek, the boisterous, noisy founder of the Swatch Group. Hayek was probably in his mid-seventies at the time, single-handedly saving the Swiss watch industry and quadrupling his fortune by now. None of this was enough to calm him down.
While we were holding a press conference to promote the event, a young reporter asked Hayek when he was considering retiring. Hayek looked at her as if the man had called his mother a prostitute. Then he declared in his hoarse voice and gruff manner:
“ENTREPRENEURS ARE ARTISTS AND ARTISTS NEVER RETIRE”
At that moment, two fundamental truths struck me.
One, I knew I would wish for the rest of my life to have been the first person to say those words.
And two, now my distress had a name I could identify. (By the way, Hayek never retired. He died unexpectedly of heart failure in 2010 while working hard at Swatch headquarters). I tried to retire once when I was forty and had my first midlife crisis. I just thought I'd play softball, go to car races, and use coconuts as a goblet. This took nine months. The stagnation and inactivity drove me crazy, so I went back to working life. I never understood why I had to go back to work. But as soon as Hayek made his statement, I got it.
Randy Gage - "Crazy Genius"
Source: Randy Gage (2016) “Crazy Genius” (Trans. Onur Çelik) Beyaz Yayınları, İstanbul. p.14-15
