One of the strangest things about social media is that sometimes you'll share something with a thousand others that even those closest to you don't know…
Here's my quirky secret…I regularly go to youtube and listen to some of the 'greats'. Not great musicians - great orators. Kennedy, Mandela, Luther King…I love them all.
I love the inspirational ideas, the rhythm, their tone, the very personal link between someone speaking many decades ago and me, here in 2015, listening to their words, in their voice, in my home.
My favourite is Winston Churchill.
Before some of you have an apoplectic fit and start writing to me in outrage…let me clarify.
I know that many of Churchill's policies and views were questionable to say the least. And I know that in WW1 as War Minister he sent a disproportionate number of our troops to Gallipoli and almost certain death. And I know that these decisions had devastating consequences.
As an individual he came from a privileged background. He struggled at school and was not academic. He had a speech impediment. He suffered from depression throughout his life or the 'black dog' as he called it.
Churchill became Prime Minister in WW2 at a time when Britain was in dire straits. France was about to fall. The war was going from bad to worse – and worse was still to come. To say the situation looked grim is to understate it massively.
Churchill addressed parliament saying he had nothing to offer but "blood, toil, tears and sweat".
He was 66 years old.
At a time when many of us are retiring, he faced (and many would say triumphed) in the greatest challenge of his career.
In his initial address to parliament he said… "You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."
A younger man could never have said that with the same truth or conviction. He needed to be 66 to do the job. And he did.
Have a listen next time you're feeling too old
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkTw3_PmKtc