Although a much later addition to the Rolling Stones’ repertoire, “Doom and Gloom” has its roots firmly in the scruffiest 70’s rock ‘n roll. For four glorious minutes Mick Jagger barks and snarls bizarre imagery, from zombies, futile wars and fracking, to water shortages, poverty and paranoia in a dark room, with references so weirdly lucid it could have been conceived in the purest pharma-grade chemicals of their early days. It’s contemporary social comment and angst spat over a driving Keith Richards guitar riff so simple you think you could play it yourself.

Before the first verse is over, I have already questioned my habit of wearing a necktie to work. Soon after, my clenched jaw warns that the motorcycle is going too fast, but the road is empty, long and straight before me as they come in the Karoo and I still have this tiger firmly by the tail.

“What’s it all about”, growls Mick. “Guess it just reflects my meeeewwd…”.

In a country that can break your heart in a million ways, doom and gloom has a meaning very different from self-indulgent rock ’n roll fantasies. It’s a tenuously cheap commodity, enthusiastically peddled by anyone with a cellphone and airtime for a few likes and an emoji. Across the fractures and schisms that have come to chart our society we compare our miseries and pain at full voice, blinded by our fears, frustration and anger. Restraint is worthless when life or death means just that.

For business it is no easier to stay a course through the shrapnel of opinions, analyses and a litany of economic indices, none of which are easily discernable. As an example, just days apart two of our largest banks recently published their respective Purchasing Managers’ Indices for June 2018. Bank S notes a slight ‘uptick’ for business conditions (50.9), while Bank A’s number (47.9) portrays a comparatively gloomier trend. I know anything below 50 spells doom, so who do we believe?

Perhaps a disclaimer at this juncture is appropriate. Modest competition notwithstanding, I am not the sharpest of Mrs Lötter’s brood. It is therefore entirely possible that I have no clue what I am looking at.

Having barely processed my inability to interpret the PMI conundrum, my dented positivity was challenged anew by the latest Consumer Confidence Index. Against a backdrop of daily civil unrest and a wilting Cyril Spring, the folks at the responsible bureau now inform us that consumers are … well … still too optimistic for their own good, considering that at the current pace, our economic growth could not outdo a snail on crutches. Unless we re-align our ‘lofty expectations’ with economic realities, so the report gloomily cautions, ‘frustrations will likely grow and dissatisfaction may set in’. A commentator laments that ‘consumers seem to remain staunchly optimistic that the South African economy and their own household finances will improve markedly over the next year, but unfortunately these expectations do not reflect the current economic reality’.

Squinting at the sub-text here, I read: to avoid crushing disappointment, expect less. Or the sub-sub-text: you can anyway do nothing about the growth end of this equation, so rather change what you can and lower your expectations. Pardon me, but ‘Go Little Consumer!’, I say.

For reasons mentioned, it would be presumptuous of me to suggest that I admire Max Planck, theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate (1858-1947), for his academic legacy in quantum theory. No, I can only admire him for his impeccable character in the face of the most oppressive evil of his time; a character that he also instilled in his son. We know this, because on 23 January 1945 Erwin Planck was executed for his part in the fatally failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. From Max Planck I learnt this: ‘When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change’.

Which brings me to the point. It is not to diminish our obvious realities, or resort to the comfort of stale clichés. Everyone with bills to pay knows that it’s not easy. Everyone in our industry understands that you have to work much harder to achieve the same results. It’s the acknowledgement that our current environment requires more than an instinctive primal reaction of freeze, fight or flight. It requires the subtlety of a response. It demands positivity, creativity and adaptability, none of which blooms in a stifling climate of doom and gloom.

Looking back at Tonkin Clacey’s first four months of the financial year, we have much to be encouraged by. We have registered in excess of 1 800 transfers and bonds and an assessment of work in progress cautiously indicates a continuing trend. Our small and growing number of developer clients have entrusted us with new developments in excess of 3000 units. That excludes developments in planning over the longer term. We remain a consistent top performer on the monthly appraisals of all the retail banks. We appointed two more secretaries to ensure that we keep up with demands. We have identified two areas of growth over the short to medium term. As a result, the establishment of our deceased estates department is far advanced, as is the increasing number of litigation instructions accepted by the firm. Our banker asked us to renew our overdraft. We were surprised to learn that we have one (overdraft, not banker), so we obliged, because we’re nice.

The firm is now more diverse than ever in its almost 30 year history, on both our secretarial and all professional levels. And we’re not done yet. In addition, the number of candidate attorneys have doubled over the past year and we have successfully completed the first of two internship programs that we bi-annually host for university students. We have recently donated a new 23 seater shuttle bus to a security estate for the transport of their domestic workers inside the estate. Because we have never been poorer for giving.

I’m writing this on Mandela day. Imagine our lives had he aligned his expectations with his reality.