What Would Blackbeard Say

about Health, Wealth, and Happiness?

Well now, allow me to address health and wealth in separate talks, as each one be deservin' some attention. This page be an overview of all three. Click on the dropdown menu for a deeper dive on each topic. Most of the dropdown menu's will be about things that bring joy or happiness: entertainment, relationships, travel, hobbies, and me opinions and advice on various subjects.

One day when I was young, whilst I be workin' with Captain Benjamin Hornigold, I be bellyachin' about good days and bad days, and asked the Captain, "How can ye know if it be a good day or bad day comin'?"

He replied to me, “How would ye like to know from the minute ye wake up in the mornin' whether it is goin' to be a good day or a bad day?”

I smiled at the thought, an' nodded in the affirmative.

He said, “When ye wake up face down on a small piece of wood from yer old ship, and there be nothin' in sight as far as the eye can see, it is goin' to be a bad day. If ye wake up in any other situation, ye have the opportunity to make it a good day.”

From that point on, me always woke up with a good attitude and a smile to greet the new day. It usually be me own choices or decisions that determined if it be a good day or bad.

So ye had a plan fer yer life, and the strategy ye learned in school failed terribly, and ye ended up shipped wrecked on a rocky shore. Or perhaps ye live in poverty and never had the chance to even attend formal trainin', so now what?

The question is; what are ye goin' to do now? If ye are not ready to feed the fish, and are goin' to go on livin', where do ye go from here?

Let ole' Blackbeard share some things with ye that I picked up from Hornigold and others I sailed with.

One old cuss said, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." Meanin' that if ye want to be more successful in life, find a mentor who has the lifestyle that ye want, who is willin' to teach ye how to get what ye want. That man or woman won't appear until ye be lookin'.

He said to be sure that this mentor has the ‘fruit on the tree’. Lots of people claim to have the magic secret to success and will gladly sell their secret for hundreds or thousands of dollars. They be hangin' out in the port taverns in me own day, tryin' to separate the sailors from their earnins'. They be everywhere these days. But after paying the money, ye find out they really don’t have what ye wanted. They are just good promoters of information which they got from someone else who was good at selling worthless information. Now in the modern world, if ye cannot find an actual person who is willin' to help ye, then turn on yer electronic device and get aboard the internet. Ye can find out how to do anything in the world that ye want to do, if ye are willing to study it, and then do the work.

I wanted to be a ship captain, so before I became a captain and created the Blackbeard character, I never took advice from the cook about becomin' a captain. Unless yer scurvy in-laws and co-workers be where ye want to be, why would ye take advice from him or her?

I had already been the employee route with the merchant ship and the Royal Navy, and I didn’t like the results. Someone else always controlled yer time and the amount of money ye got paid, and it never be enough. They also be controllin' whether or not ye got to keep the job and continue gettin' paid. So I decided to get into business fer meself. So I would get to keep all the rewards from me own labor, not just a small portion.

Now, most businesses in me own day, and in modern times, take a lot of time, money, and specific, as well as general business knowledge to get started. So what does the average person, who be startin' out with nothin', be supposed to do?

Ye know the route I chose meself. Let's address yer situation. From all me travels and meetin' lots of folks, when ye boiled it down to the bone, most folks want health, wealth, and happiness. All of these terms are relative, and based on comparison. I be addressin' those later.

Ye could find two people at exactly the same position in the ocean of life, and one may be very happy while the other is very miserable. Happiness has nothing to do with how wealthy ye are or how much stuff ye own. A wise man can be happy without material possessions. A foolish man will never be happy regardless of how much material wealth he has. True happiness comes from knowin'the answer to these three questions. Knowing where ye came from, why ye are here, and where ye are going. Until ye can answer those three questions, ye will never be truly happy. Unfortunately I be forbidden to give ye a peak into the hereafter. So me best advice be to ask people that really are happy, what makes them that way. One thing that has been proven to improve happiness is to do nice things for other people with no thought of gettin' a return or recognition for what ye have done. This will bring more happiness to ye than it will to the receiver. That be why they say, "It be more blessed to give than to receive."

Wealth is also relative. It is mainly conditioned upon whom ye compare yourself to. Most people in a wealthy nation who consider themselves to be poor would be considered to be rich by a large percentage of the population of the world, who literally struggle to survive on a daily basis.

Some people are happy who don’t have good health. Some are miserable even though they are very wealthy and so on.

To dive deep into these waters, hit the dropdown menu button and read through Blackbeard's Ten Rules for health, wealth, and happiness.