This is the first of what I hope will become a weekly habit. I have called it The Rearview: a glance back at the week just past, to see what it can teach about the road ahead.

Truth be told, I started it for myself. I was looking for a new hobby, a new skill, some new knowledge: something to keep my mind occupied, keep senility at bay, and keep me as curious about the world as I have always been. Writing each week forces me to read, think and make up my mind. It is exercise for the brain.

I begin with a line from a book I have been reading, Anthony Pompliano’s How to Live an Extraordinary Life. It told me to carve my ethics in stone, but write my opinions in sand. It hit me like a rock.

Ethics belong in stone. They must not bend because a deal is large or a quarter is short. They rarely collapse in one dramatic moment; they erode a millimetre at a time. So they must be settled before temptation arrives, not argued over when it does.

Opinions belong in sand. They should be held firmly enough to act on, and loosely enough to wash away when circumstances change. The world I started work in no longer exists, and many views I once held with confidence have been rewritten by events.

The danger is getting it backwards: opinions carved in stone, ethics written in sand. The leader who will not hear a contrary view, yet finds room for flexibility when a rule becomes inconvenient. Rigid opinions end in irrelevance; flexible ethics end in scandal.

That is the purpose of this column. Opinions change as circumstances change, and The Rearview will document mine: my views on the things of the world, week by week, as I see them at the time. Some will age well, some will not, and I hope readers will tell me when I am wrong.

The values beneath them, I intend to keep in stone.

Reference:

• Anthony Pompliano, How to Live an Extraordinary Life, Harriman House.

Dr Paul PK Lim is the de facto towkay of Accoris Management Sdn Bhd, and he loves to daydream.