Get in touch with your child

And yet the world is full of songs and films in which people who have done wrong swear they have changed.

That is not to say that change is always necessary, but in many spheres of activity it is hammered home to us that the world is not like it was and if we don’t move with it, we’ll be left behind.

It’s one of those areas in which people become “consultants”, because they have identified something that others will be prepared to pay for, so they offer their services to impart a small piece of wisdom spread over an eighthour day or, if they can swing it, an entire career.

That, though, is more a case of adaptation. They are trying to persuade us to do things differently and to accept that sometimes the way we’ve always done it has outlived its usefulness. But they are not teaching us to alter fundamental elements of our personality. There are a few individuals who were marked relatively early as potential leaders, while of others it is said “he’ll never amount to anything”.

A classic example of the former is the new England cricket captain, Joe Root, who had lived with the tag FEC (future England captain) for many years. The same happened to one of his predecessors, Mike Atherton.

The ones who get the serious jobs do tend to be those who were never really young: they dressed like their Dad and were disappointingly sensible amid the harum scarum majority.

To see if this holds water we can all look at the people we grew up with and see what has happened to them.

From a personal point of view, I’m not sure it is entirely accurate, but there seems to be something in it.

Many of the people I went to school with in my small island of 60,000 souls now hold prominent positions in business and government.

But the one who currently occupies the top slot of Bailiff of Guernsey was, as a teenager, a smiling brainbox who never seemed to put himself forward for anything.

He became a lawyer, which I, in my na?ve working class way, didn’t consider for a moment.

Cooped up in an office all day unless you were in court, and with your head swimming with details and technicalities: where was the fun in that? My old man sold insurance and was thought to have done quite well for himself, coming from a long line of agricultural labourers. He never gave me any career advice. It wasn’t until I had become a journalist and was talking to an accountant (that much-derided “grey” profession) that I realized why these people took the paths they did. For the money. Ah, I see.

This guy was giving me material for a special careers supplement in the local paper, and while I was thinking about what it could be that attracted someone to a life crunching numbers, he had his pitch lined up already.

“You can make a million pounds over the course of 20 years,” he said.

Suddenly it all became clear.

That was why people became accountants and doctors and architects: because they are extremely well paid professions. And there was I thinking you should do something you enjoyed.

Only the religious have this idea of explaining it to the Almighty when we have popped our clogs and are looking for nice accommodation in the afterlife.

“And what did you do?” St Peter would ask with a pleasant world-weariness.

What reply would get me into heaven? “I was a journalist – but not one of those scurrilous troublemakers.

And I taught a bit of English as a foreign language.

Played my guitar and sang for people sometimes.” At the next desk there’s a guy going, “Arms dealer. I supplied the rebels in Sierra Leone. Never actually killed anyone myself.

And I made an absolute fortune.” Along from him there’s another hopeful, saying, “I set up and ran a food packaging factory. We made boxes for cornflakes, that sort of thing. Did quite well out of it, actually.” Meanwhile, through the window we can all see the Mother Teresa gates, through which cruises a string of astral limousines, waved through in the direction of the luxury suites.

These are full of social workers, carers from leper colonies and philanthropists who gave away not just a comfortable slice of their fortunes but enough to actually feel it. So, is it destiny or is life really what we make it? If we look at the role models such as presidents and prime ministers and chief executives in this frantic, grasping world, do they show our youngsters the way forward?