If you’re someone who wants a more complicated life, more difficult relationships, less time for yourself, and to feel stressed to the max, this probably isn’t for you.
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For most of us life has both good and bad. Wins and losses. Triumphs and tragedies. The ride. I’ve had moments where I’ve really questioned what I’m doing here at all and others when I never wanted to leave. I’ve been rich, poor, married, divorced, betrayed, beheld, applauded and booed, high, low, arrested, accused, convicted, and released. I was even dead once (it’s true). But these days my life is simpler. Part by choice, part by consequence, part by circumstance. But these days my life is much simpler than it once was. And that’s something many of us say we want, but never find.
Like a lot of things in this life, simplicity too is easier to understand when measured. Let’s start with a simple measure of life’s complexity: stuff. How much stuff do you have? How much do you need? Stuff, its accumulation, cost, storage, and eventually its inevitable destruction is a part of life. My story of stuff started when I was about six. That’s about the time I become conscious and could remember things. I remember my grandparents’ house. They had stuff. Tons of stuff. They had stuff in their stuff and stuff on top of it and stuff beside it too. I remember the smell of their stuff …old, musty, kind of gross. Funny how the nose remembers, but man, they had a lot of stuff.
My grandparents lived remotely and alone. When I was in my 20’s my parents would talk about the day coming that the grandparents would have to move. What would we do with all the stuff? The collections of match books, the empty whiskey bottles, the clothes from the 20’s, and of course the cigarette lighters shaped like Egyptian farrows purchased on the boardwalk in New Jersey in 1973? As it turns out, we didn’t have to worry about any of that. One night their house burned down and they lost everything. All of the stuff burned to a crisp. All that was left was a few melted guns melted, the fireplace, and foundation of their house. The next day I found my grandmothers bones in the ashes. You don’t forget a thing like that. I miss her to this day.
What about money? The trade we make for our life energy. The aphrodisiac and the demon that is essential to our very survival in a capitalist society. I feel sorry for all of the TGIF’s out there. TGIF is really just code for, “my life sucks, but I need money”. Sad. I remember when I was young, my teachers told me I had to pick a job that gave me one or the other: money or happiness. I always thought that was weird, but I know a lot of people who get up everyday and shovel the poop, get bitched at by the boss, and endure the commute all in the name of the accumulation of a pocket full of dead presidents. It’s a life that isn’t simple at all.
Here’s a good question about money: “how much is enough?” Not how much you want, but how much you need. I’ve asked so many people that question over the years. Some know, most don’t. For many of us money is just one of those things in life that we never seem to have enough of even when we do. It would be so much simpler if we just had a number. Really, just a number. A target. A get there and you’re done. You should think about that number and you should start today. Because if you wait until tomorrow, you’ll just be one day closer to the day you won’t need money at all. Sorry.
I love technology. I make a point to touch some every day. You probably do too. I remember how in the beginning they told us that technology would save us all form ourselves. The 4-hour work week and all of that. How did that work out for you? Yeah, I thought so. Me too.
Don’t get me wrong, I think technology is awesome. But it doesn’t make life simpler. I’ve gotten snaked twice this week on the eBay. Twice – and for several thousand dollars. I should get my money back (I hope), but what a hassle. All of the documentation, the consternation, the huge time suck…all of it because some jackass is trying to run a con. Didn’t get your government check this year? Jackass.
Hey – what about that thing you probably have in your hand right now. You know…that rectangle thing. That thing you touch, talk to and stare at everyday (all day?). That thing. You’re probably looking at it right now. Has that thing made your life simpler? Does it buy you more time? More peace? Does it love you? Does it take care of itself? What if you break it, or lose it, or it just “dies” one day? Does your life just motor along as if nothing ever happened? Yeah, I thought so.
Relationships. Pretty important, don’t you think? Are your relationships simple? How about easy? The French have a saying about relationships, “beginnings are beautiful”. It’s probably the one thing the French ever got right. Relationships are kind of like a slide. When they begin, they’re at their simplest. In the beginning you can pretty much be yourself because you have so little invested. And you’re happy. Maybe the happiest you’ve ever been. And if it blows up you just say, “see ya” and go on to the next usual suspect. It’s true for both customers and lovers. But here’s the weird part: if they’re good in the beginning then you probably stay with them. And the longer you’re there, the more complex they become. Eventually some relationships even become toxic (weird I know). And then you wake up one day and say, “Holy moly, how did I end up with you?” Bummer.
So what’s the answer here? How do we make life simpler? Should we never accumulate nice things? Hire an arsonist when we run out of room? Stay broke? Chuck the iPhone? Never become involved at a meaningful level? I mean it would be a lot simpler, don’t you think? Yes, it would. But you probably wouldn’t be as happy. Because accoutrements, money, technology and love should really be in your life for just one purpose: to make you happier. Don’t you think?
Perhaps the answer to this modern-day conundrum is found in the green pastures of Kansas on a warm afternoon in late April That’s where the phrase “the grass is greener on the other side” was coined. Maybe you know it. And if you do, you also know that the moral of that idiom is that there is no greener grass. There is no simple life, there is no complicated one either, there is just your life. The one you get to live every day, like it or not. If you’re in a moment right now where you have too much stuff, too much technology, not enough money, and you’re in a certain situation with a certain someone and you wish you weren’t, well my Sunday friend, you have three choices:
You can stay where you are and hope it will change.
You can stay and do something to try to change it.
You can change yourself.
It’s pretty simple actually. It’s just not always easy.
Good luck and have a good week.
Joe Still
2021.06.06
Cite
“Moving on is a simple thing. What it leaves behind is hard.”
– Dave Mustaine