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What would you do if you were given 7300 dollars and told that’s all the money you have for the rest of your life?  Its funny how we as humans measure everything in this world by money… success, happiness, time, worth, even our schedules and priorities are all based off time or money or both as in this day and age time is money.

chicken and the golden eggI recently read that we are allotted an average of 30,000 days on this planet, I have about 7300 good ones left, IE in 7300 days I will be on my final glide path. That’s not much time left, 1265 weeks or 252 months.  If you equate my days weeks or months into dollars which we all seem to understand, I’m almost broke or out of time depending on how you look at it.

Getting back to the original 7300 dollars, you wouldn’t spend that on  a TV or new car would you?  Would you go to work for a dollar a day?  I hope your answer is no!  Why then do we waste our precious and finite days working for someone else, sacrificing our precious life units to their benefit.  Are we nothing more than indentured servants slaving for the mortgage on the house we cant use because we are always out working to pay for it?  What about the shiny new car that sits unused 23 hours a day?  I don’t know about you but I would rather spend my last few days with my family, or donating my time to help others in need, exploring the world, or even just napping in the sun.

Are we all nothing more than sheep that have lost our way?  Did you know the average person wastes almost 10,000 dollars a year on non essential items such as car payment, gas, insurance, phone and internet? throw a 250k mortgage in there and it will add another 21,000 in wasted money for a house you will never own, that’s  31000 a year in the trash or 310,000 in ten years.  I wonder if the average person understands that a 30 year mortgage at 6.5 % interest actually costs almost 100% of the borrowed amount.  I could go on an on… Our whole life’s are bought on time but the one thing we cannot buy is time.

There is a simpler way, a way out, or a way in depending on how you look at it.  Every time I find myself lost and, or confused I have to dumb it down to dollars and cents and remind myself that I only get one dollar a day.  That single dollar can give me the world or cost me another precious day of my life that I will never get back.

We decided to take a whole day off and do nothing but enjoy the company of each other minus the distractions of the world.  I asked Serena a simple question but it turned out to be the topic of the day.  What am I doing here? How can I make my life sustainable?  Is there any value to what I do, and if so what is it?  Below are a few random thoughts and questions that popped up in our conversation about taking a new direction in this world.

It is increasingly difficult to live a decent life. We live an increasingly perverse world. The majority of people aren’t living the life they want (because they’re not living in harmony with their values at some level, too afraid to leave the so-called security of the known evil). 
 

Lots of information out there about ways to live a simpler life, reasons you should live more simply, how-to’s, and statistics, but this amounts to the green version of keeping up with Jones.’ No one is writing about the internal struggle that true commitment to living your values is bound to cause, at least in our perverse world.  Document the miseries and joys of living your values, or trying to. 

People want to see a struggle. They want the inspiration of seeing someone living their dreams, so there is hope for them AND they want to see you fail so they feel justified in staying trapped in their own unsatisfying lives. They want to know how to get to where you are and they want to know what pitfalls to avoid. They want to know they’re not alone. 
 
This is where change happens: first in your own heart and then in the hearts of those around you who see themselves in you and find strength not so much in your success as in your honesty and vulnerability and daring. When the heart is moved, the world appears different, priorities are realigned, and making the right choices is easy and obvious. 
 
It shouldn’t take a near-death experience to wake up to the fact that your days here are finite. 
 
What would happen if everyone stopped doing the jobs and duties they hate doing?  Anarchy? Perhaps. Or maybe people would begin to remember how their ancient ancestors lived: in harmony with their environment, according to the laws and cycles of nature. What if it’s too late for that? Too late to revive old ways of living and its technologies? 
 
We are in a winter phase of existence, when it is appropriate to conserve resources, expend less energy, so we can make it through the long cold winter, like a bear in hibernation.  This comes after a long period, at least in this country, of decadence. The more we insist on living decadently the less reserves we have to get us through the winter. The more we live harmoniously with this phase, and cut back willingly, the better prepared we will be for the springtime that will someday follow. 
 
“Holding oneself back” is a Confucian idea of how to live correctly. It means quitting while you’re ahead, but more than that to stop engaging in an activity before it enters an extreme or destructive cycle (and pretty much any activity has this potential). It might mean not making more money than what you need for you and your family to live modestly or comfortably or quitting your career in acting or politics just when you are on the verge of becoming famous, because fame is usually a corrupting, destructive force. 

“Alas, our technology has marched ahead of our spiritual and social evolution, making us, frankly, a dangerous people.” 
~Steven M. Greer

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