Having it all....

[gurdonark]

"I can't be trusted. They say, I can't be true. But I only wanted more than I knew"

and

"It took an hour/maybe a day/but once I really listened/the noise just fell away"

--Liz Phair

The problem, of course, is that we acquire all these notions and desires. It's not enough to be reasonably content, blessed with kind people around us, and materially sufficient. It's not enough to have a reasonably good mind, discernible skills, and workable hobbies. It's not even enough to obtain the things we thought we would be darned lucky to obtain. We just want more.

It doesn't help, either, that some folks have the simple formulae for how to gracefully accept less. I regularly make saints, prophets and acolytes of people not only of the light-givers of my faiths, but also of those who have no faith, or altogether different faiths than my own faiths. One such set of saints are the "simplicity" folks. These movements insist that voluntary reduction of material consumption is a really good thing. This always strikes my small town Arkansas sense of humour a bit funny, as although my own childhood was in the main spent on the lower lip of the upper middle class, I grew up with solid, bright, good people who lived essentially simple, middle class, well run lives because that was all their resources would permit. Still, the notion of being a bit greener and a bit more mindful by living on a bit less is compelling. It's just that it's yet another, albeit a secular "say this three times and you are one" formula for "the good life". One can want this simple life very much, and yet the goading to want this life, even when it is hard to achieve, can itself turn into one more reason to be dissatisfied. You know, "I chose the simple life but now I'm frustrated because being simple is so darn complicated". I'll never forget the truly admirable simplicity movement advocate I knew personally who probably fit most folks' definition of saintly; still, her affectation was that she continually talked about how complicated her life could be for want of money. Her construct of simplicity always seemed a lot more work than complexity ever could be. The old Skeptic Magazine article trumpeting a poll that rich people in general are happier than poor also comes to mind here somehow.

But my topic is not The Simplicity Movement, or the Greens, or the rich. My topic is the problem of how we derive a whole complex set of notions for how life should be, and how we all spend so much mental energy on notions of what our lives ought to be but aren't.

I perhaps should not generalize this so much; maybe everyone else has a different experience than my own. In my life, I now have many of the things I one day dreamed of having. Yet, though I'm in general a half-full type of guy, once in a while, in a down moment, half-empty occurs to me. It's true that the 40s are more this type of time than any time from, say, late teens through 24 or so. But the thing that "amuses", for want of a better word, is how I can redefine the problem to make my achievements less impressive.

I find over and over in my life that folks I meet define their life's personal problem so that it is unsolvable. Got that college degree? Pretend to yourself it was a piece of cake. Do well in law school? Knock the rank of the school you attended. Get published someplace? Tell yourself 'that's easy, anyone could do it'. Got a good job? Think of someone who makes more money. Make a lot of money? Worry that you sold your soul. Redeem your soul? Worry that you make too little money. I fortunately never fell prey to the common "feel like a fraud" thing, but I sure have had that feeling that every time I achieve my goals, my goals radically shift.

Part of this is healthy. We are goal-oriented creatures. An in-law suggested to me once that one should set oneself material hurdles which are hard to meet. The theory was that career action would then be focused on getting x paid for, instead of worry about the value of the career choice. I don't follow that philosophy at all, but I sure get the notion. The notion is that we all think ourselves to death, and judge ourselves without mercy.

Of course, most of us are reasonably well read, and can quote Lao Tzu or the Buddhist writings. We know to accept the balance, and to find the harmony. But perhaps it is a harbinger of age when one has met so many "harmonized" practitioners who use a rhetoric of mindfulness and live in a reality of deep self-judgment and ambition about material and social matters.

But I wake up and realize I am "burning inside" for some material or social acquisition--oh, nothing picaresque or Erica Jong-ish, but just the day to day "wish I were better at x, wish I had more time with friends, wish I did more to help" type of stuff. We all want to "have it all". I know it is chic to blame this on the media, or our acquisitive American culture, but a cursory reading of literature of centuries past shows this is not new, and is probably a western human commonplace. So many times we don't know what we want, until we have what we want, and then we want more.

Now here, I suppose, I should quote the Dalai Lama, and say I feel much better now, and have resolved this issue. Maybe I could even either raise myself up or attack myself to put a nice coda on things. But I don't really have a simple solution. Doris Lessing once said something to the effect that the great flaw of western culture is the notion that to define a problem is to solve it. Instead of pretending to any solution, I'll just play with it a bit.

Here I am a fellow traveller, for instance, with the New Thought people. New Thought has a real emphasis on appreciating the rightness of what one has, and using a confidence that one can change the things that aren't working now. New Thought goes an extra metaphysical mile about the Great Universal Mind putting a thumb on the scales in a good cause, which isn't really my take. The great universals seem to me to serve higher callings than as my personal home improvement course. But the notion that we should bathe in what does work for us is to me a profound notion. It's just words, of course, and words are not deeds. But it does resonate for me.

Maybe it's naive to count blessings instead of sheep. But I think that many of us are hard-wired for a form of thankfulness. Even those of us who no longer buy the metaphysical constructs and myths attached to that sense of thanks have that place inside that needs to be grateful. That "need", it seems to me, is just as important as the many things we lack but feel we need.

Maybe we need to name what does work, as if we were the first two people on earth naming the animals (silly metaphor, of course, as I can in my mind hear "name him cro-magnon--and get him!"). But I think that the lost art of reckoning goal achievement, instead of merely material things or passionate conquests, is an art worth restoring (of course, passion and money can themselves be goals, of a sort).

I can't really speak for the collective "we", but I can say that this week's project is totaling up wins, and trying to convert personal losses into wins. It's not that I'm keeping score. It's that I need to know I am not losing track. It's not that we need to "love ourselves" more; that's just too ambiguous a phrase. It's not that this will "solve" anything; I doubt it's much in the way of medicine. It's instead that if we are to be truly honest with ourselves, or rather if I am to be truly honest with myself, I must see how well I met my goals, what choices I made, how the choices play out.

I must also see, during that bit of quiet assessment, what I choose now.

Comments

[amatrixangel.livejournal.com]

My father always said, "You can't have your cake and eat it too."

I can't tell you how much this grated against me. To me this was an anathema. I strove to do the opposite in my life. It worked out. I could have my cake and eat it too. I didn't feel good about 'proving' him 'wrong' though. I just thought it was a pity that he believed this so strongly, that he never did really enjoy himself. Life is about joy after all. Yes, only my opinion which I know is not shared by all. Only if it was...

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

It's a lot about how you define the problem. If you define the problem so that whatever you have is not good enough, then your father's quote is right. If you define the problem so that your wants list is insatiable, then again your father is right. If you define the problem so that goals can be achieved and enjoyed, then you are right.

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

maybe that's my problem. I never defined my problem.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I see your point. It's a tough issue, when you mix medical factors in. But some folks without medical factors still always need more than they have, whatever they have. Hmmm....

Re:

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've felt the need for MORE--- just SOME.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

The ability to make those theaters is much more than SOME. It's a LOT. I could work for 2 or 3 years to get the "technical" ability to make a little box that looks like those, and I would then struggle on for years without having the "eye" to do them right.

When you have a gift like that, I must protest that's "some".

Re:

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

oh THAT... that's nothing! ;-)

[miscelenaclosed.livejournal.com]

The phrase I heard was "You can have it all, just not all at the same time." I've spent a good part of my adult life trying to prove it wrong, too. I'm finding out that you CAN have it all at the same time, but it'll kill you trying to hold onto it *and* enjoy it.

Life's a lot of work, no matter who or what you've got. Paring down and applying your efforts to the things that are truly worthwhile to you makes sense to me.

Check-out guy at Office Depot where I was buying my son's back to school supplies asked me if I was going to play the lottery. Being clueless, I asked the pending amount: $22 million. I thought, but didn't say, "Hell, no. Can you imagine the upheaval in my life if I won? I've finally got things running smoothly!"

I didn't say it aloud b/c I have the impression that the average guy tilts his head and stares at people who don't care to acquire as much money as possible. Frankly, I've got what I really *need*, I'm content with my life the way it is right now (financially), and so no, I'm not going to throw a dollar away on a lottery ticket.

Now if there were just lotteries for perfect mates... :)

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

That's a cool story about the lottery. I suspect that ebay will not be offering the "mate auctions" any time soon.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity...

[gregwest98.livejournal.com]

...our lives are frittered away by details. Or so I was told Thoreau said.

I've made similar observations about myself and my kids - sometimes it's never enough. At some point I hope to say: "OK, it's enough now."

I have this little fantasy (no, not one of *those* fantasies) where I buy a cabin in the mountains, say around Cloudcroft, New Mexico and live there. No TV, no computer, nothing but my workbench and my tools. Just enough technology to cook with. If I stayed there, hermit-like, it would be enough since there would be nobody else to compare stuff to. I guess we can't do that though. But I think about it.

Re: Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity...

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I love Cloudcroft, and also the apple orchards just west of it. I can see you now, though, doing the simple life on White Oak Lake. That's more our speed than high falutin' Cloudcroft :)

Re: Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity...

[gregwest98.livejournal.com]

White Oak Lake be danged!!!!!

How many times do I have to tell you about my dislike of the humidity of our home turf? No, no, no - not southern Arkansas ever again! My folks used to have algae grow on the side of their house! They had to have it chemically washed every year to get the slime off it.

No, I spent some time in Cloudcroft one summer and fell for it hook, line, and sinker. What I don't know is what the winters are like although I suspect pretty hard and long. Colorado would be good also. Perhaps in the winter when the high-falutin' skiers show up it might lose its appeal. I fell in love with the summertime tourist-free part.

Anyway, I'm a mountain man so to speak. I could go on and on - someday I shall.

Re: Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity...

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I learned to love the river bottoms and pine forests of our native land. I wish you could share that love.

Cloudcroft gets "real snowy" winters, but I think it is "pure" snow, and not the slush and stuff of some wintery locales. I always thought folks in the lowlands towns near there had it good; they got moderate winters, and they had Cloudcroft a short drive away.

But another time I'll expostulate about the grass is greener syndrome, and how it's not that you can't go home again, it's that you never leave home.

[pigri.livejournal.com]

i keep meaning to ask..... are you on bookcrossing.com?? you should be, and then you can release your books to me.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

You know, I ought to get on bookcrossing.com. Then I could send books out to all and sundry. I was more interested in it than in the one in which I'm supposed to put the artist's books into bookshelves that didn't ask for them, altho that one is appropraitely mail artish.

I'll check into signing up!

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

I have a few books at bookcrossing.com. Would you like one of these?

ooooo, wheeeee!

[pigri.livejournal.com]

i'll take the patricia highsmith!

i'll send you something too, if you like. it'll have to be something i haven't registered yet, though, because those on my bookshelf now have all been sent along.

Re: ooooo, wheeeee!

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

Fabulous!

No need to send me anything, though...I'm trying to simplify! *hee,hee*

You can forward your mailing address here.

Yay!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I just joined bookcrossings.com. As soon as I can look up some ISBN numbers, I'll put some books up.

I am still puzzling over what scintillating facts to put in the bio section over there. So many boring choices, so much space!

But all the money in the world is not enough...

[espvivisection.livejournal.com]

I am constantly anxious. I can't figure out why. I fidget. I fuss. I don't know how to take a vacation. Even when I'm being a worthless, jobless, no good lay-about (such as now) I create things for myself to do, make lists of tasks that I should get to today, in an hour, in a minute. I think if I ever learn to actually slow down and take a breath and be happy in the moment, I'll have a coronary and die.

That said, I’m pretty good about being happy with what I’ve accomplished thus far. Which isn’t to say I’m not future obsessed. I think about what to do next all the time, but I get a decent sense of accomplishment from what I’ve managed to do and I’m quite proud of myself really—which, I suppose, is better than nothing.

Re: But all the money in the world is not enough...

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I like that bit in Faust when saying "I am content" is damnation, but I think it's actually important to once in a while say "I am content".