An old country song (Southern Rains by Mel Tillis) observed that when we\u2019re young we want to get away, when we\u2019re old we want to go back, and we spend our lives replacing all the things we left behind.<\/p>\n
When I was young I sure couldn\u2019t wait to get away, despite the fact that we lived in a place that I liked very much.<\/p>\n
But I was full of ambition and adventure, so, of course, the \u201coutside world\u201d beckoned.<\/p>\n
The decades went by. I was lucky enough to get to memorialize some of those adventures in Private Pilot magazine for a few years as a columnist. This at least gave me an excuse to mark my memories for events that flew by so fast I never got to really think about them when they happened.<\/p>\n
The magazine went out of business 2005, so even the keeper of the memories is now just a memory.<\/p>\n
Still plucking at strings on memories, earlier this year I was thinking about where I\u2019d most like to live, and I thought about the old neighborhood. So I took a look at house prices. Egads, I\u2019d have to hit the lotto to buy into that area. It\u2019s nice to think about, but it won\u2019t ever happen.<\/p>\n
I once talked to an old pal who managed to stay in the neighborhood; he inherited his parents\u2019 house. Although he certainly appreciated his good material station in life, he felt that life was passing him by. He was bored and longed for the excitement that the outside world offered.<\/p>\n
His case and mine are more data for the can\u2019t-have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too tally, as if the world needed more proof for that sorry scoreboard.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, when it comes to replacing what we left behind, I\u2019ll give you a choice candidate: peace of mind.<\/p>\n
The world seems to move so fast these days that it\u2019s hard to look where you\u2019re stepping before your foot lands there. Fortunately, I\u2019ve never wanted to be involved in any of the world\u2019s contentions or intrigues, so I\u2019ve usually been lucky enough to avoid these problems and the cynical creatures they harbor.<\/p>\n
But to the extent that I haven\u2019t been lucky on that note, I\u2019ve redoubled my resolve to keep life simple and tranquil.<\/p>\n
Overall, it looks to me like modern life makes it harder, not easier, to have peace of mind. Maybe modern efficiency gives us so much abundance that we take too many things for granted.<\/p>\n
For example, economists freak out when gross domestic product in any given place doesn\u2019t increase every year. This becomes a big news story. Well, I\u2019m all for increased GDP, but I wonder if the expectation of perpetual exponential growth can distort our personal outlooks, causing us to discount what really matters, today, for what we want to happen next year.<\/p>\n
One guy who seemed to avoid the big pitfalls was someone I knew in the deep South. He lived in a tidy little house on a few acres in the piney woods. He sold furniture that he built in his garage workshop.<\/p>\n
He never had any use for college, or travel, or grandiose ambitions. And, since he never felt the youthful compulsion to get away to begin with, he never had to worry about going back later on. Hey; now there\u2019s a thought: The best way to regain something is not to lose it in the first place.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re looking for an example of a practical focus, well, this guy had it. I once offered to take him flying so he could see his place from the air. His response was, \u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t have an answer to that one.<\/p>\n
As the faster-living people moved from job to job and city to city, taking on ever-greater mortgages (\u201cleverage!\u201d) and needing ever-bigger paychecks, the furniture-maker just kept plodding along. I never kept in touch with him, but I imagine that he endured the various shakeouts in the financial world better than many of his more sophisticated counterparts did.<\/p>\n
I think about that guy a couple times a year, usually when I\u2019m sitting in my beach chair, thinking long thoughts, and wondering how I can be a little more smart and a little less stupid in the years to come.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not deriding ambition, but I can\u2019t help but notice that ambition is always based on expectations, and expectations are mighty tricky things. We say that we \u201chave” expectations, but maybe the expectations have us. What we leave behind is always real, but what we think we\u2019re getting in return hasn\u2019t yet materialized and sometimes it never will.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a mighty intimidating proposition, come to think of it. It\u2019s enough to have me hunker down in my chair and just hope for the best, which is always a good idea for the weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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