Appreciating Luxury

I have spent a good portion of my life doing what we are conditioned to do – to work, and work and work in order to achieve, to accumulate, to succeed. I spent many years working 12-hour days trying to write, edit and be generally productive and generate money in addition to keeping house, cooking, raising children and constantly worrying about not being enough in any or all aspects of my life.

It was exhausting. I was thinking last night that all that exhaustive pushing to accomplish didn’t get me where I ultimately thought I wanted to go. I worked mornings and nights, holidays and weekends, when I was sick and tired and I never had that moment when I was a NYT Bestselling author or when my bank account topped six digits.

I missed a lot of days at the park with my kids, a lot of sunny summer afternoons while I stared at a computer screen. But I was conditioned, I suppose, by that old story about the grasshopper and the ants. You work your butt off now so that you can cozy up later and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Well, I did the work. I ignored the call to play and relax and now that it’s time to cozy up, there’s still no pile of gold to lie on.

I occurred to me that maybe it’s time to start appreciating what I have instead of knocking myself out to acquire more that I will never have the time or the energy to enjoy.

I realize that I am surrounded by luxury, and I’ve been taught not to see it. I don’t mean that I have champagne and caviar at my disposal. I mean that I have so many things that in so many places on this planet are considered luxuries. I have a nice home and healthy children and a wonderful husband. I have a job and a car and clean clothes and the ability to decide to relax in a hot bath on a Saturday night after a nice dinner. I can go food shopping or clothes shopping any time I want, and if I’m not feeling well, I can take a paid sick day from my job and see a doctor of my choosing. [Granted the health care situation in this country is a big joke, but it’s better than in many places.]

We are conditioned to take all this for granted in the first world. I’m supposed to be indignant when I have to wait on line for gas, or when the local coffee shop closes down and I can’t grab a latte on the way to work or when the mail is delivered after 5:00 PM or the garbage isn’t taken off the street before noon.  But what we really should be taught is that drinking clean water from a cold fridge is a luxury. Putting on warm socks on a cold night, turning up the heat a few degrees and climbing into a bed of clean sheets and fluffy pillows is a luxury. Going to work at a job that pays me not only to show up, but to stay home on holidays and vacations and sick days is a luxury. Deciding to sit on the couch and read a book, or write a book of my choosing – is a luxury.

I’ve decided that from this point forth, I will make an effort to appreciate the luxuries I have accumulated in my life. I’m not saying I’m going to stop trying to achieve, but my priority now is going to be to enjoy what I have instead of slavishly pushing to have more before I can finally consider myself a success and enjoy the fruits of my labors.

I have decided that I have enough and I am enough. I’ve been an ant long enough. 

Now I’m a grasshopper. 

Fear for profit

The older I get, the more I notice how much of our society runs on fear. The media is the chief purveyor of fear on a widespread scale, but you can find it on a more personal level every day too.

 
 

Starting with the media, however – if you notice lately, and more so every day, the headlines, the news segments are all geared around something new we need to be afraid of: cancer, obesity, heart disease, ebola, zika…fraud, floods, freezing temperatures, a torturous commute to work, a new danger lurking in the refrigerator or the washing machine or at the corner store.

 

 

 I’ve realized that if we are, as a community, afraid of something, we are more controllable, more malleable and infinitely more profitable for business of every kind. If we are afraid of a snowstorm that will trap us in our homes for days on end, we rush out to stock up on milk and bread. If we are afraid of becoming terribly ill with the flu, we will let Big Pharma inject us with chemicals as a preventative [all I’ve ever heard from people who got the flu shot is how they ended up with the flu – yet they were so afraid of not getting the shot]. If we are afraid of having a heart attack we will modify our diet [often in ways that are actually worse for our health], if we’re afraid of being fat we will turn over large buckets of cash to diet companies who will sell us chemicals and fads that only make us feel worse. If we are afraid of cancer, we will allow doctors to pump us full of poison and radiation all the while telling us how ‘brave’ we are to be fighting for our lives.

 

 

There is always someone who wants us to be afraid of something so that it will profit them.

 

 

I had a small, brief moment of clarity the other day, and for a second I could understand and feel what it was like to not be afraid. It only lasted a moment – but that moment made me think, what would an entire life be like if it could be lived without fear?

 

 

Now, granted, fear is a necessary element of survival. If you’re not afraid of the lion, you may become his dinner. If you’re not afraid of fire, you will be burned. But how often are we told that if we’re too afraid to fall we’ll never fly?

 

 

Imagine how high we could fly if we weren’t burdened with incessant fear of everything? I’ve always lived in this state of fear that society has created. While there are certainly people who live in fear of truly horrible things that are much worse than anything I’ve experienced, I realize I’m one of millions or maybe billions of people who are controlled by the fear that’s created in order to boost the profits of others.

 

 

What would happen if we stopped worrying every minute that we might be sick and not know it, and therefore should be running to the doctor all the time for tests to prove that we are not sick? What would happen if we could vote for a president because we thought that person was the best qualified for the job and not because we are terrified of what will happen if the opponent we don’t like wins the election?

 

 

I wonder how much money would be lost if we stopped being afraid of every calorie, afraid of missing a mammogram, afraid of getting a fever, afraid of growing old, afraid of LOOKING old?

 

 

What would happen if we were too busy living life and enjoying it to worry about dying?

 

 

Unfortunately my moment of clarity was fleeting, but I can’t stop thinking about it. My hope is that I can keep working on it and maybe get to a point where I can let go of some of that fear that has kept me controllable and profitable to the fear mongers for so long. My hope is that in the second half of my life I can live it on my terms and not be afraid of what anyone else will think of my choices.

 

 

 As long as I’m happy and I can get up every day and go to work, enjoy my hobbies, spend time with my family and friends, laugh and love and look forward to things – then guess what, I’m doing perfectly okay, and NO ONE has the power to make me afraid that I’m not doing what’s best for me because I’m not a customer of their fear based profit machine.