A person never really knows when they are going to die. A fellow could be on death row, scheduled for execution, and die of a brain aneurysm before they ever meet the executioner. And it can happen at any age, too. Even at nearly 50, people sometimes tell me, "you're so young, you have lots of time!" But how do they know? In the last ten years I've lost as many people my age and younger to all kinds of things: heart attack, cancer, stroke, and an assortment of other diseases and accidents. What I mean is, without some really exquisite planning, it can be hard to tell for sure when it will happen. Being "young" offers no immunity, and all we know with certainty is that one day will be our last.
I bring this up because when my father retired twenty-some years ago, he had a laundry list of things he wanted to do, but he never did any of them. He let my narcissistic mother bully him out of nearly every design he had. Now he's in a nursing home, disabled from Parkinson's disease, and plagued by dementia.
And so becomes the dilemma of enjoying oneself in the now whilst working to secure a future that may never arrive, or may not be at all what we expected. Even if you're presently retired, or independently wealthy, I'll bet there are things you do now that you wouldn't do if you knew somehow that you wouldn't be alive in six months. I also bet that some of the stuff you thought you always wanted to do wouldn't seem so important, and perhaps things you never even thought about before suddenly would.
Why has this been on my mind lately? In Eastern philosophy, there exists a concept of "meaningful coincidences." There have been far too many meaningful coincidences lately for me to believe anything other than that everything that happened in my life in the last eight years happened for a reason: to wake me up. For one, I am convinced that if my father had learned to live more fully in the moment, and to recognize toxic people and toxic habits for what they are, he wouldn't be as bad off as he is right now. He may not have even contracted Parkinson's, and even if he had, it wouldn't be as advanced as it is now.
This blog is about my quest to let go of things that no longer serve me and live more fully in the present. It is about embracing fear and really living. It is about finding peace in simplicity. It is about living debt-free and growing wealth, real wealth, which often has nothing at all to do with money. Don’t get me wrong, money is necessary, and you should save and invest, but most people could probably live on much less than they believe they need. And a person might even be much happier living a simple, low-profile life of presence and meaning.