The Good Life

Where does the good life start?

For some people it used to be when you made a salary that equaled your age. I know most of those people don’t feel that is enough anymore. For others it is when you pay off your house, or the kids have all flown the nest for good. For some it is having a roof over your head and food on the table.

Some people are never satisfied. They are always on a quest for a bigger house, nicer car, more shoes, stainless steel appliances. For them life really is about who can go to heaven with the most stuff, even if that stuff is stashed away in attics and basements, or sometimes rental storage. It is worth it to them to pay to keep stuff they don’t use. Perhaps out of fear that they can’t replace it and perhaps just so they can say they have it, either way it sits useless somewhere, taking up space.

Others pride themselves on doing without and drive people nuts with all their boasting about recycling, and being green, and not wasting anything. And others live that way because they have no choice. (I fall in between here someplace.)

For some it is having health, for others wealth while they are young. The good life seems to be one of those things whose starting point is like the float in the toilet. Just depends on whose toilet it is. I was in an intentional community in New Mexico where the outhouses had no floats at all and they were awesome, smelled good and worked great with sawdust.

In a world where people are constantly at war and life can be shattered in an instant, instead of focusing on what I lack, whether that is health, or wealth, I prefer to enjoy the good moments, whatever they are, when they come. It’s a bit of a Taoist thing I suppose, but mostly it’s just experience.

I’ve had an awful lot of really good times in really bad times and somehow it felt like the good life.