What’s Wrong with Bucket Lists?

Bucket List: 1) Reduce stress 2) Complete bucket list 3) Reduce stress created by not completing bucket list

Everyone knows what a “bucket list” is–the term was popularized by the 2007 by the movie that starred Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.  In the movie, the two men meet in the hospital as in-patients for cancer treatment, and they embark on fulfilling their “bucket lists”–things they want to do before they kick the bucket.

The notion is not new–and the movie’s title was based on the term.  Google “bucket lists” and you’ll find all kids of lists you can steal from and be inspired by:  The Thrill Seeker’s Bucket List; Bucket List for Men; 28 Places to See Before You Die.  The Huffington Post even has an article on the Reverse Bucket List:  things NOT to do before you die.

Sounds inspiring to come up with a to-do list of Meaningful Activities.  But the idea has always bothered me for some reason, and I think it’s because of the faulty logic:

1. Focusing on 5, or 17, or 98, or 1000 things to do before you die assumes that THOSE THINGS are the things that matter.
2. Aiming your arrow at those few things pushes the things you are doing right now into peripheral vision.
3. Therefore, the moments you ARE living, prior to jumping out of airplanes or crossing the country on a motorcycle are placed in your mind as not as important.
4. Then, what if those bullseye activities aren’t as fulfilling as you had hoped?  Haven’t you ever gone to the prom and it was nowhere as magical as you had imagined it?   I think that’s what Stephen Covey refers to as having the ladder against the wrong wall.
5. At that point, have you been chasing an illusion?  An expectation that this one thing, or dozen things on your list should be the things that count, when, after all, you find they weren’t?

Which brings me to the thing that bothered me the most about the movie.  While Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman were sitting on a mountain in Sedona or wherever, Morgan Freeman’s wife was trying to track down her husband, and essentially was shut out of the bucket list.  The movie tries to mitigate this by adding expository about some existing trouble in the relationship.  OK.   I’m sure there are people who are sorry, at the end of their lives, that they tolerated stale relationships, but maybe addressing relationships should be #1 on the bucket list as opposed to a fancy dinner with a near-stranger in Paris.

I’m not saying life shouldn’t be an adventure. and a quest for our heart’s desire.   Dorothy had to have that experience in Oz before she came right around to learning that her heart’s desire is in her own “backyard”  (a metaphor for inner self, or divine guidance, or the kingdom within).  But, the bucket list is not a mythological quest:  I think we must guard against making our bucket lists diversions from our true inner quests.

To me, a bucket list is like jumping over running streams right in front of you to chase a mirage.

My bucket list has one thing in it, and if I can accomplish it, I don’t have to worry about check marks and timelines.  In fact, the timeline for my bucket list is very, very short.

My Bucket List:

1. Be here now.

Jessica Sanchez: I Just Do What I Do

Sanchez: "I just do what I do."

I LOVED the title quote, from Jessica Sanchez, American Idol contestant.

I am an American Idol groupie. American Idol has been my guilty pleasure since Kelly Clarkson days. I don’t seek spiritual transcendence from it, just entertainment, but I loved the spirituality behind 16-year old Jessica Sanchez’s kind of zoned-out response to Ryan Seacrest’s question. After she was “saved” by the judges last night, he asked, “What was going through your mind when the judges were coming up on the stage to save you?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I don’t expect anything. I just do what I do.”

Is anything more spiritual, more Zen, than that? More Zen than pure in-the-moment detaching yourself from the results?

Contrast that with AI contestant Hollie Cavanaugh, who hasn’t reached her stride yet despite an amazing voice. In trying to find that peak performance that the judges have been looking for, she picked the song “Perfect” by Pink, because that’s how she wanted others to see her. That’s what she wanted to be.

After her performance, Ryan asked Hollie what she was thinking right before she started singing. Tellingly, she said “I better not mess up.” The judges gently pointed out to her that “perfect” isn’t the right bullseye. Forget perfect pitch–perfect isn’t perfect, unless you are perfectly one in the moment–one with the task, with no expectations. A lesson for us all. Mind you, I’m not putting Hollie down–I relate to her. I was the only kid in my 4th grade piano recital who had to have my sheet music as a crutch because I was afraid of forgetting the notes.

A blog post in the blog Early to Rise calls out one of the principles in the Deepak Chopra’s book in which I first learned of this miraculous concept of detaching from the results:

As Deepak Chopra says in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, when you are constantly classifying, labeling, and evaluating, you “create a lot of turbulence in your internal dialogue.” The more internal bickering that takes place, the less time and room (in your mind) for constructive thinking.

This week I had a report to do, and frankly, I was stressed about it. I did what I usually do under these circumstances and I set my alarm for 4:30 am so I could get an early start to worrying. No, really, getting up early is my way of keeping distractions at bay. My way of thinking is, “if I’ve sacrificed the wee hours so I can get things done, I better not waste them!”

But in spite of getting up at 4:30, I felt I was still groping in the dark with this report by the end of the day.

On Wednesday, I finally got to the point where, in desperation, I prayed, “Dear God, I trust that you are going to work through me and allow me to present this material creatively, intelligently, and cohesively.” Then I let it go.

The next morning I got up (at 4:30) and by 8:30 it was lookin’ pretty good! I didn’t think about my client. I didn’t think about my job prospects. I just did it.

Jessica Sanchez, I’m going to tape your quote above my computer: I Just do What I Do. I Don’t Expect Anything.

Moorjani: You Are Love: So Allow Life, Live Fearlessly, Have Fun!

The title of this post is my attempt to cram in the message of a book I read this weekend called Dying to Be Me by Anita Moorjani, which I felt compelled to find and download while watching Wayne Dyer on PBS.

By all accounts, Moorjani had a miraculous life event.  She was rushed to the hospital one night in 2006, reaching the end of her two-year battle with cancer.  Doctors told her family there was nothing else they could do–that her death was imminent.

There, she had a near-death experience, about which she writes in detail in her book.  Many elements of her experience match that of others who have reported NDEs:  the amazing feeling of peace, connection with loved ones previously dead, an inexpressible sense of Oneness and a place where linear time is simply irrelevant.

She was told by her father (who had died previously) that she could go back if she wanted.   She chose to do that, while she witnessed the events in her earthly life unfolding:  her husband grieving, her mother crying, her brother who, having had a strange foreboding, had jumped on a plane to go see her before it was too late.

She knew if she returned, the cancer would be resolved.

So, she returned–30 hours after having lapsed into a coma, and over the next few weeks, her cancer shrunk and then completely disappeared.

That’s the background–which is interesting in itself.  But the main idea:  the main message is in the rest of this coherent book.  a message shared by a lot of saints, mystics and gurus throughout the ages.

If I could shamefully present her message in a four-bullet powerpoint presentation, these would be my key takeaways:

• You Are Love:  We are all part of this Great Whole.  We draw from it, we give through it, we are it.  There is no separation between us and other life forms.  As a result, all fears driven by separation and all judgement is suspended.  We’re like a big reflecting pool:  We see ourselves in the sparkles of the light reflections on the water, but we can’t separate the drops one from the other.  This Big Pool is unconditional love.
  • She feels that her cancer (while being careful not to blame others for their sicknesses) was due to her repression of her self, and lack of acceptance of herself in an effort to please everyone.  She entreats everyone to realize their own magnificence.
• Allow Life: Because we are Love and part of this Oneness, anything we do to force what we think should happen (as the result of judgments, perceptions and beliefs) is going to impede the life flow from going through us–it’s going to dam up that Love and render it ineffective.
  • So we need to find our center, we need to get to that Source within us and stay true to it.  We must not betray our own essence.  If we let life flow through us, the Love will emanate, and we have no need to fear.  Life will unfold as it’s meant to.
• If we allow, and if we trust, we can then live fearlessly.   We can stop worrying; we can stop controlling ourselves and others.  We can just be.  That doesn’t mean we just sit around navel-gazing (although there’s a place for that).  But we accept the purpose of our lives as it unfolds.  If we listen to our inner selves, we will be drawn–we will know–what the next steps are, and we can follow them without anxiety.  It will all feel Right–we can stop trying to make the Universe a creation of our own limited projections.
• Finally, don’t take life so seriously!  It’s a Garden of Eden still, in many ways.  If you draw away from Love by attempting to do the “right” things, you might feel like you are in a constant state of self-denial.  But following rules to “be good” for the desired effect, says Moorjani, is a backwards way of looking at things.  There is no punishment for the “wrong” way:  there are only misguided ways in which we fall away from the Source.   Instead of saying “If I do this, I will lose weight” or “if I do that, I will make my spouse sorry he hurt me,” simply fall back into line with the Source, and your actions will follow in tune.  For instance, instead of dieting, you may feel like you want to eat better because you honor your Self, and instead of controlling your spouse, you may stop wanting him/her to fulfill all your emotional needs–you have all the Love you need already and you’re ready to share that no matter what he/she does to you.
• Bottom line:  “Your life is your prayer,” is what Moorjani says.  And prayer shouldn’t be a chore.  Your prayer should be your life  blurting out gratitude.

So, with my deep apologies to Anita Moorjani for paraphrasing her wonderful message so crudely, here is the main truth (You Are Love) and four implications it:  Feeling love and honoring your divine self, you are free–to allow Life to flow through you; to abandon your fears,  to act on the direction of the Voice within you, and to enjoy every moment!  Life is a ball!  Realize your magnificence!

External Preparation for Lent: Giving Deliberately

Ahh, it's so nice and comfy under this bushel!

There are two components of my Lent this year:  The first component is Living Deliberately.  I want to try to cut out the distractions and let God in.  That’s basically it.

The second part of my Lent is a bigger challenge for me–it’s giving deliberately.  I have to admit, that as an introvert, I have sorely slacked in the giving department.  I love to read, but for all my high-falutin’ spiritual reading and being into Buddhists, and Christians, and Hindus and New Age mystical writers like Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle…well, I feel like you do when you spend all your money on fine dining.  You look around and you have nothing to show for it.

Yesterday I did a stupid time-killing exercise online, as a distraction from doing some report-writing.  It was a chakra test.  Now, I’ve been into all kinds of New Age stuff, but I’ve never gotten into chakras.  To be honest, I still don’t know what they are!  But, I took the test anyway, and guess what?   Out of my seven chakras, one was weak, and three were closed!

My Crown Chakra was strong:  my desire to connect with God.  But the other three closed chakras basically said that I was hiding myself “under a bushel” as Matthew says in the Gospel.

It’s about time to crawl out under that bushel.   All of the great spiritual leaders have had dual lives:  they had interior, contemplative lives, but then they used all the internal strength and they all got out there and did stuff.   The tended to the sick and poor.  The performed works of mercy.   Jesus spent 40 days in the desert, but then he went out there healing and ministering.   Today, Thich Nhat Hanh lives out the concept of  engaged Buddhism.  There are so many people out there today who volunteer and give, give, give selfishly and saintily (is that a word?).     People reading to the blind, or running in marathons, or serving on local councils or heading up committees at their churches.  I am a baby crawling on my knees in this area.    All because I am–as my Chakras apparently reveal—closed.

The ironic thing is, one of my morning gathas/mantras is:
Breathing in feel God’s love
Breathing out I share God’s love

So where to start in actually sharing love?  I suppose there are two routes:

1. Just do one nice thing a day–a random act of kindness.  Drop a note to an aging relative.  Say Yes to the next request you get for a donation or quick favor.  Compliment someone (sincerely).  Offer to watch a neighbor’s child for an hour to give them a break.    Make amends for something.  Instead of brushing by a panhandler, give them a buck.   Thank a colleague or coworker or boss.  Write a note to a local family that lost a son or daughter in the call of service.   Call up a relative you haven’t spoken to in a while.    Listen to someone.
2. Pick a place to volunteer on a regular basis.  Choose a volunteer activity that matches your passions.  If you love to read, read to the blind.   If you love to cook, volunteer at a soup kitchen.   If you’re handy with a hammer and saw, volunteer with a local Habitat for Humanity.  If you’re still not sure where to go, check out VolunteerMatch.org or Serve.gov.  A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, so all you need to do is make that first phone call or visit.   No obligation.   At least that’s what I’m telling myself as I work through my shyness.

So, that’s the Giving Deliberately part of my Lent.  It’s the toughest part.  For me, it’s not that hard to give up stuff. It’s a lot harder to actually get up and do something.  But it’s time to crawl out from under that bushel.

Internal Preparation for Lent: Living Deliberately

The sleeping loft in Innermost House

The prior blog posts about retirement may not seem to have much to do with Lent, but in a way, they are related.  They both have to do with withdrawing–in the case of retirement, you are withdrawing from the working world; in the case of Lent, you are  imitating Jesus’ withdrawal into 40 days in the desert. Both concepts are about preparation and readiness. Both concepts ask you to think about how you are living your life.

Every year I do something for Lent.  I find it to be a great spiritual discipline, and I always learn something about myself.  Even though learnings may be barely meaningful (hey, I really don’t mind coffee without sugar!), other learnings run deeper as we strain to listen with the ear of our heart, as I did last year when I lived for a few weeks in a beachside poustinia.

So, what to do this year?  I’ve given it a lot of thought, and this year I’ve been inspired by a few people who are represented in the following books or blogs:

• Jim Merkel, author of Radical Simplicity
• Jacob Lund Fisker, author of Early Retirement Extreme (and past author/editor of the now-inactive blog of the same name)
• “Dr. Jackie Benton,” the subject of William Power’s book, 12 x 12
• Helen and Scott Nearing, counterculture homesteaders and authors of The Good Life
• Thoreau, author of Walden
• Diana Lorence, owner of Innermost House

See a connection there?  All have lived (or still live) close to the bone.   They all live or have lived below what the Department of Health and Human Services’ definition of the poverty line.   Yet, they call themselves rich in other ways.

Some people go that route to protest how we spend our taxes (like Jim Merkel and Dr. Jackie Benton). Some want to retire early, and so lived on a very small portion of their income (like Jacob Lund Fisker).  Some are in search of a deliberate life (like Thoreau, Diana Lorence, the Nearings). And every time I read their stories, their philosophies, and their experiences, I’m both inspired and jealous.

So, this Lent  I plan to take on some of the practices of the people above, recognizing that it’s impractical and overambitious to just jump into their lifestyle from my vantage point of a typical mortgage-owning, business-owning habitant of suburbia.    But I am going to try to inch closer to the mindset of those who have chosen this path.   Internally, I will practice detachment and mindfulness.

It is a crime against life to not be constantly aware of the natural blessings and challenges of life.  Yet we make it hard on ourselves to do that because of the layers of mental and spiritual clutter we’ve heaped on top.  It’s like going to a banquet table and the filet mignon is hidden under a pile of Cheez Doodles.  OK, I’m vegetarian, so that’s not the best analogy for me.  So, let’s say living mindlessly is like passing violinist Yo Yo Ma in a subway station on the way to work.   You can’t really hear the divine strains of music because of the screeching of the trains and the bustling of the crowds.   And you’re not even paying attention because you’re busy going somewhere else:  sadly, you walk right by. Anam Thubten’s book, No Self, No Problem, is one of my nightstand books, and this is his analogy:

If we want to create space in a room and we begin by bringing in a lot of things from outside of the room, it will not work out.  The room will become stuffed with junk.  So how are we going to create space?  We should begin by just getting rid of things.  We simply get rid of all the junk.  Get rid of all the things that are not necessary.  In the same way, to bring about contentment we need a consciousness that is like creating space.  It’s not about having more, accumulating more. Rather it is about letting go of this and that.  When we let go of everything we see that the space we wanted to create is already there.  In the same way, inner contentment is already there and that is true happiness.  There is no enlightenment other than that.

The only thing I would add here, from a Lenten perspective, letting go and creating space also puts us in readiness mode to transform and transcend suffering and sorrow; makes us more able to make sorrow redemptive; helps us see that we can love the sorrow as much as the joy because both are parts of living and being. So for me, Lent will be an effort to cut down on the meaningless and pay attention to the meaningful.   Be more detached from thoughts and possessions.  Be more mindful, awake and aware.  Instill daily practices to support that.

Next Post:  External Preparation for Lent:  Giving Deliberately

Rethinking the Retirement Paradigm: Matt and Joan Get Weird

Picking up from the previous post,  Joan can do one thing to escape any future “golden handcuff” trap.  For that matter, Matt can do the same thing.

Matt and Joan can simply rethink living beyond their means, and instead, live far below them.

Why do we have to go toe-to-toe with others in our cultural and professional circles?  Why do we think we have to wear our promotions on our sleeves, over our heads, in our driveways?    The reason is not real surprising:  Humans are social beings who have a hard-wired need to belong.  We belong by blending in, wearing the “uniforms” of our tribes, making sure that our peers will not question our choices, and we can seamlessly fit by matching our possessions with the trappings of our peer group.

And let’s think about the expectations for the social hierarchy.  Typically those who are one step above us in our social circles are one step above us in material possessions.  You go to your boss’s house for dinner.  You expect him or her to have a nicer house than you do.   What if Matt’s boss, a vice president, invited Matt and his partner to dinner.  On the way, the two of them anticipate the McMansion, the Lexus in the driveway, the stainless steel and granite kitchen big enough to prepare meals for a city block.  Instead, what if they pulled off onto a dirt road and found his boss living in a one-room cabin?   What if the boss had one bathroom, not two and a half?  What if the boss had no microwave, and offered beverages, not out of a stainless steel built-in beauty, but out of a decades-old white Frigidaire?    Matt would be thoroughly confused.  After all, our possessions are important cues about our status and our relationship within the social structure.

What is the cost of Matt’s boss breaking this stereotype?    Probably not much.  He’s free to spend his money the way he sees fit.  As long as he doesn’t wear a hard hat and construction boots to an executive board meeting, no one will ding him for his living choices.  But his peers and his subordinates will gossip and question his choices to live far below his means, because to them, it would be weird.

Dave Ramsey raises “weird” to a badge of honor when he encourages his audience to live below their means for a greater purpose.   In doing so, he acknowledges the reality and the pull of the status symbol, as well as the difficulties of breaking the material ties that trap people in lives of debt and wage slavery–just so that they “fit in.”  But he also acknowledges the pay-off.

He tells people to “live like no one else now so that some day you can live like no one else.”  He is telling people that there may be a price to delayed gratification now–even a social price, but there will come a day when your peers will be like the albatross while you will be like a sparrow.   If you live beneath your means, you are a swan among ducks.

So, what is the paradigm shift for Joan and Matt?  What can they do to be able to be responsive to their lives, rather than encumbered by them?

Here are some broad strokes to bend the paradigm–and this is not a to-do list–it’ a to-think list:

1. Master your desires.  One of my favorite books is The Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing–a couple who moved to Vermont, and then Maine to set up homesteading and build a new kind of community.  They built their own home, stone by stone.  They ate out of a wooden bowl and with a pair of chopsticks.  They worked 4 hours of “bread labor” a day and spent the rest of the day in leisure and community work.  I always assumed that they were just always happy with this simple life.  But in the book The Making of a Radical, Scott Nearing admits that he always grappled with his desire for more stuff.  But he never gave in–he simply tamed it.  Recognizing that having a desire for more doesn’t mean more will make your life better will help direct your life.  Lower the ceiling on “enough.”
2. Live deliberately:  The myriad of distractions today keeps us in a tizzy.  It was bad enough just a decade ago, but now we have a new culture of social media and an online life  that splits our attention like light through a prism.  Work on mindfulness.  Learn to tame your mind.   Choose wisely where you direct your thoughts and actions.     What do YOU want?
3. Redefine luxury.  Find beauty is subtraction, not addition.  Consider the hypothetical situation of the dinner at Matt’s bosses wooded cabin.  The paradigm in our mind dictates that this cabin is inferior–that the boss must be crazy, or maybe he got involved in an expensive divorce, or maybe this is his hunting cabin, but his real house is somewhere else.   But what if Matt’s boss lived here?   This is Innermost House, and it seethes with beauty.  It’s luxurious in simplicity; luxurious in peace; luxurious in balance and harmony.   It’s the kind of luxury that will set us free.

The less we own, and the less we are accountable for with our future, the less we’ll have to worry about retirement.    The less we own, the less we’ll have to spend our days in meaningless work now so that we can spend our days in meaningless activities later.

We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the minds of others, and for this purpose we endeavor to shine.  We labor unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence and neglect the real. — Pascal

Instead of developing techniques for maximum profit, try to develop those that will give the maximum of freedom.  –Simone Weil

Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not misery but the very foundation of refinement. — William Morris

Be interested in the universe.  Do not cling to this world.  Do not want to possess anything.  Never think of your pension. — Okada Torajiro

Challenging the Retirement Paradigm Case Study 2: Joan, the elementary school principal

Blessed are those who enlighten the rest of us with their quest for quality--and get paid, too!

We need to consider that some people may not want to “retire” because they like their jobs.  As Confucius once said, if you love your job, you’ll never work a day in your life.   Many of this type of worker is a professional in a service industry, or they are lucky enough to earn a living off of their art or other passions.

I ran into Joan at a restaurant one Friday night.  I hadn’t seen her in several years, but I had actually helped to hire her decades ago as principal of the school that my kids went to.   We chatted and while we were catching up on family and life events, I was doing the math in my head and calculated that Joan was well past the point at which she might have collected her pension and retired from her lifelong career as an educator.

“So, Joan, are you thinking of retiring at all?”  I asked her.

“Well, I could, but my job is getting easier, so I figure, why retire?”

“It’s getting easier?”  I asked, surprised.  After all, a lot of educators I meet complain about the lack of support they get on every level, as well as the challenges of their students who often are distracted from learning by familial, social, and economic factors.

“Yes,” she continued.  ”There are a lot more Asians in the neighborhood now, and they make my life easier.  The parents are supportive and involved and the children are motivated.  So, it makes my job easy.”

Joan is not going anywhere soon.  She may as well continue being of service in the community as long as she enjoys it.

Most of the early retirement how-to books I’ve seen are proponents of being completely financially independent so you can quit your job and travel and go wherever the wind blows you.  If you have a job that lacks meaning and you have no intention of seeking greener career pastures, working for financial independence with the goal of not working at all is a great goal.

But wouldn’t it be heaven to be able to accept the money you earn as kind of icing on the cake–not the pot at the end of the rainbow?  Who wants to chase that rainbow, anyway?   You totally miss the journey if you do.

Shortly after Steve Jobs died, I read his biography by Walter Isaacson.  One thing that struck me was Jobs’ ambivalence towards money.   In fact, this ambivalence manifested itself in some nasty fights with his Board of Directors at Apple.  While the Board of Directors and the stockholders a healthy profit as their “True North,” Jobs saw profit as secondary.   His True North was always Quality.

Steve Jobs relentlessly pursued Quality–in much the same way Ayn Rand spoke through architect Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, and the same way  in which Robert Pirsig maintained his motorcycle in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  In the meantime, he made money.  Lots of it.

If you are lucky enough to have gotten to the apex of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and are profiting from it, you are in company with Steve Jobs and Howard Roark.   But most of us need to earn money in more mundane ways while working on actualizing ourselves.  (By the way, for inspiration on that front, I highly recommend a visit or revisit to those two classic books I mentioned above.)

***

It’s also worth noting that even the shine of idealism that motivates people in the service professions tarnishes.  In the book Rethinking Retirement–How to Create the Life You Want Without Waiting to Retire, the author, financial planner Keith Weber, talks about one of his clients, a teacher:

I learned Jeff was covered by a state pension program that used the ‘Magic 75′ formula where he would qualify for full retirement benefits when his age and years of service combine to equal 75.  At age 57 with 17 years of service, he was just a few years away.  You can imagine my surprise then, when he responded to my question, ‘When would you like to retire?’ by saying ‘I want to leave at the end of this year.’

‘But why?’ I asked.  ’You’re so close to being able to retire with full benefits.’

Without missing a beat he said, ‘Keith, I just don’t love the little bastards anymore.’

So, let’s look at someone like Joan–who has dedicated her life to worthy goal–getting thousands upon thousands of kids to learn and grow.  Let’s just say she is ten years from retirement, and her job hasn’t gotten easier–it’s gotten harder.    She’s burnt out.

There are two scenarios for her situation now.  Scenario 1: she has lived her life as if she was going to have to depend on her salary until she retired at a normal age, which means she lived like most.  She bought as much house as the bank was willing to lend, and she’s furnished it to keep up with her academic friends.  She finances her cars to get to work,  She loves to travel and on her few weeks off during the summer, she loves to go to exotic places, as justifiable sabbatical and mental stimulation.  She usually charges the trips and pays them off throughout the year.

But now she’s stuck.  She’s servicing debt, and while she’s hovering on the line of living within her means, she handcuffed to the salary she’s built up over the past twenty years.   She either has to find a way to work through the burnout (maybe with another expensive trip next summer), or she has to cling on miserably until she can figure out what else to do.

On the other hand…[to be continued]

Next Post–Joan’s alternate scenario

Matt, About Your Job: It’s Not About You

"This mantra misleads on nearly every front," according to this Diversified Insurance blog post

OK, so here’s where I’m going to provide the possible alternatives for Matt, but I want to lay out one overriding principle that I’ve learned in my travels in and out of employment and finding the best route for my life, and that is:

It’s not about you.  It’s not about you, but it is about finding your calling.  Sometimes you and God might not agree, but one of the best ways to distract yourself from the idea of retirement is to try to figure out how you and God can get on the same page.

I want to be perfectly transparent in my belief that finding the best path in life is not always about Finding Your Bliss or indulging in immediate gratification for the perfect work life.   Let’s face it–life is full of struggles.  To get to where you should be, sacrifice is always the price you pay.

So this theme of unretirement is really more about opening your heart and mind to alternatives.  Alternatives that might take your mind off of the typical  self-centered marathon of a life to cross the finish line at 65 with blinders on.  There are other ways to live in which your focus can be on the present moment instead of a future one.

Matt is lucky because he’s so young and life’s door is wide open.  But being young is sometimes a disadvantage for finding your true calling.  Sometimes you have to be like the writer in Ecclesiastes, or like Dorothy in Oz, wandering around until you realize that you spent a lot of time and miles searching for something outside yourself, not knowing that the real answer was right there in your own heart.

Perhaps Matt could get a head start on his course in life if he does what Lisa Kelly advises in her Ignatian blog post, Connecting to the Source, dotMagis.com.  In examining his alternative in life, Matt might simply want to take some steps to connect with the Source that will put him on the path meant for him.  This path might be something Matt hasn’t even imagined. It might be confusing to Matt.  It might be difficult.  But somehow, Matt will feel pulled in that direction.

Here is Lisa’s advice for finding new habits of the heart, which might apply in Matt’s situation:

- Get over yourself—whatever you are going to be called to, if it is a higher calling, it’s not going to be about you. It is going to be about and for others. You are going to be the tool. Connecting to God will require putting aside your wants, your desires, your biases, your plans. Are you ready for that?

- Get outside yourself- Stop judging and start observing, observing, observing. Be aware of what is going on inside. Ignatius taught his companion to just name what was going on inside and let it be what it is rather than trying to stomp it out or avoid it. He suggested seeing situations from multiple points of view—others in the scene, open to what insights may come from any vantage point, knowing God is in all of them. We are seeking what we don’t know or can’t see rather than reaffirming what we already think.

- Make some space and time for your mind and body-The first step of the Examen is to settle ourselves and be aware of the Presence. While some spiritualities make this space by retreating from the world, Ignatius saw it as most important to do while within the world. Get out in nature and let your senses be overwhelmed. Let the cares and worries and constant chatter of your mind fade away into awareness of nothing but the present moment. If we don’t stop talking to ourselves, how are we going to hear the Voice that we seek? Centering prayer, yoga, meditation all help people practice being in that space that makes connecting to the Source far more likely because the chatter is kept to a minimum.

- Give it wings. Trust what you glimpsed. Do something (even if you don’t know where it is going to lead you.) Get over your fears—don’t let that Spirit Not of God, get in your way. Run with it. Try it—knowing full and well you still have a long way to go. Prayer must result in some action or change to be complete.

So, perhaps Matt might decide to stay in his marketing job.  If he does, and if he pursues this job mindfully, he might decide to ignore the social cues the prompt him to keep up with his colleagues’ status symbols.  He might make a decision to stay out of debt, because as soon as you borrow, you are no longer living in the moment.  You are no longer free to follow God’s call.  And he might perform his daily tasks, as simple as they may be, with an attitude of service.

Or he might start mentally and prayerfully exploring other options, following his heart even if it seems counterintuitive to who he thinks he is, and what he thinks he wants.  So many saints found their way by ignoring their self-perceptions.  As Evelyn Underhill stated in The Spiritual Life:

St. Paul did not want to be an apostle to the Gentiles.  He wanted to be a clever and appreciated young Jewish scholar, and kicked against the pricks.  St. Ambrose and St. Augustine did not want to be overworked and worried bishops…St. Cuthbert wanted the solitude and freedom of his hermitage on the Farme, but he did not often get there.  St. Francis Xavier’s preference was for an ordered life close to his beloved master, St. Ignatius.  At a few hours’ notice he was sent out to be the Apostle of the Indies and never returned to Europe again.  Henry Martyn, the fragile and exquisite scholar, was compelled to sacrifice the intellectual life to which he was so perfectly fitted, for the missionary life to which he felt he was decisively called.  In all these, a power beyond themselves decided the direction of life.  Yet in all we recognize not frustration, but the highest of all types of achievement.

In out modern day, we have examples.  What do you think Albert Schweitzer‘s family thought when he gave up classical music to minister in deepest Africa?    What drove St. Theresa of Liseaux to inspire greatness with her spirituality of imperfection, with her Little Way?  What do you think Martin Luther King Jr.’s family thought when he took on leadership of the Civil Rights movement?   I really don’t see him sitting at Boston University saying to himself, “I think I’ll go home and put my family in danger and risk a nice life as pastor of a church and start a civil rights movement.”

So step one is to change our Habits of the Heart, as Lisa Kelly calls them.   Let Someone else do the coloring of our parachutes.

Challenging the Retirement Paradigm Case Study I: Matt, the Promising Marketing Manager

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
–The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost

I’m not a financial expert and I’m not a life coach, so the way I’m going to answer the “yes buts” about the retirement paradigm that I said that I’d talk about in the last post is to let the real experts take the floor by providing a few links.

Over the next few posts I’ll discuss some hypothetical people marching toward retirement:

Matt is in his late 20s and has been entrenched in his job for a few years.  He had gone to college and changed his major a few times, but finally settled on Marketing, after trying classes in history and anthropology.  He loved his classes in anthropology and thought it would be great to go to places and uncover hidden secrets about man and society, but he wasn’t ready to rush into grad school, and he was sick of being a broke student.  So,  he shifted to a more practical major, upon his dad’s advice, and his personality and better-than-average grades won him an interview at a Fortune 500 company.   He and his parents were thrilled when he got a job offer after only three months of searching.  In this economy, he considered himself really lucky.

But, some realities of 9-5 came as a rude awakening to him the first year.  Not that he dislikes his job as an entry-level manager.   He really enjoys the camaraderie and the challenge at this job.  Plus he’s optimistic about his future.  His boss thinks he has a lot of promise, and has indicated that he could be promoted within the year.  Matt’s friend Ashley started a couple of years before him and she is already a vice president!  She recently got rid of her college car, a Ford Focus, and bought an entry-level Audi.

However, Matt sometimes finds it overwhelming because he knows he has to work 50-60 hours a week at his job to continue to impress his boss.  With those hours, and his 3-hour a day commuting time into the City, he’s pretty exhausted on the weekends.  The worst thing is, he feels that two–weeks vacation a year is pretty constraining.  He has to choose carefully how to use each day.  His college dreams of traveling to exotic places has been pushed to the back of his mind.   He doesn’t think about it most of the time, because the thought of having to wait decades to do those kinds of things is kind of depressing.

In the meantime, he hangs on out Thursday nights with his friends at trendy bars and joins a really great gym, spending some of his cash on a personal trainer.  Because of his commute, he’s thinking of leasing a Lexus SUV.  There’s a great deal going on–only $396/month for 24 months.

Matt might want to read:

Your Money or Your Life:  This classic by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin will be on the list for all my friends here, because it simply asks you to take a good hard look at your life and evaluate how you are spending your life energy.  Nothing is worse than not being true to your values, and YMOL (as it’s affectionately called by its fans) takes you through the consequences of spending mindlessly, and provides 9 steps to transform your relationship with money and achieving financial independence.  An updated edition was published in December 2008.

Chris Guillebeau’s blog/book:  The Art of Non-Conformity:  Before Joe’s Golden Handcuffs get locked on, he might want to prod the fires of his dreams of travel by reading alternative lifestyles, such as Chris’s.  Or, Tim Ferriss’s The 4-hour Workweek.   Or, My Exile Lifestyle by Colin Wright.  Reading books and blogs that show how other young people have shaped their lives might help challenge the paradigm Joe grew up with and soften his loving parents’ advice to work hard and get a good secure job.   After all, isn’t that what his dad and mom had done?   That was fine, but Chris and Tim and show Joe another way.  Joe’s boss said he is smart, a great communicator, and has great ideas, so Joe could easily be another Chris or Tim if he wanted to.

Poke the Box by Seth Godin.  Since Matt is a marketing guy, this book will come in handy for both work and life.  It asks you to shake things up.  Don’t accept what you see.  Have the courage to take initiative.

Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover:   Before Tim leases that Lexus he might want to read Dave’s book.   But since most people read TMMO as triage after financial damage has already been done, let’s leave Dave alone for a moment.

Matt needs to ask himself the following questions:

• Why am I working at this job?  Do I really feel fulfilled, or did I grab it out of fear nothing better would come along?
• Was I also listening to my heart when I took my parents’ advice, or was I leaving it behind?
• Why am I coveting Ashley’s Audi?  What are my real reasons for wanting to lease an SUV?
• If I never get around to traveling to cool places until I retire, how will I feel about that?
• Am I following a path because it’s the path of least resistance?  Or because it’s the only path I’ve had a model for in my life?
• Do I really need the perceived security of a “good future” at a corporate job?  Why?  Is “security” even real in the workplace?
• If I really do like the challenges of my job, are there any ways that I use the same skills but modify the work schedule?
• If I really do like the challenges of my job, how can I ensure that I don’t compensate for my hard work by spending hard-earned money on stuff I don’t really want or need?

Matt has two paths in the road in this particular scenario:  He can either continue on his path in marketing for a major corporation, or he can revisit his interest in travel and anthropology.   How will his thought of the future be changed for each one?  What are the possibilities for shifting the retirement paradigm for each pathway?

Next post:  Matt’s road(s) to the future

Give Us This Day Our Retirement Bread: The Retirement Paradigm Needs to Shift

There was a child who was watching the mother prepare a pot roast for their traditional Sunday family dinner.  The mother cut off the tips of the roast and put it into the pan.  The child asked, ‘Why did you cut off the tips of the roast?’ The mother replied, ‘That’s how my mother prepared it.  She’s in the other room–why don’t you go and ask her?’ The child then asked the grandmother, ‘How come when you prepare a roast you cut off the tips of the roast before you put it into the pan?’ The grandmother replied, ‘Well, that’s how my mother did it.  Why don’t you go ask her?’  So,  the child went to her great-grandmother and said, ‘I asked Mom and Grandma why they cut off the tips of the roast before they put it into the pan and they each told me to ask you.’  ‘Well,’ the great-grandmother said, ‘I don’t know why they are doing it…but I did it because the roast we bought was always a little too big to fit in the roasting pan I had.’

Conventional wisdom says that we should work at jobs until we arrive at some arbitrary age that was set at some irrelevant point in recent history and then stop working suddenly in order to spend the rest of our days taking water aerobics classes or chasing balls on golf courses.

This paradigm is about as relevant as the truncated pot roast in the story above.  I’ve recently been thinking about how every day I ask the Lord for my daily bread–not for the bread that I might need in 2025.   This raised a contradiction in my mind–in the most foundational prayer Christians pray, we simply ask for what we need today–not tomorrow.   But as a member of this Western culture, we have been raised with the belief that we are as foolish as the fabled grasshopper if we only live for today without stocking up big time for our Golden Years, perhaps at the expense of our happiness today.

So, I started investigating where the idea of “retirement” came from.  And as you might expect, I found that the concept and practice of “retirement” as a very recent phenomenon created for the convenience of employers during the Industrial Revolution.   We, as a species, have gone millions of years without needing a pension or a 401k–but whoa!  All of a sudden comes the 20th century and now hoarding for the future so that we can drop out of society at late mid-life is part of our mental DNA.

Does it make sense?

Not necessarily, but the culture has over the course of four or five generations adapted to the concept.  I found this entertaining, short history of retirement in the New York Times archives and there learned that it was not the retiree fighting for the right to drop out of the workforce back at the turn of the century:  it was drummed up by politicians, factory management, and even religious leaders (Cotton Mather for instance).  The retiree in many cases would have preferred to continue working.

I also found this website, The Next Hill, that was created for the sole purpose of debunking the retirement paradigm.  An interesting read.

So, I found I wasn’t alone in questioning the value of the practice of saving, saving, saving, hoarding, hoarding, hoarding in order to get to a point where you only hope you won’t outlive your money, because ten, twenty, thirty years of your life are going to be spent in leisure.

As with the pot roast story, usually changes in practices start out with good reason.  Back when modern day retirement began and became entrenched in our psyche a couple of things were going on.   We weren’t living much longer than the current retirement age, and there were economic dynamics at play such as the Great Depression and World War II which forced economic adaptation.    But as time has gone on, the consumer culture has raised the cost of living, and better healthcare has extended life, and now we are in a situation where our financial advisors are telling us we’re going to need at list a million dollars in our coffers if we want a decent quality of life.

But I propose that all that is smoke and mirrors.  Perhaps the more natural evolution into our golden years is to be productive as long as we can be, earning our daily bread as we go.

A lot of people are going to say, “Hey, retirement is my right!  I can’t wait to get out of this lousy job.   I want to retire as soon as I can. Are you proposing taking that right away from me?”

No, not at all.  But which is better:  to spend your life energy focused on a moment in time decades away, just to save up money so you no longer have to do precisely what you’re doing now?   Or would it be better to relax about the future, which will free up your life energy to focus on ways that you can live more fully now?

In my mind, the answer is obvious.

TLC has a series called “The Hoarders” which is quite sensationalistic in terms of showing people who have become obsessed and sick with the inability to let go of things.  Their possessions, both useful and useless, overtake their lives.  Do you suppose that if you think about those horrible images of hoarding (which we are so quick to judge.) and imagine that all that stuff–the garbage, the clothes, the clutter–is turned into dollar bills saved and hoarded for the future–do you get that same feeling of sadness for the one who is buried beneath?  Are we buried beneath our obsession with hoarding dollars for tomorrow at the expense of a free and uncluttered today?

In the next post, I’ll explore a few of the “yeah buts” as well a proposition from shifting our personal paradigms about retirement.

The illustration above was taken from The Next Hill, and the one at the left was taken from the blog Not Buying Anything.