At the beginning of the week, I had a dream where I was hanging out with a variety of random people from my life, both male and female. Quite a bit into the dream, I realized I wasn’t wearing a shirt. I was just standing there in my bra and jeans. This wasn’t the typical dream where you realize it right away and freak out. I had been having full conversations with these people for quite a while. We had done stuff. And THEN I realized I had no shirt. At this point, I was horrified, of course, but I couldn’t just hope no one noticed. OF COURSE they had noticed! How long can you hang out with a person and not realize they are missing something as basic as a shirt? The answer is half a millisecond. And I had been with these people for hours! I had no choice but to just own it. None of them had mentioned it. And no one had treated me any differently shirtless, so I just decided to just own the situation.
Category: Goodness
Martin Luther King, Jr. provided my children and husband a lovely day off work and school. But much more importantly, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. introduced the possibility of change to this world. He has always been a hero of mine and I even get choked up writing about him. Dr. King had the courage to ask the hard questions when no one else would and face absolute horrors with true love and peace. I have read many of his sermons and highly recommend you check them out online or at the library as they are full of wisdom and insights on a range of topics. Reading them will want you to be a better person. I promise. But let’s talk about his most famous speech (please read the whole thing if you haven’t recently), and more specifically, one of the most famous quotations:
I turned 30 this past year and it wasn’t life-changing. Here’s why:
For the few years leading up to my 30th birthday, I watched several friends hit 30 first. A surprising amount of them wrote up a whole bucket list of things they wanted to accomplish before the big birthday. For most of them, the 29th year meant racing to finish a made-up list by an arbitrary deadline: the 30th birthday. I watched one friend successfully finish all 30 things on her list (which involved a lot of frantic racing the few weeks leading up to her birthday and a few all-nighters). Another friend even started a blog about the 30 things she planned to accomplish before she turned 30. I think she blogged twice that whole year. On her 30th birthday, she wrote about how she remembered how much she hated doing new things. When she turned 30, she felt bad about not hitting her goals for about ten minutes, and then she realized that was dumb. Being 30 meant she was free from the “decade of decision” and she could own who she was. Her goal after that was to have no adventures and fully enjoy what she actually likes to do.
In the United States, yesterday was Thanksgiving. It is a day we traditionally gather with family and eat turkey, mashed potatoes, yams, green beans, rolls, stuffing, and just as many pies! It is a day in which we are supposed to give thanks, celebrate the harvest, and rejoice in the cornucopia of abundance we have. Unfortunately, today in the United States is also a holiday of sorts where people go out at unreasonable times to wait in long lines to buy more stuff. Over the years, stores have opened earlier and earlier on Black Friday (as it is called) with several stores now starting sales on Thanksgiving evening… giving us just enough time to stuff our faces and run out the door to buy more stuff. No time for the giving of thanks.
English writer G. K. Chesterton penned: “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
If you are capable of thankful thoughts, you are elevating your thinking to its highest possible form. And “happiness doubled by wonder” sounds like a pretty great state to achieve. There are no downsides to being grateful. It helps you keep perspective of what you have already and stop wanting more. Gratitude fills the void of want.
Money is an interesting thing. While it is an amazing tool to help you reach your dreams, it is also the root of suicide, homicide, divorce, and family divisions. If you want to bring out the absolute worst in people, buy them a winning lottery ticket. It turns out winning the lottery is a horrible thing for most people. Money makes us crazy.
During my obsessive consumption of social media coming out of #FinCon15, I caught pictures of the full faces of two of my favorite anonymous bloggers: The Frugalwoods and J. Money. Neither of them looked anything like I’d imagined (which is surprising because I’ve seen a lot of profiles, partial faces, etc). But instead of being disappointed, I thought “how refreshing!” The financial blogger world (and especially the early retirement world) is such an interesting microcosm because people talk about real money. People share their net worth. People share how much they spend, down to the penny. Savings and Debt payoff are celebrated! Financial Independence days are a thing! But we don’t know or care about job titles, home sizes, or even what these people look like!
In the personal finance world, we like to discuss asset allocation and rebalancing our funds. Where will you put your money? How much will be in stocks or bonds? Will you choose an index fund or buy individual stocks? With the stock market plummet of the past week and people freaking out, I thought about how we undervalue ourselves while we focus so much on money. If we were to manage our lives like we manage our assets, we would ask ourselves similar questions. Let’s explore the possible life allocations:
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
Last week, Mr. T stopped by the library on his way home from work. Because of construction, the outdoor book drops were unavailable and he had to run in to return some things. He locked his bike, ran in and returned the books, and came out to find his bike was gone. In five minutes, someone had taken his bike and he was stranded at the library. (They were kind enough to leave him his water bottle.) Mr. T said the worst part was that he was only gone for such a short time. Because he mostly processes these things silently, I know he’s upset about it, but has moved on to “It’s Okay.”