Live Life As If You Were Already Retired

From the time we begin our adult working life, we are inoculated with the belief that we should plan, save and direct substantial amounts of our energy toward being ready for retirement.  Yet, we live a retired lifestyle for an average of sixteen years, and work for nearly 40. So where is the wisdom of focusing on the future, when it is so distant and such a small portion of our adult life?

The concept of retirement planning is, of course, with merit.  However, living for today also carries merit.  There are extremes of lifestyle focused in each of these directions, with those that indolently absorb the moment, but are totally unprepared for any contingency or emergency that may arise, counting on society to take care of their needs.  On the other hand, there are frugal, obsessive individuals who hoard pennies to be ready for old age, and, when old age arrives, fret over every coin that is spent, even when faced with the truth that they have more than enough set aside to live comfortably.  In the middle is the route to comfort and balance, making the most of each moment without selfish indulgence.

Unfortunately, modern technologies and modern standards blur the lines between responsible work and planning, enjoying one’s life and being a contributing part of the world around us.  Our laptop computers, tablets and smart phones carry our personal lives to work, our business lives home.  Exclusive, valued time spent with close friends has become shared with Facebook and Twitter, email and text friendships at our fingertips.   Quiet time frequently is shattered with the beep, tweet, chirp, ring or jingle that alerts us to incoming communications.  Few of us demonstrate the will power or social awareness to defer answering these devices, regardless of where we are or what we may be doing.  We live, not for the moment, but governed by that moment – a moment owned by whoever is intruding into our time.  There is no exclusivity to our time, whether it be work, play, community personal or family.

We have become a society that has no future, but is directed to save for it.  We have become a culture that has a surfeit of time, but gives it away frivolously, then bemoans the loss.  We have become slaves to the moment, but that moment is defined by others, for the most part.

To embrace the idea that we should live for the moment is as polarizing as to embrace the idea that we should focus exclusively on the future.  However, we do need to value the moment, and anticipate the upcoming life. 

Studies show that we derive more value from small, frequent pleasures than from one large indulgence.  On the other hand, analyses reveal that we are more stressed by frequent minor annoyances beyond our control than by larger, infrequent crises.  The logical corollary to these two conclusions is that, to get the most out of life, we need to take time to embrace the world around us, but to do so in a manner that provides long term satisfaction rather than short term spikes of pleasurable but selfish indulgence.  The future will be shaped by how we view and interact with life today.  If we opt to ride the crests and valleys formed by others around us, we will experience less enjoyment in the moment than if we take a balanced view of our contribution to the environment around us in relation to what we would like to see come back to us.  We should grab each moment, not each day, and look to being the best we can be, not look to grabbing the most we can get.

By snatching at every incoming communication, by mashing work with personal life, by sacrificing friendly personal interaction for electronic jabber, we are ingesting everything, but like the cow in the foxtail patch discovers, everything is not always a pleasure to eat!

Balance, then, is vital.  Enjoy the moments of pleasure, but enjoy, also, the moments of effort and hard work.  Save and plan for the future, but also plan and spend as if the future is today.  Use technology to embrace life, rather than letting gadgets sap life from your fingertips.  Live each moment as if you were already retired!

Reach Out And Touch Someone. It's Psychologically And Physiologically Healthy

What is the value of a good massage?  For the surgeonfish, even a fake massage will do!  Marta Soares of Portugal's ISPA University Institute recently concluded a study using surgeonfish and fake cleaner fish, that mimicked the movements of real cleaner fish, to see if the draw of the cleaners was their scouring function, or the stimulation that the nibbling action provided to the bigger surgeonfish.

It is well known that many larger fish, including massive sharks, not only allow but encourage small sucker fish to “ride along” and nibble at parasites on the scales of the big fish.  It is a symbiotic relationship, in that the small fish gain protection, while the bigger fish get a good cleaning.  But seeking out these little stimulators for the sake of a good massage seems hard to understand.

However, the Soares experiment leaves little room for doubt.  First, Soares exposed the surgeon fish to all kinds of stressors, similar to what they would experience in the wild, then they were put in a tank with the cleaner wrasse.  The surgeonfish immediately sought out the cleaners, and positioned themselves in such a way that the wrasses’ fins provided the massaging action.

So how does this extrapolate to us humans?

Psychology Today reports that, when used to treat eating disorders, massage therapy had some unexpected benefits.  As expected, it boosted dopamine and serotonin levels, resulting a calming effect.  But it also decreased the patients’ dissatisfaction with their bodies and raised their self esteem.  This is the simple and powerful value of touch, as assessed by the University of Michigan Medical School.  They showed that there is a strong correlation between being touch-deprived and having an eating disorder.

Developmental psychologist Tiffany Field, Ph.D., claims that massage, for premature babies, helps them gain weight and improve health.  She also claims that touch-deprived babies grow up to be more aggressive than those that receive tactile interaction.

Diane Zeitlin, of the New Jersey Medical School discovered that touch therapy revved up the immune system in students at exam time, who were experiencing fatigue and anxiety.

And cancer patients under the care of Pauline King and Richard Jost, of Ohio's James Cancer Hospital reported less pain and anxiety as a result of receiving massage therapy.

More than just sometimes, it seems, the power of touch is all we need to improve our attitudes and responses, our day, and our lives.  Whether human or animal, massage and tactile stimulation are essential to our emotional, and physical health.

Of All The Most Important Things in Life, The Most Important Is Commitment To Others

Ask ten people what they consider to be the most important thing in life, and you may well generate ten different concepts of essentials.  However, explore those ten answers in more depth, revise the scenario to include the possibility of being isolated from human contact, and the critical concern that those respondents will come up with is that a specific person would be the most essential element to be included in that existence. 

Human beings are, like many beasts of the wild, wired to need social contact.  For some, that contact may be minimal, but all of us need interaction.  Does that mean that we view others as vital, or are we so completely narcissistic that we view fellow man as nothing more than a need to make our life complete? 

Regardless of why we need people with whom to interact, the stimulation that man provides for man completes a significant component of how we view ourselves. As far back as 1943, psychologist Abraham Maslow postulated that the need for belonging, love, friendship and human interaction neared the base of his hierarchy of needs, just above the need for safety.

The male of the species has been bound, it seems, to man’s best friend – the dog.  While our connection to this four-legged friend undoubtedly offers something psychologically satisfying to humans, it lacks the completeness of human to human involvement.  The connection fulfills, on the surface, the need to have someone, or something else, understand us.

Gang membership, and, in turn, gang initiation, draws on the desire to belong, and to be involved in something that sees us, individually, as something special. While, superficially, gang members appear to lose that individuality, they do view themselves, in fact, as disparate and unique from the rest of the world, or the rest of the neighbourhood.

There may be precious little difference between the desire to be a gang member and the desire to belong to an elite club, or a segment of society that has riches to flaunt.  Both say to the initiate, pledge or member, “You are part of something special and unique, and therefore, you, too, are unique.”

The idea of looking to be a part of something that someone else cannot be a part of is coloured with liberal dollops of narcissistic personality.  Yet, is it wrong?  And how is it different, for example, from seeking to find that special aspect or part of our lives that fulfills us? 

I have chosen a minimalistic way of life.  Does eschewing material acquisition make be the antithesis of narcissistic?  Hardly.  I choose this lifestyle specifically because I feel that I want to focus, not on frills, but on fewer, but more significant benefits and luxuries in my life.  To simply forfeit things for the sake of forfeit gains neither the minimalist or society at large anything.  It is akin to being a lowly carrion-eater, and choosing to ignore the carrion that it finds, in case someone else might come upon it and want it.

When I began my journey toward voluntary simplicity, and opted to focus on fewer, but more significant things in my life, I had not contemplated the philosophical dilemma of choosing specifically what the most important thing in my life would be.  I had a concept of things and experiences that would be more significant to me than others, but had not established an absolute priority.  That changed, dramatically, this week.

On Tuesday, my wife awoke, drenched in sweat, breathing shallowly, experiencing numbness on her right side, and thoroughly nauseated.  Within seconds, I had her in the car, heading toward the hospital.  Driving as quickly as I could from our isolated home toward the local hospital, I called 911, and was escorted through  the protocols as I rushed to intercept the dispatched ambulance.  When I determined that I could make it closer to the hospital, rather than park on the highway and await the emergency vehicle, I became quite belligerent with the dispatcher who wanted me to be in an identifiable location for the EMS drivers.  My anger increased as the seconds passed, and my wife’s symptoms worsened.

Ultimately, the ambulance arrived, my wife was rushed to another hospital thirty miles distant (where better diagnostics could be conducted), and her impending critical incident was averted.  I am very pleased to say that, while she was close to a severe crisis, she has recovered fully, thanks to the speedy response of the EMS team and the skills and dedication of the hospital staff.

However, what I learned was that all of the important things that I had casually itemized in recent years truly were minimal in relation to the one important thing in my life: the valued relationship and love affair that I have with Janice.  I learned many valuable lessons, but the most vital lesson learned is that the most important thing in everyone’s life should not be a thing at all, but a feeling:  the feeling that you have for someone important in your life.  For many of us, that someone may not even be human, but a pet or animal pal.  The most important “non-thing,” even for us minimalists, should be a feeling that has its basis in narcissism, but ultimately ends in completely submerging our own wants and desires in favour of the needs of another.  Call it love, or call it selflessness.  Call it what you want.  The most important thing in life is to place all things behind the commitment to another living being.