Some beach chair thoughts

An old country song (Southern Rains by Mel Tillis) observed that when we’re young we want to get away, when we’re old we want to go back, and we spend our lives replacing all the things we left behind.

When I was young I sure couldn’t wait to get away, despite the fact that we lived in a place that I liked very much.

But I was full of ambition and adventure, so, of course, the “outside world” beckoned.

The decades went by. I was lucky enough to get to memorialize some of those adventures in Private Pilot magazine for a few years as a columnist. This at least gave me an excuse to mark my memories for events that flew by so fast I never got to really think about them when they happened.

The magazine went out of business 2005, so even the keeper of the memories is now just a memory.

Still plucking at strings on memories, earlier this year I was thinking about where I’d most like to live, and I thought about the old neighborhood. So I took a look at house prices. Egads, I’d have to hit the lotto to buy into that area. It’s nice to think about, but it won’t ever happen.

I once talked to an old pal who managed to stay in the neighborhood; he inherited his parents’ house. Although he certainly appreciated his good material station in life, he felt that life was passing him by. He was bored and longed for the excitement that the outside world offered.

His case and mine are more data for the can’t-have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too tally, as if the world needed more proof for that sorry scoreboard.

Meanwhile, when it comes to replacing what we left behind, I’ll give you a choice candidate: peace of mind.

The world seems to move so fast these days that it’s hard to look where you’re stepping before your foot lands there. Fortunately, I’ve never wanted to be involved in any of the world’s contentions or intrigues, so I’ve usually been lucky enough to avoid these problems and the cynical creatures they harbor.

But to the extent that I haven’t been lucky on that note, I’ve redoubled my resolve to keep life simple and tranquil.

Overall, it looks to me like modern life makes it harder, not easier, to have peace of mind. Maybe modern efficiency gives us so much abundance that we take too many things for granted.

For example, economists freak out when gross domestic product in any given place doesn’t increase every year. This becomes a big news story. Well, I’m all for increased GDP, but I wonder if the expectation of perpetual exponential growth can distort our personal outlooks, causing us to discount what really matters, today, for what we want to happen next year.

One guy who seemed to avoid the big pitfalls was someone I knew in the deep South. He lived in a tidy little house on a few acres in the piney woods. He sold furniture that he built in his garage workshop.

He never had any use for college, or travel, or grandiose ambitions. And, since he never felt the youthful compulsion to get away to begin with, he never had to worry about going back later on. Hey; now there’s a thought: The best way to regain something is not to lose it in the first place.

If you’re looking for an example of a practical focus, well, this guy had it. I once offered to take him flying so he could see his place from the air. His response was, “Why?”

I didn’t have an answer to that one.

As the faster-living people moved from job to job and city to city, taking on ever-greater mortgages (“leverage!”) and needing ever-bigger paychecks, the furniture-maker just kept plodding along. I never kept in touch with him, but I imagine that he endured the various shakeouts in the financial world better than many of his more sophisticated counterparts did.

I think about that guy a couple times a year, usually when I’m sitting in my beach chair, thinking long thoughts, and wondering how I can be a little more smart and a little less stupid in the years to come.

I’m not deriding ambition, but I can’t help but notice that ambition is always based on expectations, and expectations are mighty tricky things. We say that we “have” expectations, but maybe the expectations have us. What we leave behind is always real, but what we think we’re getting in return hasn’t yet materialized and sometimes it never will.

That’s a mighty intimidating proposition, come to think of it. It’s enough to have me hunker down in my chair and just hope for the best, which is always a good idea for the weekend.