Escaping Stuff

 

Nothing but a tee shirt and a water bottle

When I look around the garage, all I see is all our stuff.  Bikes and skis.   Motorcycles and weed-whackers.  Basketballs and helmets.  Umbrellas and chairs   Chainsaws and cushions.  It all requires maintenance and interferes with our desire to just live simply.

  We put the hoses up in the attic and took the shovels down yesterday.  Who needs four shovels and five hoses.  Our attics and crawl spaces are full of stuff.   Half of our house is a storage shelter, and we are not hoarders.  We are minimalists.  It just creeps up on you.  One thing at a time until you are buried in stuff. 

We can’t move into our small empty dream cabin in the woods because it would take days to purge, merge and move.  Its like boiling frogs.  Ya don’t know what you've got till you're gone.   Eventually all purchases disappoint, and all possessions possess the possessor. 

I always thought that it would be great to have a mountain home, a beach bungalow, a desert casita and a city apartment.  But I have friends with multiple houses and all they do is drive around and fix stuff.  I ask them if they want to go for a ski or a ride and they say they have to clean or fix something or work with a contractor.  They love that kind of stuff, are great at it and make a lot of money doing it, but enough is enough.  

We drive by or read about these massive second in our neighborhood and wonder aloud, ‘what do you do with all that space’ and my wife always says, ‘vacuum’, and I think, ‘fix stuff or worry about all the contractors that are ripping you off’.  It does not seem really worth it all.  I see garage sales as a feeble attempt at liberation.  Who wants to leave all this crap to their kids or spouse.  It is a race to the grave because no one wants to clean this mess up themselves.  Somebody has to save us from ourselves.  Set me free.   Take my stuff - please.  

So we go away occasionally to get physically removed from our stuff, our baggage; physical, mental, emotional and social, our responsibilities and obligations, career connections and interpersonal commitments.  We pack our camper van (of course) with all the stuff we can fit, bikes and motorcycles, paddleboards and golf clubs, wetsuits and boogie boards.  Even when we travel, camp, run rivers and even backpack we bring our stuff.  But we leave the mountains and head for the coast.  Another recreational geography of dynamic hope. 

Happy Place!

To the Central Coast of California to escape the hustle-bustle and the Hurley-Burley of home.  To beat the crowds and skirt the traffic.  I’d tell you the name of the town but then I would have to kill you.  A sleepy little ghost surf town that has no extra water or land and doesn’t want to grow.  Sustainable and sensible.  

It’s a long way from everywhere, which is its charm, and foggy in the summer, which is its salvation.  Any place destined to maintain its good vibe is hard to get to and has a fatal flaw, to go along with the perfect snow, sand or surf. 

We found our hidden place with its unique attractions and fatal flaws, where we can go to escape our avarice and greed, to quell or quench our own intelligence and ambition.  A place where we can be mindful and live in the moment, be where we are, be who we are.  We are constantly surprised with what we find there.  We go to our special, happy place to chill and escape our stuff and ourselves but wherever we go, there we are.  And so is our stuff.

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Retirement Entitlement

 I read recently about the 4 main components of Intelligence Quotient : 1)  IQ which is standard school type intelligence and learning; 1A) derived math and science, 1B)  memorized English and history, 2)  EQ is emotional intelligence, happy/sad sensitivity and how you read and react to people, 3)  SQ is social intelligence on how you make and maintain friends and lovers, 4)  AQ is adversity intelligence and the ability to stick with things when the chips are down and figure it out and get up.  That one was new and surprised me as appropriate and applicable.  More on that later.

 I would round out the top 10 with: 5)   PR which is practical intelligence on the day to day stuff, 6)  NB which is nuts and bolts intelligence on how things work 7)  PY which is physical intelligence on athleticism and how to play football or ski, surf or compete, 8) CR is our creative side 9) EM is empathy for others and understanding of the common good and public welfare and 10) HW is holistic understanding and general wisdom.  We all have different mixtures of each of my top ten spectrum that makes us what we are.  My dad used to say “everyone is smart at something; you just have to find out what that is and celebrate it.”  Fair enough.

I get that parents should raise their kids to deal with #4 - adversity, to struggle and to fail, and then get back up and try again.  Parents these days coddle their kids and try to save them from disappointment.  Everyone gets a trophy.  They say you should prepare the kids for the road, not prepare the road for your kids.  My folks used to predict that I would fail out of every fancy school that I went to, so I didn’t.  My dad once told me I was a gum-shoe and too slow and small to be a wide receiver.  Then he said I should play quarterback because I was smart and knew the game.  Back-hand parenting, I call it.  It is old-school, but it works. Every kid should know the back of that hand.

But I struggle lately with adversity.  Let’s just say I am adversity adverse.  I have this retirement entitlement where I don’t want to deal with too much reality, wait in lines and traffic or share popular places, go shopping, endure stupidity, or figure stuff out.  I did all that and now I’m tired of it and don’t want to, or have to, do it.  I’m not good at it anymore.* So if any little thing comes up I get disappointed, grumbly, angry or mad.  Its silly but I’ve had enough of that.  I am inwardly imploring for the Seinfeld blessing of  “serenity now”. **

 What I’d rather do is sit on my back porch with my wife and drink coffee and watch the sunrise, and then after an easy day, sit on my front porch and drink a beer and watch the sun set with the neighbors.  I am comfortable with who I am, with my achievements and my limitations. I get it that exercising our character for adversity keeps us strong and resilient but I’ve got nothing to prove.  I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed but at least I have seven or eight out of my Top Ten Intellect Quotients to get me through my days.

The Golden Years isn’t always about challenging yourself, it’s about rewarding yourself for all you have done by giving you time to rest and relax, think and appreciate, meditate and do yoga, be who you are and do what you want to do.  So if I appear a little grumpy and irritable or drop an inappropriate F-bomb now and then, cut me some slack.  I’m working and  practicing for number 4 – 'adversity now.' 

*They say it may be from banging my head too many times that makes me irritable and emotional.  Hell, I cry now during the national anthem at hockey games, and it is not even our national anthem.  I like Oh Canada better, it’s not so bellicose.  I am working on the irritability, but I don’t mind the emotional stuff, it makes me want to be a better man.

**We used to climb mountains, run rapids, forge dessert canyons and ride across continents when we were young, with nothing but a rain shell , water bottle and granola bar, to prove to ourselves and our parents that we could do it.  Now, who cares?  When I’m out riding now I see a climb up ahead and think ‘AFH’ – Another Freaking Hill – and I’m riding an e-bike.  Friends will ask me if I want to take a hike, ride, road trip, or fly to South America for Mardi Gras.   I’ve got to say honestly – not really.  Been there, done that.  I’ve been everywhere – twice. 

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