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Today's
Meditation:
I've
been amazed over the last few years to find out how many
of my wants truly were "needless," and how
liberating it was to leave them behind me as I made my way
through life. They were complicating my life as I
tried to find ways to fulfill these wants and then trying
to figure out what to do with them once they were
fulfilled.
If
I need a car, for example, I need something to get me from
place to place comfortably and reliably. A $15,000
car will do that just as well as a $45,000 car, yet the
latter car will keep me focused on making money for quite
a while as I continue to make much higher payments and pay
much higher insurance rates. If I find work that's
much more interesting to me but pays less, guess
what? I probably won't be able to take it because
I'll be stuck making payments on the car and I won't be
able to lose that income.
Some
people would call this "settling," for they
believe that anything less than the "best" is
beneath them. This isn't the case, though, as Edwin
points out. If we can examine our wants and figure
out which are necessary and which truly aren't, then we
can simplify almost every aspect of our lives by finding
things that adequately fulfill our true needs in ways that
allow us freedom to make choices without money being at
the center of those decisions. The only way to
reduce labors-- and thus increase the time exploring our
passions-- is to reduce our financial obligations.
The
Spanish have a wonderful saying: "No me
compliques la vida." Don't complicate my
life. Only by keeping our lives simple will we
find adequate time and space to explore those things that
are truly-- and timelessly-- important, such as our inner
peace, our spirituality, and our goals and desires in
life.
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