Competence is Required
If you want to live a Goodlife
What makes a goodlife?
Wealth? Lots of sex? Family? Children?
Wealth definitely matters, but only to a certain degree. We need to be sure the basics are taken care of. Shelter, food, and in the modern era, transportation, internet access… LOL…
[Maybe I shouldn’t laugh at the idea that we need internet access just because I didn’t grow up with it. In fact, I definitely should not.]
Back to a goodlife.
Admittedly, your mileage may vary. But for me, a goodlife looks like a long health span, filled with action that benefits humans, or animals, or other living things, lots of family and friends, plenty of laughter, artistic creation, and time in my garden. If I’d had more information when I was younger, it would have included children. [More on that later]
I’d like my departure to be a quick decline that puts little burden on those who care about me.
In order to do that, I must continue to protect my health, earn more wealth, and learn more social skills. I’m a life-long learner, and I believe my constant curiosity is one of the things that’s kept me searching for answers when life became difficult.
Perhaps considering the end of my life seems morbid. I didn’t think much about it when I was in my 20s. But then I had very little in the way of family around me, just me and my mother, so there were no older relatives passing away.
The ability to have the life you want doesn’t start when you graduate college, or when you get your first job, or when you get married. It starts now. Right now. Whenever, wherever you are. Because whatever you’re doing with your time, you don’t get it back.
Abraham Maslow, one of the great masters of modern psychology described a hierarchy of human needs.
At the base lay physical needs: air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, and reproduction.
Without these basics, it’s hard to focus on things that would make us happy.
The next level was safety: personal security, employment, resources, health, and property. The third level was love and belonging: friendships, intimate partners, and a sense of connection.
Then there was esteem: respect, self-esteem, status, strength, freedom.
At the top is self-actualization: the desire to become the most you can be.
If someone doesn’t have the needs on the bottom in place, they can’t move forward with finding a goodlife, and make no mistake, that self-actualization thing is one of the greatest joys you can create.
Sex? It feels good, and, if done right, is more fun with two. [As opposed to ONE. Were you thinking something else?] If it’s done right, it’s also one of the things that can keep one away from less healthy behaviors. It’s part of the glue that can hold a relationship together in hard times.
But there are risks. Done casually, sex doesn’t produce long-term happiness. For men or women. Certainly, it didn’t for me.
Family. How many of us have families that make us want to scream? I write fiction under a pen name and I’ve worked with a young artist - in Italy - to help me with covers. Her family is horrendous. The things she’s struggling with would make your hair stand up on end. My father was an alcoholic and he abused me before I had language. [Therapy. Lots.]
But family can be created. Or joined. That’s the nature of marriage. Choosing the right partner -ideally with a healthy family - makes us better people. Family of choice is harder than just going with the flow. It’s not instinctive, and we don’t have good institutions for that. Marriage - as opposed to just living together - matters. It’s a public commitment.
Family is who takes you in when the shit hits the fan.
And the shit always hits the fan. Always.
Children are one of the things that make life meaningful. What could be more satisfying than engaging in the miracle that is new life? It’s miserable that people have been discouraged from having children. As if it’s somehow irresponsible.
Bull. Shit. Piles and piles of it. The circumstances matter, yes. Don’t have kids without a good partner. My mom was a single parent, and there was a price I paid for that, and a price whole generations of young men, in particular, have paid. But the idea that simply adding more people to the planet is immoral? Again, Bullshit. We’re headed for a population crash. Have the kids.
Children matter. Not the least of which is the question: Who do you want by your bedside when you’re dying? A nurse? A stranger? Seriously, that’s tragic. I’m hoping to avoid that, but I have one competent stepson who’s not having kids of his own. That part of my future currently appears bleak. Life is tragic enough without that to look forward to. As a younger person, we know that if we die of some lingering illness, our parents will be there.
But parents die, and if they haven’t prepared you for that, then they could have done a better job.
To raise a child well means that end-of-life scene has a very different meaning. To die with family nearby means that one can let go with grace because in a very real sense, part of us goes on.
There’s more. Of course, there’s more. Without the right skill set, the basics aren’t going to be available.
You can’t get past debt unless you understand money and have good financial habits.
You can’t get satisfying sex without an integrated partnership.
You can’t get family without communication skills, and some agreed-upon ethics, and, if you’re a guy, at least the potential for some wealth.
Having children without family is hard on the children and impacts their lives in a way that’s dark.
If you really like this post but don’t want to do a paid subscription, then maybe you could…
[I’m aware that sometimes people don’t have a choice. I’m just saying that if it’s possible to avoid that, it’s a good idea to try.]
My mother largely failed to prepare me for a goodlife. I don’t blame her for that. She did the best she could and earned a salary that kept a roof over our heads and let her save up enough to retire early. She was a single, working mother who made a bad choice in partner.
But there was so much I didn’t learn. How to make food for myself, how to manage finances, how to get along with men. I didn’t even have siblings, so I missed all the aggravation that teaches us how to get along with others as adults. That’s been a pretty serious handicap. But the worst thing was that between my mother’s poor choice in partner and her subsequent anger with men, it took me until I was in my late 30s to find a good partner myself. Before that, I didn’t have the skills to hang on to such a relationship.
It’s taken me into my 50s to escape anxiety and depression. So much of that anxiety left me when I developed competence. Competence with money, competence with communication, competence with health and food management. Contrary to popular practice, being told we’re perfect the way we are isn’t doing us any favors. It has some truth in that, we pick up myriad garbage ideas that don’t serve us on our path of finding out our place in the world and what our gifts might be.
But being told we are perfect as we are by our fellow humans isn’t enough to give us either the motivation or the confidence, let alone the skills, to create what we want in this world. We ALL have gifts to share. Gifts that will uplift us, our families, our communities, and change the vibration of the universe, and the unseen world. If that sounds a bit Woo, well, I’m pretty darn Woo, and it allowed me to survive more than one trip to Hades in a hand-basket.
I’m happy now, despite regrets. I’m happy because with this solid base I’ve finally been able to do something that is the very definition of a goodlife. I have something to pursue by engaging my unique talents that gives my life meaning. I wouldn’t have that if I was struggling to pay the rent, or desperate for some joy or human companionship.
A quiet, confident mind and the self-actualization it makes possible doesn’t happen with praise [as some would have us believe], and it doesn’t come with a piece of paper indicating that we’ve completed a curriculum [as I was led to believe.]
Release from anxiety and depression comes from competence. Competence in the skills needed to live well and build a goodlife.
I don’t know what all those skills are, and some of them are going to be different for you than for me. [I don’t need to know how to wire a building.] There are some that I gained young that helped put me in a better place, and rather more that I gained late, after realizing my profound inadequacies.
I learned nearly nothing in my 13 years in the schooling system that I use now. Nor did my mother teach me survival basics. That’s true for most people in the Western world now. We need to change it.
This post is adapted from the introduction to The Young Woman’s Goodlife Guide.
I’ve looked for and found guidance in making my life better. Here are some newsletters that might make yours better.
Andrew Lokenauth puts advice in easy-to-understand terms in his Money Mastery and Wealth Building newsletter.
Matt Leo talks about communication and people skills that apply to the home the board room.
Tim Ebl fights back against the steamroller of health issues with how to restore what we’ve lost to 21th-century food and habits.
Unskool offers insights and alternatives to the sucking pit of our education system
Bobby Dimitrov and Healthy Farming, Healthy Food share their journey on how to build a food production system that is better for humans and better for the planet.
Selina Rifkin, M.S. [Nutrition], LMT, has been to Hades in a handbasket. More than once. This has given her some opinions. Like most of her generation [X] she’s okay with snark. Most days she tries for good writing. But the snark, and side comments creep in. She lives with her husband, and is Mother of Cats; three boyz. Selina has written The Young Woman’s Goodlife Guide: Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was 20. Or… Learn From My Pain, and How to Train Your Cat: Using a Clicker and Leash to Keep Your Indoor Cat Happy and Healthy, the Goodlife Guide to Nutrition, and The Storytellers: a Journey of Discovery.