Pick a Direction and Move

Get busy living or get busy dying

I’m watching some people I’ve known for 20 years sliding toward a dark and unhappy end. Life is slowly steamrolling them but it’s not as simple as getting older. It’s about attitude and having something you’re passionate about. When I’m over on Facebook, I see a LOT of complaining: about politics, about aching joints, about illness, about how the world’s going to hell, about finding housing, etc. On Substack, I see people trying to make the world better for themselves and others. The contrast is striking.* There are so many things that get harder as we age. What can - and should - get easier is having a sense of purpose.

Plenty of people derive that sense of purpose from children and then grandchildren. But some people look at the world and ask themselves, “What can I do to make the world better? How can I help people?” We do that by sharing our particular gifts, gifts we find by following our passions. Gifts we find by looking at our life experience and learning from it instead of drifting on the winds like a milkweed seed. Gifts that need effort to be honed before they are worthy of sharing.

That’s the difference I’ve been noticing. The complainers - who often post on socialist ideology - don’t have a passion [besides the ideology.] I read recently that there are all sort of things that get fixed just by building something: a business, a house, a garden. Not just having a job [which isn’t trivial!] but having a goal and moving toward that daily.

I’ve had multiple goals in my life. They hardly ever ended up where I planned. [Since I changed my spiritual practice, I started setting better ones.] When I drifted, things did not improve. It’s important for things to improve because as we get older, things get harder. Aging is a thing, and we don’t have to go gently into that good night [I’m not.] But no one gets out of here alive and planning for how you want your twilight to go gives you a much better shot at not ending up dying in a hospital surrounded by beeping machines instead of your family. I’m early Gen X and not far from 60. I wish I’d figured this out in my 20s. But better late than never.

Having goals matters because sacrificing current pleasures to achieve them makes our lives better later on. Better usually means having social support, and more resources, but it also means life satisfaction and meaning. We need to be able to look back and say “I created good in the world.” This is one of the reasons the Jews have survived as a people for so long. My husband is Jewish and we just did Passover. In the Haggadah, the booklet from which we read the Passover ritual every year, some lines talk about how every generation brings that opportunity for finer and nobler living, and every generation brings new challenges. I’ve always gotten emotional about those lines. They speak to me. When I read them, I feel the changes that have washed over all of us. And how we, as humans, have adapted.

Or not.

The complainers on my FB feed don’t seem to have goals. At least, none that I can discern from what is admittedly a shallow communication platform. They work to earn money, do craft projects, and mark time while slowly slipping into poverty and posting memes about how unfair it is that some people seem to have a lot while they have so little. With every single one of them, I can look at their life choices and see where they went south.

Bad choices don’t have to be permanent. I made bad choices. I got student loans, I dated people who weren’t good partners. I thought people who had money were by definition bad people. I spent too much time trying to ‘figure out what I wanted.’ I chased after a lifestyle that was - at best - well beyond my skill level. But change can happen at any time.

I deliberately chose a man unlike others I’d dated. We’re still happily married 22 years later despite severe challenges. I educated myself about money and got myself and my husband out of debt. I wasn’t sure where I wanted to be. But I was entirely clear about what I didn’t want, ie, unhappy in my relationship and struggling with money. That’s a good start. Now I can look at where I want to go. I can dream a little.

FB isn’t all bad. A woman I know just bought her first house with her husband after dreaming about it for ten years. They’re both disabled with physical and psychological issues but they did it. It’s really nice reading about her being happy. Challenges don’t need to stop us and they had plenty.

What matters is deciding you want something - or even don’t want something - and deciding to act even if you don’t yet know exactly what to do. Guidance on direction can come from other humans. Speaker and entrepreneur, Tony Robbins recommends finding someone who’s doing what you want to do successfully, and copying their actions. You can also take some time to learn more about the subject in question. That’s what I did with money. I started by reading very general information because I understood my problem wasn’t only simple ignorance about how to make money. I also had a problem with my attitude about people who had it.

That worked well. But once I added the spiritual piece, things went even better. Asking for guidance from something greater than ourselves opens a door. What’s behind that door is much more than information. If we listen, the still, small voice can point us toward meaning, life satisfaction, peace and faith in the midst of chaos. Even happiness is possible. But we have to be willing to show up, to work, and to offer the sacrifice of our time. We also need to sacrifice the transitory pleasures that might bring ease from suffering for a moment but don’t contribute to our long-term well-being.

That last, is what the people I see sliding into grief object to. “I can’t give up [X] because it’s one of the few pleasures in my life!” Yeah, well, [X] is why you can’t lose weight/feel tired all the time/have type II diabetes/can’t hang on to money. I’ve known some of these people for 20 years. Early on, I thought it was a matter of them not having the information. Now I know it’s willful blindness. I follow my own advice. I listen to the gods. My life’s not perfect. But my goal is to get as close to what that means to me as I can.

So, I set goals, and do the things it takes to get there. I eat carefully, I write daily, I communicate thoughtfully.

The world keeps moving. I refuse to be steamrolled.

*There’s some things I like on FB: The awesome fiction writing group The Writer Dojo. Reader groups for Fantasy and SciFi. The chance to argue on other people’s feeds about ideas that suck.

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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 21st-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.

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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; four boyz and one cranky gurl. 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, and the Goodlife Guide to Nutrition.