Suppose you're one of five people who have been selected by a mysterious philanthropist to participate in a contest. The five of you all have comparable debt-levels and costs-of-living, as well as similar, middle-class financial situations.
You're all roughly the same age, equally healthy, have the same number of children, and you all live moderately low-risk lifestyles.
Privately, and one by one, a representative of the donor approaches each of you with a blank check and a pen, and poses the following question:. How much money would you have to be paid, right here and now, to retire today and never receive another dollar of income from any source for the rest of your life? The catch this time is that whoever among the five players writes the lowest amount on the check will be paid that sum. The other four players will get nothing.
This thought experiment forces you to cut away the natural impulse to aim ever upward if you do that you'll bid too high and get nothing. That result is however much you ask for is your number, the amount you'd need to live comfortably and pursue your goals if status and lifestyle inflation weren't a factor.
Your answer might be a little bit higher or lower than mine or your neighbor's. That's fine. It's not important everyone agree on a number. Be careful! Spend some time contemplating these questions. I say that because these lofty dreams are going to become reality. How much is enough? This is different from simply answering the question of how much is enough.
Rather than saying that some certain amount should be enough i. For each category of expenses, how did it feel? Do you wish you had spent more there, or less? Did it feel just right? For example, I spent about three hours of my life energy on a pair of running shoes last month. I find running to be very rewarding in my life, and replacing my shoes regularly helps to avoid injury. I wish I had bought two or three pairs instead of just one.
I would have experienced greater fulfillment by purchasing more running shoes at the same time. Oh well, live and learn. Ann was frustrated by the amount of money life energy she spent on rent each month in San Francisco. She moved a few times to try a variety of situations that turned out not to be fulfilling. Eventually she happened upon the unconventional idea of living on an old houseboat.
If you live by the virtues and values that you hold true, then your innermost feelings that you actually have should largely match the feelings you think you should have. If you have less need for money, you have less need for work particularly stressful work. The less you have to work, the more time you have for leisure. The reason this idea is so satisfying is that almost everyone inherently understands and agrees that, at the very least, leisure in moderation is enjoyable and brings happiness, while the connection between work and joy is much more debatable.
A compulsion to work is seen as a bad thing by many, though hard work itself is usually seen as a virtue because someone is doing something that they might not enjoy in order to reap rewards of some kind like taking care of their family. Good leisure for me involves some sort of mental or physical challenge of my own choosing, like solving a puzzle of some kind or doing something that requires energy.
To me, this is a vital component of life, one that I make time for, and one that I wish I could make more time for, though I would not want it to be all of my life. Bertrand Russell among other philosophers is very critical of overwork, as expressed through essays like In Praise of Idleness. This goes down an interesting rabbit hole about work ethic and capitalism and other ideas. Most people and philosophers tend to aim for meaningful self-chosen work as the best kind of work.
There are a number of ways to get there: be born into it, marry into it, get lucky, or accumulate it through work and investment, and frugality which has the double benefit of reducing the needed amount while also helping to accumulate.
The best strategy is a mix of frugality spending less and industriousness earning more ; industriousness alone tends to lead to spending more and jumping onto lifestyle inflation. Frugality balances out industriousness, in other words. Westacott summarizes a lot of philosophy that points at finding work that pays the bills and is inherently rewarding. One of those two paths leads to a strong sense of happiness. This section ends with two caveats.
First, individuals often have little choice in how hard they work, as it is dictated by other needs and goals and circumstances. While this is undoubtedly true, a lot of our sense as to whether work is enjoyable or miserable comes down to what we choose to feel about it and what we choose to look for, which is one of the most valuable lessons of stoicism. Second, work is much less of a curse than it once was, especially in industrial societies. Many of us are able to work in information economy jobs, which do not involve back-breaking labor in the least.
Even those who do physical labor often have a great working environment compared to the past, with worker safety regulations, limitations on working hours and conditions, and abundant learning and training opportunities. The modern worker in the Western world has a pretty good life compared to to years ago. As long as your true basic needs are met — food, water, basic clothing, basic shelter — you have all you need to be happy. This is an argument often used by Stoics that argues core necessary elements for a satisfactory life, one that can offer significant happiness, are quite minimal.
How minimal, though? Can one achieve happiness without a cell phone? Without electricity? Without a car? Without running water? People did these things less than a century ago and were certainly happy. Westacott offers up a lot of interesting arguments on this issue. Epicurus , for example, argues that our default human condition is pleasurable and that pain is merely a disturbance of this condition.
Our sense of discomfort at not having something is due to our reliance, not due to the necessity of that item. Modern society seems to constantly nudge us toward fulfilling unnecessary desires and often nudges them to the point of insatiability, both of which are recipes for unhappiness. Modern society seems to constantly encourage us to desire more , even when our basic needs are well met.
As time goes on, we begin to view more and more things as being essential needs and that also causes a much larger number of things to be considered completely reasonable wants. As the world changes, so do we; the world presents a mirror in which we view ourselves. A simple example: if everyone around us has a smartphone, we thus assume that we need one, too. Happiness comes from having an internal definition of what we need to live and what we need to be happy, and having insatiable desires is guaranteed to detract from that.
So, how does one curb insatiable desires?
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