Life Changing Events:
Good Morning all of you Middle Class thinkers, your King of Simple News is on the air.
While many may not realize it quite yet, the current turn of events in these economic times will become a permanent life changing episode for millions. I truly believe that this change, given time, will be viewed as positive.
It appears that the only thing that may eventually bring us to our senses and snap us out of this borrow and spend trance, will be the total inability to burn our precious lives up in the pursuit of material wealth. Sometimes bad things produce positive results.
You may be asking how such a traumatic period of time could possibly yield a positive outcome. I experienced a tragic event many years ago that forever changed my life. I don’t recommend this approach; however it was effective. At the time, it hardly seemed as if anything positive could come of the incident.
Click the following link and scroll to the bottom of the page, where you will see “Pilot Mike Folkerth tells us”. . .click the listen link and then scroll to the bottom of the next page and click “Stories of Hope and Gratitude, pilot Mike Folkerth. http://www.kcfr.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=282
Please listen to the above feed before continuing.
This may give you some insight as to why I hammer each and every day to live simply and to live well. I have close up and personal knowledge of the very real fact that each and every day could be our last.
NPR had requested examples of life changing events and some details are lacking in the story that I shared with them. One of those details is that I estimate having had less than 10 seconds remaining before dying that day; that sort of thing does get ones attention.
In my book, I said that if we had an hour glass on the kitchen table that represented the exact amount of time that we have to live, that we would behave much differently. Our quest for material wealth and the associated debt would be internally challenged every day.
We would ask ourselves such questions as, “Is it really worth the time out of my life to earn the money for making interest payments for seven long years to own the smell of a new vehicle?”
“Is it really worth thirty years of my life and hard work to be strapped at the end of every month to make the mortgage payment on a mini-mansion? Are the countless hours that I spend doing the “slow burn,” while stuck in traffic every day of my life well spent?”
If we asked ourselves that single question, “Is it worth the minutes and seconds that make up my very life,” before making any purchase I think we would be surprised at the outcome.
I always want to be perfectly clear that when I continually say, “live simple and live well,” that I am not advocating a life of hardship and poverty; far from it. The money that one saves from endless monthly payments and interest by living a simpler, less ostentatious lifestyle, can be directly converted to those things that are truly enjoyable. Of which, free time is not the least!
As a perfect example, when I lived in Talkeetna, Alaska, I rented a low cost cabin, drove a cheap older vehicle and rode my bike. At the same time I owned a private airplane! With the money that most people stick into the ownership of a new depreciating auto, I supported my used appreciating airplane at a time when aviation was the love of my life.
Many of life’s hardships are of our own making. Freedom of choice is a wonderful thing. Just so long as we don’t allow our freedom of choice to make choices that steals our freedom.
Remember, don’t sweat the small stuff and take time to smell the roses; life is short and comes with no guarantees at all. Make the best of it.
Subscribe to this blog
Our economic policy of exponential growth has filtered into and has been driven into every segment of life globally. It has to, since it is based on an ever expanding growth pattern. It depends on ever expanding population, money (interest), jobs, resources; the list is endless. It is also mathematically impossible long term.
With everyone, including family members, all forms of the media and government hounding us to spend, spend, spend, so we can do our part to prop up this flawed system, it is very hard to focus on what is important and to divorce ourselves from the insidious grip many of us are held by. This is created by the our roll of “debtor” in this bogus economy.
I also believe the function will play out beginning this year and continue on for many years. I believe that breaking free from the life robbing system as Mike has discussed is difficult for most folks and that it will take the ensuing exponential function to break the grip our government has on our lives at this time. This will happen and if we are not prepared, it will be quite frightening.
The preparation phase needs to begin today. It is not difficult, but does take planning and focus. For most it will be fun. And for all who follow through with their plan of preparation, the era after the exponential function plays out will also be rewarding. -bb
‘Freedom of choice is a wonderful thing. Just so long as we don’t allow our freedom of choice to make choices that steals our freedom.’ - Mike
WOW! Does that hit home. How many of us have traded financial, emotional, spiritual, and life freedom for ‘Stuffitis’? How many of us have willingly and knowingly become ‘Indentured Servants’ to the bank?
At the moment I’m at work pushing a mouse around a desk, but I’m still picking the dirt out from under my fingernails after a great weekend of getting my garden prepared.
Maybe all this will make people realize they can only live one moment…………….now.
Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is a hope…….or an illusion. The only real time we have is right now.
Being in debt robs one of that moment because most people live a life of “quiet desperation,” as Henry David Thoreau said.
Always planning always scheming of how to move this money over here, to use this credit card instead of that one, because that one is maxed and they drive down the road fingers clinched around the steering wheel, mind abuzz about their pitiful financial condition and how much they owe on the house and car, the truck, the boat, the four wheeler and the bike. Things.
And to top it off they binge eat or drink, lay around and watch television, yell and scream and basically feel hopeless.
Debt has made many Americans bona fide candidates for the funny farm or a strait jacket.
Look at what money does to people or what they will do for money.
Our educational system supports this wicked illusion of having to have things. Yep, the good Ole American Dream was actually a big friggen nightmare.
This life is so precious, so fragile, do delicate and it should not be wasted in pursuit of the nothingness called consumerism.
If you can truly close your eyes each night with a smile on your face and get a good nights sleep unburdened by debt or fear of the future you have arrived to a peaceful life. That is what the Founding Fathers might have meant in the Declaration of Independence..”the pursuit of happiness.”
Awesome story, Mike! Thanks so much for sharing it! And a great blog today.
I’m not much for most poetry, but Mary Oliver is truly a great poet. This poem really captures what we need to remember every day, stick with the reading, the end is where the wisdom hits:
The Summer Day
Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention,
how to fall down into the grass,
how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed,
how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.
What good does Debt have to do with Life? Liberty? and the pursuit of Happiness? Hmmmm I think my answer is little or nothing. Debt actually reduces Life, Liberty, and Happiness.
George, so right!
Debt=shackles
Great poem. It made me realize that I am still a work in progress.
FYI and this one has me stewing in vinegar!
Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 (H.R. 875)
This act would essentially transfer all state control over food regulation to the Food Safety Administration (FSA), a newly-established federal bureaucracy to be created within the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Its implications point to the elimination of all independent, family farms as well as all organic farming operations due to overbearing federal regulations subjectively determined by FSA in favor of corporate factory farms.
http://www.naturalnews.com/z025824.html
It’s actually so far reaching that it could make it illegal to plant your own personal garden!! And make it to expensive if not illegal to process wild game meat thus all but putting an end to all hunting.
“Control the oil and you can control entire Continents. Control food and you control the people.” - Henry Kissinger
Hello everyone,
It appears that many of us are in agreement when it comes to trading life for debt. Bad trade.
Perhaps this period of economic turmoil will allow many more people to arrive at a slower paced, less debt, more fun filled lifestyle.
Perhaps it will reinvent our vision of what success looks like.
Thanks for all the well thought comments.