That Which Remains

When I was very young, I had a toy prospecting tool. It was really just a plastic pan, about the size of a paper plate, with a grated bottom that allowed for filtering dirt, sand, etc. My mom explained to me that prospector's used this tool (well, the real kind anyway) to sift through piles of dirt in order to find gold. The useless material would fall through the cracks and be lost and forgotten, while the gold, or some other valuable mineral, would be large enough to stay in the pan and thus be visible to the prospector.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to have one of these toys to apply to my life.

I was thinking about this the other day when I was worrying a little about finances. I'm not broke by a long stretch, but I'm not getting any younger either and I don't really make a lot of money. Plus the prospects (no pun intended) for substantial advancement at my present job are almost nil. So I guess it's only natural that I would think of how and when I could ever retire, what my health concerns will be by that time and how and if I will be able to pay for them. The way things are going with our economy, most people my age that haven't either made a killing on the stock market or been lucky enough to have a pension plan will be working well into their seventies. It's scary, particularly when you are in your forties, single and have health issues.

Then after a customary period of near panic, I calmed down and came to a kind of peace. I decided that for all my fear about the future, I didn't want to be one of those people who lived in constant concern about some distant "someday" while doggedly ignoring their day to day reality. Maybe that's just a nice cover for being less than responsible about preparing for the future, but it just seems that so many of these prepared people are sacrificing so much of their present for a future that, truth be told, is always in doubt anyway. It doesn't matter how much you save, how healthy you live, or how well you chart your career course; we're all going to get old, develop health problems and die.

Now of course, it makes sense not to spend irresponsibly and chow down on fatty foods. It's nice to think you won't have to work until old age, and will be able to enjoy some nice amenities afterward. And it's also nice to have an old age that is reasonably active and free of constant doctor trips and medical treatment. But, that said, one really need to strike a balance. No amount of financial or health responsibility can guarantee happiness, now or in the future. Maybe a steady diet of KFC will kill you off early, but to deprive yourself of EVER eating it is really kind of masochistic. What's the use in living to 100 if the path that gets you there is nothing but a joyless, colorless trudge? And what real good is having a million dollars to work with in your old age if you saved it by a lifetime of delayed (and often cancelled) gratification? Life needs to be lived, and if you only concentrate on "someday" you're really banking on a big "maybe" anyway.

I don't eat out as much as I used to, but I do still treat myself to doing so once a week. And I try to budget my money more, too. If I REALLY want something, I'll probably buy it, but I don't make many impulse buys and I'm looking into the stock market for investment opportunities. I want to grow old, but I want to be young while I still can.

In the end, there's a whole lot of sand out there; deadlines and meetings and promotions and "networking" and handwringing about getting into the right school and buying the perfect house and buying the perrect stock. All sand, all of it. The real gold is all the stuff you can't plan and can't see; the laughs and love you shared with your family and friends, the simple joy of making someone you love feel better, the quiet pride of doing the right thing or doing a good job. These things, unlike money and health and prestige, can never be taken away.

So I'll plan as much as I can, but I'll try to remember while doing so that no amount of planning gets me that much further than anyone else really. In the precious little time I am here, I might not find a lot of gold, but I'll treasure what I do find, and hopefully, be able to distinguish it from sand.