I reckon all of us have this ideal life that we hope to live. Its the life we believe would make us truly happy and free. The only problem is that it doesn’t exist – except in our imaginations.
When I sold my boat last week I was admitting that my ideal world didn’t exist. The world where I went fishing, surfing or diving once or twice a week simply didn’t exist. The real world did – the world where the boat sat there and took up space – and cost me money the less I used it.
My neighbours bought a boat recently – a much nicer one than I had. They also bought a family set of ski gear and a heap of dive gear. They told me they would be getting out every weekend and using it because that was what they imagined… Is it a surprise that the boat hasn’t moved for 4 weeks?
We were supposed to be going to Busso this weekend, but the weather conspired against us… So the boat will sit there a bit longer.
Yesterday two monster caravans turned up in our street. We had seen one before, but the other was new. Turns out it is very new and belongs to another of our neighbours. He told me today they will be getting away every fortnight in it. Call me a cynic, but I think they really just bought a spare room… I think they’d like to travel and they hope to travel and they will dream about it, but actually making it happen is just a bit harder than that.
I guess we all have a mental picture of the life we think we want to live but reality is that life simply doesn’t exist and even if it did we’d get bored with it.
In year12 I had to memorise some Shakespeare for my English Lit exam. One quote that sticks with me is from Henry 1st Part IV
“If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But when they seldom come, they wish’d for come”
How true.
If all the year were a holiday then we simply wouldn’t know the difference between fun and work.
I’m much like my friends with the caravan and the boat in that I regularly feel like there are things in this life that would make me truly happy. However a little reflection seems to easily undo the myth.
In fact to spend a lot of money on toys that rarely get used only adds to the anxiety. Now there is a loan to repay on an item we rarely use. I’m not happy. This is not my ideal life…pandora and the flying dutchman free download
All MY life is a holiday – this is my sixth year of retirement and I have no paid work – but who has time to fish surf or dive? If I owned a big boat it would never get used. When I DID get away (to join at a beach resort seven of my ten grandchildren) a few weeks ago, I told everyone I was “on leave” that week. And had a really great holiday.
Viva retirement.
geez hamo
you’re getting all “intellectual” on us – quoting shakespeare… what’s next! 🙂
but i agree… it’s something i’ve been about a bit lately.
Thanks for the brilliant honest post. I’ve been feeling the same as I stare daily at my far to expensive mountain bike. Oh how I long for the days of riding trail after trail getting filthy dirty and having a ear to ear grin. Now it rests, sees trails 3-4 times a summer and my mastercard feels the weight of such a purchase. It’s not my ideal, but it’s there. I reminds me of adventures past, and dreams of adventures future. But I hang it up gladly for the ideal of family and friends and the true ideal life shared in community with others under the grace of God. So I’ve gone from one ideal to another. Do I wish those worlds could collide, of course. But it’s better to make best of the season of life we’re in then, the one we wish we were. I see this value as a church planter too, I can dream of the day when there is a network of churches built to expand the kingdom and I’m getting to disciple young leaders, but if I live in that dream I miss the reality of the ideal now, the struggling growth, the people God has gifted in my care to shepard now. Life is always ideal if we don’t covet the dreams of leasure and live with what we have.
Thanks Hamo – now I have another six months of self-justification for NOT buying the new front wheel to my bike!
I’d never use it. . .
I suspect when they build the Butler railway station that Mrs Grendel won’t look kindly on that excuse any more.
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