Muck’s Minute #35

Achieving Peace with Change

This Muck’s Minute is a wee bit off track the current economic, political, fiscal, monetary idiocy that I usually comment on. Hope you like it.

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde once said, “With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.”  Mr. Wilde is better know by shedding the middle three names and is just known as Oscar Wilde, a world class novelist, playwrite and poet. (1854-1900).  Truer words were never spoken.

And since I’ll begin my 80th year on 1 January, 2017, I am continuously searching for any short, worthwhile wisdom that I may have been lucky enough to pick up  (like beggar’s lice or cockle burrs) as I’ve waded through life so far.

I don’t claim to possess more wisdom but I do think the occasional insight into something of life’s travails probably wouldn’t have happened without the age and life’s experiences mixed in.

Such is it that man spends a lot of his life (I’m old fashioned and use man bisexually..  I am also not PC, so live with it) conflicted, sometimes depressed, often disappointed and now and again, angry or fearful about  changes that force a modification of the status quo in which you are quite comfortable.

Such it is with relocating – permanently moving – from one place you like, are well established, content and comfortable to somewhere new, 2/3 a continent away, and with no small amount of uncertainty about your eventually landing zone.  This multiplies with age as the older we get, the more set in our comfortable ways; tomorrow promises to be close to today and since you handled today pretty well, tomorrow will likely be nearly the same.

Making such a move can drag out all the emotions outlined above (plus a few others) and value judgements also force their way into the equation.  Everything in this world has a price of some sort – not necessarily “money” but can include hard work, vast amounts of trouble to do, physically “packing up and up stakes” AND what the hell do I do with the piles of “stuff” we’ve accumulated and surrounded ourselves with in manufacturing our current “status quo” that’s so comfortable.

Even though you sometimes have problems remembering why you bought whatever it is that now resides on the closet shelf or if you’re artsy and the item now sits and is displayed in a glass front cabinet.  When is the last time you examined that stuff to see if it has real (and I mean REAL) meaning or attachment to your life that you’d like to pass on to offspring someday.  You will find a few of your own ancestor’s possessions (usually art or craft, personally made) you immediately recognize.

The rest of what’s there is S-T-U-F-F.  If you’re lucky, you’ll find treasures you know a grandchild will like to have.  Maybe it has value and maybe it doesn’t but when you got it, you liked it.  Perhaps others wouldn’t. Maybe no one would appreciate the memory attached to it, after all, it’s your life’s memories tied up in it, no one else.  We all like to have our “precious” stuff admired – after all, we did – so we want others to agree which, in turn, validates our judgement in getting it in the first place.

Next, with very few (I can come up with three or four if you’re willing to stretch it a little) exceptions, the value of your possessions, after your screening, found what you liked and bought them immediately drops to zero unless, when you attempt to sell them, that “right” person comes along and wants to buy it.  Odds are 99% that all the comfy furniture, beautiful pictures, odds and ends, kitchen stuff (with one or two exceptions), in fact 90% of the current status quo things you are quite comfortable with, unless depreciated and discounted significantly, are worth zip squat.

Everything in this Universe including the Universe itself depreciates.  Your STUFF is no exception.  So when you buy things to admire or use (good tools are one exception – you never get rid of good tools) from a financial point of view, knowing those things are valuable to you and likely only you (unless priced at a super-discount) depreciate to give away value the day you bring them home.

Anything you use, your house, car, rugs, beds, the whole kitchen depreciate.  Mourning that fact when the status quo must change and your STUFF is just too many, too big or too much in size and number, remember, the day you bought it, depreciation sets in with bang, dropping the value (a very subjective term) to zilch…

Hence, yard sales, flea markets, garage sales and such where items precious to you are marked down in price to the extent someone else will find the item – at that discount – irresistible.  Pennies on the dollar when valued in your terms and they are worth exactly what you can sell them for in other peoples’ value.

What doesn’t sell at the terminal garage sale warrants a call to Goodwill or your favorite charity for them to come out and pick all the rest up and haul it off to sell in their outlets.

Presto – no more bad feelings, mourning the lost of STUFF, fretting about ROI (there is none on personal possessions).  The treasures you’ve sorted, kept and will make their way to offspring or peers.

So the insight is this.  As we grow older we should be simplifying our lives and welcome changes in the status quo.  Change is always stimulating and you’ll live longer.  If you get rid of something you could have used in the new environment, replace it. If you don’t have the capital to replace it, then do without out it or find a substitute (at someone else garage sale!).

I realize this is hard to do.  No one said life’s changes are painless but when you accept that 10% of your stuff is worth keeping into the next chapter of your life, let the other 90% go.  You enjoyed it, took comfort from it and you will, in the future, enjoy the new “special things” that will accumulate in your new status quo.. Maybe just not quite so much stuff.

PS:  If  you are wondering about the bases of this Minute, Old Muck and his bride of 60 years are in the process of uprooting a perfectly comfortable 20 year life in a comfortable home in Central Florida to move across country to reside in the piney woods of Arizona.  The reason?  Annette wants to spend at last a whatever years left to us in closer proximity to our oldest daughter – who has now been widowed twice and finally convinced her Mother to “please, Oh! pretty please come out here so we can be closer together!!”

We will be remodeling her current dwelling into something comfortable for three instead of one, get rid of a ton of STUFF in the process and take what happens next one day at a time!

So while our status quo will change over the next few months, Mucks Minute will continue to come from both here and evenutually, the woods of mini-mountainous Arizona somewhat East of Prescott.  Perhaps some new view points and better ideas will flow from a new location.  There will likely be more from here before we make the transfer but I want to wish all of the curmudgeons of TBP the seasons best and may Donald Trump hold off the climatic part of this upcoming 4th turning until we’ve established ourselves in the new status quo!!

Author: MuckAbout

Retired Engineer and Scientist (electronic, optics, mechanical) lives in a pleasant retirement community in Central Florida. He is interested in almost everything and comments on most of it. A pragmatic libertarian at heart he welcomes comments on all that he writes. View all posts by MuckAbout