Being an Adult is Boring

"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

-C.S. Lewis

I found my old dress suit while cleaning up my closet and remembered how I dreaded wearing it for work or other formal settings. Why did society ever made something like this? The older I get, the more I realize that in order to partake in society you often have to play these games that you don't really like to play but still do because it's expected of you. 

The problem is that I can't play by all these rules, for too long, or I'll go crazy. 

I'm at an age now that I get funny looks when I tell someone that I still have my old Pokémon cards or about some other, relatively, Geeky thing that I'm into. I know that they're telling themselves "aren't you a bit too old for this?" Perhaps they're saying this because they've given up on something that used to make them happy purely to satisfy the image society placed upon themselves or out of necessity.

I found ways to feed my inner child while also contributing to society. If society had technical specs, like a Computer game, for adulthood then I probably satisfy the minimum requirements for it.

If your life is boring as an adult then try looking into the things that used to make you happy as a child. Maybe what you'll find is that you still enjoy these things and you've given up on them a too soon. While rediscovering yourself, insure that you satisfy the minimum requirements, such as paying bills, of Adulthood and you'll be fine.

We Need to Rethink Consumerism

It's crazy to think that a bag of chips I used 25 years ago is still in a landfill somewhere. According to streetroots.org, the average American will produce 102 tons of trash in his lifetime. Multiply this by the almost 8 Billion People on the planet and it's not difficult to see that we have a problem on our hands.

How did we get here?

We got here through a series of small innovations designed to make our lives easier at the expense of our planet. We got here by replacing paper bags with plastic ones, glass with plastic, towels with paper towels... Someone is profiting from our desires to live a simpler life at the expense of our habitat. We could blame companies for introducing these "innovations" in our lives but the blame ultimately falls on the consumer. Afterall, we wouldn't have a market for paper towels if people didn't buy them.

Have you seen a Swiffer commercial lately? They literally show you how easy it is to clean and then put the thing in the trash. Commercials are training us on how to use those "single use" products and how to disposed of them. 

"It's as easy as throwing it in the trash". Easy doesn't make it right now doesn't it?

We need more reliable, recycle products. We, consumers, must look into everything about our products and choose the ones that are friendlier to the environment. While it starts with the consumer, I also think that business could do a better job at leading us in the right direction just the same as they did lead us in the wrong direction.

Things need to change now...

Dominant Specie

We started our journey off by being at the mercy of our environment and eventually evolved to be such a dominant specie that we're not only impacting climate but have also became responsible for the survival of most other species.

Is intelligent life destined to be detrimental to their environments or is this something unique to humans? If only we could compare the history of our specie with another!

What could we of done better?

For the longest time, we've underestimated the impact we've had on our surroundings. Whether it be in Ancient Rome or up until last week we have done things to the planet that isn't helping it. We wipe our butts with our forests, we use our drinkable water as a vehicle for various waste... we've evolved in such a way that we use every bit of the resources found on this planet to our advantage and making things worse, in almost every instances, in the process.

We certainly can forgive ourselves for the times that we "didn't know" yet we're slow to change when our mistakes are exposed to us.

Perhaps the most bizarre of our creation is with how we've linked nature to our economy. We MAKE money from destroying it and it COST us money to preserve/restore it. We get immediate value from cutting down a tree but it costs us to plant one even though, I would argue, the value of planting a tree has a bigger significance on our survival.

We need to take a serious look at what we've built so far and make changes in order to be less destructive to our environments.

Owning Up to Your Mistakes

Some people go to extremes in order to not take the blame for the mistakes that they've done and it doesn't make them look any better through the eyes of everyone else. Honing up to your mistakes makes you a better person.

Justin Trudeau, the current Prime Minister of Canada, has apologized for some of the stupid things he has done in his younger years (such as "black face" costume). By apologizing, he calmed his critics, showed the world that the leader of the free world is a human being that acknowledges his mistakes and want to be better.

Self-Improvement is the name of the game here. We can only change the things that we acknowledge as being problematic about ourselves. If we go to extremes to avoid taking responsibilities for our mistakes then we also become powerless in changing these short comings. 

Save Money to Retire Early

A few years back, a manager of mine, who had saved millions up to that point, said to me that I should enjoy myself with the money that I have rather than save it all like he had done. 

Recently, an older woman admitted to me that she had no savings for retirement as her philosophy was to, in-fact, enjoy her money in her youth while she still could and not wait until retirement to do so.

My questions to these people are the following:

• To the manager - Why were you still working at the time you told me this? If you have millions saved, and you're sharing with me that you're regretting not having enjoyed yourself more in your youth, why didn't you just quit your job and enjoy the money you had acquired up to that point while you still could?
• To the older woman - Why aren't you saving money in order to retire earlier to enjoy yourself without the constraints of work?

I save money not because I plan on spending it when I'm retired but because I want to retire earlier. While I love what I do, I increasingly want it to become a choice the older that I get. I would find it stressful to not have anything saved up for my future.

We live in a society that's all about "buying now and pay later" but that's such a bad way to live. Why would you sacrifice future time for something now? Isn't that how people get stressed out? 

No.

Don't sell your future. Save money now in order to buy future time.

"Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants."

-Epictetus