Living on the fringe
Has benefits
I thought that this short poem would have been the seed for a larger poem, but the more I thought about it, I didn’t want to mess with the simple elegance of it.
Since I quit my “regular” job to run my own business full-time, I have learned that time is way more valuable than money. This has been confirmed along my journey with much less money and much more time. Research confirms that once we have enough money to meet our basic needs, additional money offers little increase in happiness. Apparently, the proverb, “you can’t buy happiness” is largely true. On the other hand, having additional free time, to do what we really want to do, does not seem to be limited by the principle of diminishing returns as money is, that is, after meeting our basic needs. I would say that trading money for time would be a good deal for most Americans. Of course, my approach is not to purchase time through vacations or hiring help, but rather to free up time by not selling myself pay any more than I have to. Living simply and frugally is part of my vocation. Such a vocation allows my life to better resemble a vacation. Every dollar I don’t spend is a dollar I don’t have to earn in the not-so-free market. If you are fortunate to have significant assets available to you, I would highly recommend transitioning to a much simpler life, by ransoming your life with whatever assets you have available.
A transition to a simpler life requires letting go of certain things. For instance, I am living on the fringe, in the fact that I have been without health insurance for almost a decade. Though I might add, our health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system, and now is as good of a time as any to be on the fringe of this non-system. Fortunately, I am healthier than most of my peers. I eat nutritiously. I get plenty of rest. I have much, much less stress than most. I get a decent amount of physical activity. I have something that the finest doctors in the world are unable to give their patients.
So, what are some other benefits of living on the fringe? In recent months, I have written a poem a day, and a blog commentary to boot! Just yesterday, I broke my record for length of a blog commentary. I can’t remember the last time I set my alarm to get up in the morning — this is something that the richest and most powerful people in the world cannot claim! One of my greatest hopes is for people to have morning without mourning!
I recently spent a couple of hours most days for a couple of months with a friend dying in hospice care.
I have spent most of my life on a quest for simple living. I contemplated and calculated quite thoroughly the costs and “affordability” of quitting my regular job. Perhaps the greatest single epiphany in my life has been how grossly I underestimated the benefits of working for myself, relaxing my security reflex, and living fully into the serendipitous benefits of simple living. I feel like I have won the lottery! Only without the money…
Like a former pastor of mine says, “If you aren’t living on the fringe, then you are taking up to much room.” May you find the space and time in your life to discover fringe benefits beyond your dreams!
