Comfort can kill. It really can.
We spend most of our lives trying to get comfortable. Being good animals.
Enough money coming in. Enough credit to see us through the bad times. Enough predictability to keep us regularly supplied with fun, happiness - no surprises. We avoid surprises at all costs, though we kid ourselves we don’t.
It’s a vicious circle. The more comfort in life we receive, the more comfort we build - the less “real” life we experience. And fewer surprises we are rewarded with.
“Our lives teach us who we are.” Salmon Rushdie
We live all our lives preparing for the freedom and liberation of retirement. A time when we’ll spring out of our predictable comfort and be free to experience the world in all its unpredictable glory.
However, for almost 99% of people who organize their lives this way - retirement is a disappointment. We’ve become what we’ve lived. We no longer seek out dark corners or what’s over the hill. Our lives have taught us who we are and we set about living our retirement as comfortably as we’ve comfortably lived our lives.
Just tell it like it is and being honest. Sorry to wipe away anyone’s illusions.
I spent some time this morning flipping through some old poetry notebooks. About this time of year in Kiev, Ukraine - 2000. This poem was born exactly as it is described. Just got home, threw off my Russian overcoat, and wrote it out after warming my hands in the gas oven on Lutheranska, just off the main boulevard, Krushachek.
Surprises
Walking home Christmas time
late evening
bags full in both hands
and I spy a lady
going through the bin
in front of the house.
If it weren’t Kyiv
it would be an affront.
But I walk straight by
as she adjusts her
half pink wool hat
and reaches down deep again —
So many surprises await her!
A half-eaten sandwich, 5 kopeck bottles
a purple hairpin, old tomatoes
dry paper for tonight’s bed.
And for me?
No surprises.
I know what I’ve bought.
I’m the one who’s been caught.