“Lock the front door, oh boy, got to sit down, take a rest on the porch…”

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Throughout the numerous posts in this blog, I’ve offered and/or advocated many courses of action.

 

From understanding the importance of being yourself, to exercising, to cleaning one’s environs and to embrace/overcome one’s fear.

 

All of these, however share an extremely important end goal.

 

One I believe to be the most important in a man’s life.

 

 

 

Fourteen years ago, I had $64,000 in the bank, a car, a motorcycle, a great apartment, a high paying job and more friends at my reach than most garner in a lifetime.

 

Six years later the wheel of fortune turned, leaving me with little more than the clothes on my back and enough troubles to require an abacus to count.

 

So many, in fact, I needed a friend to help me vacate my apartment

 

When my friend and I stopped by my family’s home to borrow my dad’s truck (which he grudgingly loaned me), my father told my friend:

 

“[A♠] had it all and he threw it away.”

 

My friend was stunned into silence, at the time, but remains angry at those words to this day.

 

 

 

He believed my father to be so wrong as to be insulting.

 

Looking back, I’m sad to say my friend is the one who is wrong.

 

Yet, as much as that saddens me to confess, there is some comfort.

 

 

 

I believe my father was something worse.

 

He was right, yes—

 

But for all the wrong reasons.

 

 

 

See, he didn’t think I fought my fate as hard as I could regarding my dismissal from government service or to keep my girlfriend from leaving.

 

That couldn’t be further from the Truth.

 

Regardless, his statement is still correct.

 

I did “throw it all away”.

 

However, that’s because I never fully appreciated or even realized that which I had, at the time or earlier.

 

I was far too busy focusing on what I was missing: steady relationships, job satisfaction, et al.

 

Instead, I gave into grief and decided to die (albeit slowly).

 

 

 

Sure, I’d lost a tremendous amount but – had I made better choices – I could’ve started a business rather than drink my money away.

 

I could’ve gotten into even better shape than let myself go.

 

I could’ve taken a more careful stock of what blessings remained rather than squander them.

 

 

 

Now, I was literally mentally ill (depression), so I’ve lessened the self-assault considerably.

 

But it’s True that a simple change of focus and framing – along with some positive accounting – may have brought about a much better outcome.

 

Which leads me to the revelation I implied was imminent earlier in this post.

 

That most important of end goals?

 

Contentment.

 

 

 

Chasing happiness usually turns interminable on the hedonic treadmill.

 

The hunt for material things just creates a bigger toy-box to fill.

 

And constant, promiscuous sex tends to kill any real chance at love.

 

Even the pursuit of physical perfection ends in eventual disappointment as age takes merciless hold.

 

(None of that should be read as condemnation of having ambition and taking good care of one’s health.)

 

 

 

As for self-respect, dignity, a good name and the ability to appreciate one’s state?

 

Those are paths I’ve yet to see lead me anywhere but wondrous.

 

 

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..” 

― John Milton, Paradise Lost

 

 

 

 

 

 

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