I can't emphasize this enough: when you are faced with the prospect of your own death, you cease to take life for granted. You (meaning me) make a promise to yourself that regardless of the problems of the outside world, you (meaning me) are going to stay true to yourself, your beliefs, your way of life (and lifestyle) and you are going to live out the rest of your life in peace and harmony.
I was born in the 50s but knew real well what life was like during the 60s. I faced the inflation of the 1970s and what it was like to wait for hours on a gas line just to half-fill my car's gas tank. I remember how the elderly ate dog food and how we froze over the winter months because we couldn't afford the energy prices. I remember the high profitability of the 80s and 90s. I knew what it was to be rich and I knew what it was to be poor. I remember the Stock Market Crash of 1987 (where I vowed NEVER to invest in the stock market again) and I remember the dot com disaster of 1998 to 2001. Oh right....that's when the World Trade Center was bombed.
What I learned along the way was that consumerism was a trap. Borrowing money and engorging oneself (that would be me) in debt was the quickest route to insolvency. Has anyone experienced what not having fifty cents to your name feels like? It's worse than the embarrassment of explaining to your best friend that you don't have the $1.50 bridge fee to come and pick up the fifty dollars he/she was going to loan you. It's being invited out to an Easter dinner by your father only to have him tell you at the table that he ain't picking up the tab for you, your boyfriend (now my husband) or your kids. It's the realization that you have absolutely no money to pay for yourself and relying on the kindness of the waitress who seated you at another table and paid for your two kids meals.
Being debt free (fully paid for home and cars, no consumer/revolving debt, no student loans, no equity lines of credit) helped my husband and I sail through the housing crisis of 2008. This current cost-of-living crisis, although a bit scary at times, has not caused us to miss one step. We've been able to additionally face cancer and heart disease without missing a beat. We live like two self-reliant individuals, close to the land, close to the home, part of a commune/community, free from Corporate America and free from Big Pharma.
Life is a struggle for sure, but looking back on it now, I wouldn't change a single thing. I learned, unfortunately the hard way, how to handle money. How to be successful regardless of the outside world. After living through all my different lifestyles (hippie, boomer, yuppie, entrepreneur, rich girl, poor girl) the best lifestyle out of all of them, for me, was living as a hippie. You lived in the moment. Money was NOT that important. Consumerism was nowhere to be found. You loved life. You loved music and you loved your man and your children.
With my remaining years of life, I'm being retrospective and I'm choosing to go back to my hippie days. I lived my best life then (when compared to all the others) I wear nothing but blue jeans and tee shirts. I am not into consumerism, status or living a so-called 'good life'. The fact that I am still alive is as good a life as ever. My house is small and cozy. My furniture is hand-me-downs from my mother and father. My meals still consist of the 70s recipes I have known to love and cook with zest. They're cheap, healthy and oh! so good! No celebrity status here. I'm so close to Woodstock NY, I can practically call it my second home-away-from-home. This is where we old hippies wind up, isn't it? We enjoyed the Woodstock concert so much that we call upstate New York our homeland.
If you haven't seen the Bob Dylan movie, A Complete Unknown (click here. it's free on Prime) I would advise that you see it. That movie brought back so many wonderful memories to me. I had forgotten. The music. The lifestyle. It was filmed on the very hippie streets of New York City where I used to hang out. I had (almost) every single record Bob Dylan released. I thought he was fantastic. And now, in retrospect, I get him even more. I get his message, his music, his life and his disgust for corporate America and Big Business. We knew the way but we lost our way. Corporate Big Business destroyed everything.
For Mother's Day my husband bought me tickets to see Bob Dylan in concert here in upstate New York at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. I can't wait to finally see and hear him in person. When Bob first married, he, his wife and three children lived here, in Woodstock, in upstate New York. Geeze, I wish I had known that fact. Both Bob and Pete Seeger lived up here. I knew about Seeger but never about Dylan. Oh well. Better late than never.
One of my favorite Bob Dylan songs is 'Forever Young'. Here's Dylan singing with a favorite of my husband's: Bruce Springsteen. I'm very thankful that these great musicians are still alive, still kicking and still entertaining us. May we all stay: Forever young.
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A serious illness really does make you realize what/who is really important. So much of what we worry about and think about doesn't matter in the long run.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how we change so much over the years and usually end up back where we started.
Hi Lori. So true. So true. I didn't realize how good I had it till I went back to the very beginning. I think every generation comes to the same conclusion. But we all have to venture out and test the waters, so to speak. Thanks for your comment.
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