Episode 25: What is Enough

[00:00:00] Seth: I enjoy reading classical literature quite a bit. I don't always have the stamina to read it all the time, but I still have managed to read most of the classics that I'm familiar with, but the book that really got me started was Robinson Crusoe. It was one of the first classic books I read as an adult, and I did it somewhat on a whim.

But that book really changed my perspective of the world at the time. It's been retold so many times through cinema using different places, characters, and names, but it is essentially the same story. A few movie titles that you might be familiar with that are basically just redone versions of Robinson Crusoe are The Martian, Cast Away, Swiss Family Robinson.

They're all just different versions of the same story, really. So in this story, it details the life of a young man, Robinson Crusoe, who sets off to seek his fortune. And while sailing across the Atlantic, he gets shipwrecked and is the only one to make it to land. Once he manages to make it to land, he has to figure out how to live with what little he could retrieve from the shipwreck.

And the book reads like a diary. He details out all the mundane things he has to figure out while he's stranded. It's really one of the funnest books I've ever read because it goes through in incredible detail, telling you how he figured out how to make pottery, how he built his home, how he planted food, and so on And everything else he had to do.

It just is detailed in this. diary that you're presumably reading. And he figures it all out through trial and error. The book is fascinating. I was glued to it and was totally surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I read somewhere that at the time the book came out, which was, I think it was 1719, people thought they were reading an actual account of a castaway.

One of the main themes the book discusses is What a person actually needs. And this is the topic that impacted me the most. So I'm going to ruin the story for you a little bit. He ends up becoming very comfortable by the end of the book. This guy's built a summer home in the interior of the Island. In addition.

To having a home by the beach. He's got a reliable crop every year. He's got food stored away in case of a rainy day, and he's figured out how to be comfortable. He spends most of his time reading the Bible that he recovered. From the shipwreck and tending to his farming operation during the growing season and for the rest of the time He's just a man of leisure basically but one of the things he talks the most about is that he is still left without company and At one point in the book he remarks how he has as much as a king But only lacks other people a little later in the story.

He eventually has run ins with cannibals You and manages to befriend a victim that he rescued. So eventually he does have some company as well, but it's pretty poignant how important that is. This whole time he's there, he, he gets comfortable. He literally has for the time, like everything that he could possibly need, but he is just battling an intense, intense loneliness because we're not meant to be by ourselves.

At the end of the book, he's been on the island for 30 plus years. When he's finally rescued and as he's leaving some of the sailors end up staying behind and try to actually settle this island And when he gets back to England, he's some I forget somehow he's wealthy I can't remember how possibly some salvage from the shipwreck included some coinage But he finds he's unhappy and he actually returns to his island only now They're actually people living on it and settling it.

So this story really made me think hard about So, what would be enough for me? I had to face the truth that there is no enough for me. If there is more to be had, I want it. And I'm not alone. But there's something wrong about that. What do we really actually need in life to be happy? Well, we need to be fed.

We need to be comfortable. We need other people. The problem with our needs is they get skewed by our perceptions of others. If the neighbors regularly take expensive vacations to unwind We like to take their cue and try to do what they do because that's what we think we need to do. It's like we feel left out if we are not doing what everyone else is doing.

Heaven forbid we feel like we are less than others because we can't do the same things as them. Our needs get so dependent on what we see others doing when we could live comfortably in tents in some places. I mean, even in the freezing tundra, the Mongolians seem to have figured out how to be comfortable in tents.

But I have always dreamt about having all the stuff. A nice house, a nice car, and I remember at one point when I got a nice house, and I had a nice car, I wanted a nicer house, and a nicer car. I can still remember how excited I was to have a 15 year old truck at one point. Now, to be fair, I know some of these diesel trucks that are like 20 years old are in some ways more valuable than much newer trucks.

But that aside. It's funny how our perception changes. I also remember how excited I was to get a car that was five years old. And then I remember being excited to get a new car. I'm still the same person, but somehow along the way, something changed in me so that I no longer get excited over the idea of having an old car, even if that car is just as functional as the new one.

I don't think it's really about needs, but rather about some level of status. We want to be heard. Respected, admired. So sometimes we satisfy ourselves with the symbols of status in an attempt to imitate the feelings of status. I mean, I remember when I was. a teenager and just hadn't had, didn't have my license yet.

Just the idea of any car was exciting to me. So something that's a little bit ironic to me is that some of the happiest years of my now ended marriage were living out of an RV. I have to remind myself of that. Sometimes we got excited over reading about other people. living out of RVs and saving money and stuff like that.

So we got this crazy idea to try it ourselves. And so it sounded like an adventure at the beginning, but there was a point where I really felt like a poor provider for my family over it. But those two years we lived in it were truly some of our best. I think in some ways it detached us from feeling the need to live like other people.

Not that we were totally alone, we met lots of other people doing the same thing. It really was kind of a trend at that point, and it may still be. It is amazing to me how disconnected happiness can be from the things we have. You would think based on how much of our life is dedicated to making money in order to have things, that there'd be a stronger correlation.

All the happiness we get from stuff, though, seems to be front loaded. Right there at the beginning, when we first get the thing, and then after a little while we just take whatever that thing was for granted. And start looking for the next thing that we want, so we can get that next hit of dopamine. I don't really think it matters if we have stuff in our lives.

If we can afford a thing, then I suppose this is Fine, but I think we need to escape this false notion that those things are actually going to make us happy. Generally, I found anything you use less than once a week is going to feel more like a burden than a benefit at some point. What I do think is bad is when we can't afford what our friends can and we let ourselves feel bad about it.

Stuff can impact how people look at us, so I understand why it feels important to have Stuff. At least on par with our friends. But the stuff we have is not anywhere near as important to how people look at us as who we actually are. So it might be worth asking ourselves if we are good enough for other people to like and respect, even if we're destitute.

The truth is that, to some people, you wouldn't be good enough. But I think in a way that's only to your benefit because you may have just weeded out the worst people in your social circle. The thing is You are you, regardless of the things you own. Your value as a person is not tied to the things you own.

People with a lot of money get to do cool things, but I believe the highlights of a person's life are never really the cool things that they got to do. I think the highlight reel of our life would be far more likely to show us the moments we did good for someone else. If you ever go to a funeral and listen to what people have to say about that person, it almost never has anything to do with their stuff.

And if it does, it, it usually is only to provide context for a story. I remember attending my grandfather's funeral. He was a fairly rich guy. At one point he owned a ski resort and he was fairly involved in politics, but those were not the things anyone brought up outside of maybe mentioning them, like I said, to provide context for a story about him.

They brought up the good things he did and how he impacted their lives. I actually love funerals. I think it's because, for a moment. We all get to celebrate a person's life. I love that we get to hear about all those small little moments that people remember about that person. How they made someone laugh, or how they handled some impossible problem.

It's a privilege, really, to hear about the good things a person did in their life. It's an opportunity to take just a little bit of wisdom from the life of someone else. And although I'm in no rush to get to the end of my life, I hope when I do, I do. That I've done enough good for people in my life that they'll want to spend a little time talking about it.

So maybe sell a few things, downsize a bit, start putting your time and money into things that actually give you some lasting benefits, maybe start spending more of that time and money looking out for others that could use a hand. I'm sure you can get creative. So what is enough really? Well, enough is just whatever we need to stay alive.

Plus good people to live our lives with. Everything else is really just a bonus.