Ben Howard - "Old Pine"

Take a Risk

"I waited at home in my own comfort zone. Thought my life was planned out already set in stone. I ran from love with no goodbyes not even trying. So I crossed an ocean. Climbed the mountains. Quit some things in life and threw pennies in fountains. I fell in love. Told some goodbyes. Oh, now I'm trying.
 
Tell me you tried. Tell me you dropped out. Tell me your lies. Tell me you left town. Tell me you fell in love with a girl and you don't know why. Tell me you gave risk a try.

Now, I'm gonna travel all over. Play my love songs for her. Hold my child close to me while he weeps on my shoulder. So baby boy, please don't cry. You're the reason why I am giving risk a try.

Tell me you tried. Tell me you dropped out. Tell me your lies. Tell me you left town. Tell me you fell in love with a girl and you don't know why. Tell me you gave risk a try.

'So take the rocky road,
that leads you far from home.
The comforts now in life will only upset your soul.
Live your dream. Change your life.
Take a risk and try.'"

"Take a Risk"
by Sean Bruce
from his album Daytime Hopes

Lawyer -->Wilderness Instructor

"On New year's Day 2010, my two-year old son broke his femur in a skiing accident while we were vacationing in Lander. I spent eight weeks there while he recovered, thinking about life. For a decade, I'd been moving up the law-firm ladder in California and relegating what I really love - climbing - to the weekends. My husband and I decided to just stay in Wyoming, and I started looking for work with an organization whose mission matched my core values. I applied for a n internship with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) as a blogger. Within a few months I was hired as a writer, and this summer I became the diversity-and-inclusion manager and trained to lead wilderness courses. NOLS is flexible with schedules, and we're encouraged to spend nice days skiing, climbing, or running. Some meetings happen on bycycles. I make a fifth of what I made as a lawyer, but I'm at least five times happier. I'm climbing four days a week, and I play with my son outside every day."

-Aparna Rajagopal-Durbin - as told to Michael Roberts
Outside Magazine (September 2011)

In Music...

Super 8

Experiences vs. Possessions

"The cheapskate next door knows something that numerous social scientists have confirmed, including Ryan Howell, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University. Howell’s research not only supports the idea that spending to create life experiences, as opposed to accumulating more possessions, makes us happier; his findings also show that the relative amount we spend on those experiences doesn’t directly impact the level of happiness they provide. A $27 dinner, for example, can bring the same amount of happiness as a $400 weekend getaway.

So the important thing is not how much we spend on an experience – assuming it costs anything at all – but rather that we make the effort to have them. For that, of course, we need time. That’s why, as discussed before, the cheapskate next door values his time and what he can do with it more than money and the stuff he can buy with it.

When I speak to groups about the virtues of the cheapskate lifestyle, I like to ask the adults in the audience how many birthday and holiday gifts from their childhood they remember, and how many of those gifts they still own today. The answer is usually just a couple, at most, of the countless gifts most of us were showered with when we were kids.

Then I ask them how many memories from those same special occasions they remember and cherish even more with each passing year. You can see the light bulbs coming on. As the cheapskates next door know, possessions tend to disappoint and become less valuable over time, while experiences often retain or even increase in value with age."

Jeff Yeager
The Cheapskate Next Door

being human

But there does need to be a new realization that being human is something great, a great challenge, to which the banality of just drifting along doesn't do justice. Any more than the attitude that comfort is the best way to live, that feeling healthy is the sum and substance of happiness. There needs to be a new sense that being human is subject to a higher set of standards, indeed, that it is precisely these demands that make a greater happiness possible in the first place. There needs to be a sense that being human is like a mountain-climbing expedition that includes some arduous slopes. But it is by them that we reach the summit and are able to experience for the first time how beautiful it is to be. Emphasizing this is a particular concern to me."

-Pope Benedict XVI
Light of the World