By Anne Strand
Dr. Anne Strand is a chaplain in the Episcopal church, a counselor and retired therapist. 

Does this sound familiar? We work to make more money so we can be happy.  We think that if we can just have a little more of this or that, then happiness will surely follow. But, when we find that this doesn’t necessarily happen, we try harder to fix the situation. So we get a bigger house or a better car — and the more things we accumulate, the more we have to work.

I realize that some of us have to work even more than one job—if we are lucky enough to have those — just to survive! And, this may be true, that we don’t have a choice. But, many of us do have a choice, and we just don’t realize it. Being addicted to over working and too much spending are symptoms of undirected, unconscious living. Blinded by false hopes and values, we keep on looking for the good life by doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result — a common definition of insanity.  How to be released from this prison is the question.

This problem is not new. The ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates, said that, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  Only by examining our true values — not those preached at us by the media or the worn out prescriptions we get stuck in from our past — can we get out of this mire. Perhaps even those of us with very few options have the ability to wake up and start paying attention rather than sacrificing ourselves and our resources on the altar of mindlessness.

Making a list of our life priorities and looking at which of these we are doing right now is one way to start. Thinking about what we loved to do as a child or wanted to be is a way to uncover these ideas.  Did we love to spend time alone in nature without a project, read for pleasure, dream up stories, make music or make something with our hands?  How about spending time with good friends just playing rather than planning for tomorrow?  Or watching caterpillars turn into butterflies, or lightening bugs turn on or just listening to the birds sing? Can we remember looking at the sky in wonder and thinking about God? (An adult spiritual version of this is learning to meditate or do centering prayer.)  Dancing or singing along to the music that was popular when we were coming of age is a way of lifting our spirits and feeling free and it doesn’t cost a thing.

Since we can never get enough of what we don’t need in the first place, the life we want often causes us to lose touch with the life we need — the life that comes from connection to ourselves, nature, creativity and others.

Sharing what we have person to person is far richer and more expansive than any life we could have built with things or found on screen time.  The solution is not how much money we make but how much money we spend and how. Remembering this will help us examine how we can live the good life — a life where we think about the quality of everyday living and how we really need it to be.