Live on the Straight and Narrow or On the Edge? A debate

Most of us live life in the middle, but occasionally, wisps of wonder enter consciousness: "Should I tiptoe off-center?"

Perhaps this debate I present as my PsychologyToday.com article today will help you clarify.

How Important is it to Live Ethically?

A previous post offered a self-assessment on how ethical you are.  Another post offered tips on identifying and living your principles.

But neither article addressed a foundational issue: How important is it to live ethically? Perhaps you’ll find your answer in a debate between a highly and a minimally ethical person. That's my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Living By Your Principles: Baby steps toward getting there

Most of us would like to prioritize principles over expediency. As social reformer Henry Ward Beecher wrote, “Expedients are for the hour, principles are for the ages.”

But we’re human. As psychologist Alfred Adler wrote, “It’s easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.” Perhaps one or more of the tips I offer in my PsychologyToday.com article today will make it easier for your principles to prevail.

Is Contribution All?

It’s popular to extol the “life” part of “work-life balance” and its various manifestations such as exhortations to meditate. The masses have glommed onto such simplisms as “You’re a human being, not a human doing”

Yet, across the 5,600 career and personal advising clients I’ve had over the past 30 years, many if not most of the people who are highly satisfied with their life have a life that's "out of balance.” They work long hours and value doing that.

I make the case for such a life in my PsychologyToday.com article today. 

Thinking Cosmically: The wisest approach to life?

he concept I've learned in school that has most affected my day-to-day thinking is Kohlberg's six stages of moral development. At the highest stage, decisions are based on what's universally, cosmically, wisest. 

 My PsychologyToday.com article today encourages you to do the same.

Milking Every Heartbeat

Perhaps today’s #1 mantra is “work-life balance.” I think that’s misguided. I believe life is better-led when you spend as many heartbeats as possible, perhaps 60 or 70 hours a week, using your best abilities to make the biggest difference to society or at least to your sphere of influence. That’s what I call, milking your heartbeats.

My PsychologyToday.com article today makes the case for the wisdom of that and practically how to make it happen.

My 34 Best Ideas on Career, Relationships, and the Life Well-Led

I'm entering my 30th year hosting Work with Marty Nemko on an NPR station in San Francisco and for my membership drive show this coming week, I will offer the pieces of advice that my listeners, readers, and career and personal coaching clients have found of greatest value. 

I thought you might find them of value, so I give you an advance look as my PsychologyToday.com article today.

I am honored that many of them were included on the Inspirational Quotations website. That site has pages for the likes of Einstein, Lincoln, and Ben Franklin..and me?!

To Be Awakened

Ah to be awakened. perhaps by the sunrise, a lover’s touch, or often in my case, my doggie licking my face saying, “I want to go out.”


Of course, those are mere literal awakenings. More interesting are awakened ideas.

As my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer some of my clients', colleagues', friends', and my recent awakenings, changed views.  

I've chosen to include a wide range to make it more likely that one or more will resonate with you or trigger an awakening of your own.

Stories of Seclusion: An Around-the-World Search for Meaning

My PsychologyToday.com series, Stories of Seclusion, tells composite stories of people who have spent much time alone.

Today's installment tells of a woman who failed to make partner at her law firm, which triggered a search for meaning with an around-the-world airline ticket.

Rate Your Life

My article yesterday on PsychologyToday.com: Rate Your Life. 

Update: Today, April 26, 2014, this is the #1 most read article of the thousands on PsychologyToday.com

Days of Our Work Lives: An unvarnished look at work today: Part I: David's Saga. Episode 14: The Marriage

Days of Our Work Lives

Part I: David's Saga

Episode 14

The Marriage

In the previous episode, David and Susan settled into life in Sage River, doing their jobs remotely. Less stressed, they were able to work on their parenting skills.

Next, they turned to their marriage. Sitting by the fire, Susan began. "You know, we've become more like roommates than anything else."

"I just care more about work than you do. We only have a certain number of heartbeats. I believe life is best-led when we spend as many of them as possible contributing, being productive."

"That's just too Calvinist for me. I need to leave room for pleasure. If I work nonstop like you, I'll burn out."

"I did have two heart attacks, you'll recall."

"Well, shouldn't that have been a wake-up call?"

"It was, for a couple weeks, but then you somehow forget. Or you think, "Better a short but very productive life than a long and happy but less contributory one. I mean, I could be happy spending all day hiking with the dog, watching comedies, eating, having sex..."

"That's one thing we don't have."

"I don't know if it's just that my sex drive is lower than yours or that I'd simply rather be working."

"That scares me, David."

"Whatever the reason, that's who I am. You know it, I know it. We've tried everything: positions, fantasies, how-to books, toys, porn, sex therapist: 'Communicate your needs better, make date nights, light candles.' Same advice you get in Redbook but none of it works for us. Remember when we walked out of the therapist's office, you said, "For our 150 bucks, we'd probably get more benefit from retail therapy?"

"So what do we do?"

"What we are doing: accepting each other as-is. I've read a ton that says that mismatched sex drive is the most difficult sex problem to cure. We've worked hard at it for a decade and all it has done is made our relationship worse. I think we're wisest to follow The Serenity Prayer: accept what you can't change."

"That is a tough one to accept, David."

"Is there really only one definition of marriage? One definition of love?... Susan, do you love me?"

"I'm not sure what love is anymore."

"You know I love you and what that means for me is that I'm always glad to see you, be around you, do the things we enjoy doing together. And we have the memories of our years together. It gives our relationship substance. Isn't that enough?"

After a long silence, Susan changed the topic to common ground. "So, Mr. Only-So-Many Heartbeats, now that we're settled in Sage Valley, shouldn't we be doing some volunteer work?"

"Good point but what would make the biggest difference?"

HERE is the next episode.

Four Approaches to the Life Well-Led

Here's an advance look at my next column for the Mensa publication, The Intelligencer.

Four Approaches to the Life Well-Led 

Countless authors have opined on how to live the life well-led but their approaches seem to distill to just four: pursue happiness, serve God, serve society/the universe, and pursue balance. Here are pros and cons of each:

Pursue happiness. Obviously, making choices based on what makes you happy leads to an enjoyable life. And you can define happiness more contributorily than just eating, having sex and watching comedies. Your definition of happiness might, for example, include the contentment that comes from being productive, whether as accounts payable clerk, cancer researcher, a friend, or school volunteer providing (badly needed) enrichment for Mensa-level kids.

A limitation of the pursue-happiness approach to life is that you’re less likely to do worthy but unpleasant tasks, for example, diving into icy waters to save a drowning person or be a Mother Teresa who, to save lives, worked amid Calcutta’s sewage stench, her ankles ever bitten by scorpions. Of course, there are more common examples. I know a top hand surgeon who, because he’s been doing that for decades, would find it more fun to play guitar gigs on evenings and weekends but recognizes  he’ll make a bigger difference spending that time seeing patients than playing Grateful Dead songs.

Serve God. For many people, religion is the prime driver of people’s lives. And it’s easy to understand why:

• Many people need rules or structure for their lives. Religion provides them.
• Many people need fear and reward to motivate them to follow rules. Religion provides them, for example, heaven and hell.
• Many people need support in life’s tough times: The belief in a loving God provides that.
• Following a deity’s rules magnifies the import of one’s actions.. It’s one thing to be kind for its own sake; it’s a bigger thing if you believe it’s part of a benevolent God’s plan.

A downside of religion is that it’s too black-and-white: There’s only one way. For example, the Bible says, “Thou shalt not steal,’ no exceptions--In many denominations, a poor person who steals a drug from a corporation to save a spouse’s life is deemed destined to burn in hell for eternity. Sure, individuals can perceive what they want in religion: Some claim the Bible condemns homosexuality; others insist the Bible endorses it. Some say the Koran encourages peaceful behavior, others that it demands jihad against the infidels. But net, a God-centric approach to life suffers from a narrow definition of acceptable behavior.

Another weakness of the serve-God approach is that it urges passivity. For example, the New Testament urges surrender to God, to trust God above reason: “Be not wise in your own eyes. God shall supply all your need.” (Philippians 4:19;) “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:1: )“If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20)

Serve society/the universe. This is the utilitarian approach: Ongoing, you decide which activity will most likely make the biggest difference. In the extremis, you could rate each of your life’s hours on how contributory it was: from -100 (making progress toward developing a mutated smallpox virus so communicable, deadly, and incurable that it would cause Armageddon) to +100: (working toward being a Messiah that would inspire everyone in the world to use their greatest powers to abet humankind as much possible.)

The serve-society approach has value even if your sphere of influence is small. For example, a ditch digger can decide whether, during a break, to have a cigarette or to teach a novice how to dig a ditch more easily. In turn, that novice will not only dig more efficiently but be equipped to teach others. The ditch digger has also, without preaching, shown the novice the value of giving, which makes that novice more likely to give to others. And those others, in turn, are more likely to give to others in this generation and in generations to come. So even a ditch digger’s impact can be significant enough to be worth the effort.

An even loftier variation on the serve-society approach is to serve a universal/cosmic good. For example, some people believe efforts to equate resources among people is a cosmic justice. Others believe that furthering meritocracy is more just.

But whether serving society or the universe, you can enhance your utility by focusing on what few others can or will do. For example, I champion the intellectually gifted at a time when government and non-profits focus on redistributing to “the least among us.” That way, I feel I make a bigger difference than if I focused on popular causes I believe in such as abortion rights, where my efforts would add a mere grain of sand onto a beach.

A downside of the serve-society/the universe approach to life is that it leads to a less pleasurable existence. That approach gives no brownie points to fun. Sure, adherents to the serve-society model may sometimes deviate from it and watch that silly sitcom but when life is done, devoted serve-society people die having experiencing less pleasure than do others.

And for some people, focusing so much on doing good for others could lead to burnout and, ironically, to doing less good than if they were moderate. However, based on the people I’ve known, you’re unlikely to burn out even from a lifetime of long workweeks as long as you’re working on something of value, are good at it, and have a measure of control over your work tasks. I’ll be 64 in June, been working 60+ hours a week for my entire life, and feel as energized as ever.

Another downside of the utilitarian approach is that an individual can do only so much. With seven billion people on the planet, your likelihood of making a big difference is small. Nevertheless, it strikes me that a life aimed at even minor contribution is better than rationalizing that you should pursue a pleasure-centric life because your potential for impact, in the largest scheme of things, is modest.

Strive for balance.  Many people believe their best shot at the ideal life is to work moderately and play moderately, dividing your time among serving yourself, God, and society. Or as many of our parents say, “Moderation in all things.”

The downside of that is that it assumes all those goals are of equal value. Can one say that a week on the beach is as valuable as a week mentoring Mensa kids?

Now it’s your turn.  In light of the above (and anything else,) do you want to write a word, sentence, and/or paragraph summarizing how you plan to live the life well-led?

In Praise of Work: Work-Life Balance is Overrated

Psychology Today features a weekly column, "Who's Going to be the Next Einstein."

I was flattered that the author of the column, a Duke University research scientist asked me about how to live the life well-led. HERE is the link.

Should You Be Living With More Integrity?

Is this too sanctimonious?

 

How to Do Life: what they didn't teach you in school

I've just written THIS article for Mensa's national magazine, the Mensa Bulletin. It contains some of the best ideas from my recently completed book manuscript, How to Do Life: what they didn't teach you in school.

It offers not-obvious but helpful ideas on career, recreation, money, education, coupling, parenting, spirituality, plus a few all-purpose tips for living the life well-led.

Live by "The Meter": a tool for living the meaningful life, the life well-led

A couple of days ago, I posted a stream-of-consciousness talk on what you should know about higher education that the universities won't tell you.

A viewer of that video, Justin Wehr, posted a comment asking if I might do and post more unscripted talks, and he suggested some topics, one of which was The Meaning of Life. So, here it is:

Toward the Life Well-Led: The Meter

Many people believe that The Goal is happiness.

That trivializes life's meaning. You could fill your life with activities that make you happy: sex, favorite foods, movies, a Lexus, a beautiful house, hell, I'll even throw in a front-row seat at a Lady Gaga concert. Yet you would die leaving the world no better for your presence. And the extent to which you have left the world better is, in my view, the only valid criterion for assessing whether you've lived a worthwhile life.

It helps us live that life well-led if we use The Meter: -10 (selling crack to kids) to +10 (working to cure cancer) every time we're deciding what to do next. We simply need ask ourselves, "What could I do that would score high on The Meter?"

On my radio show Sunday, I discussed that approach to the life well-led with a leading public intellectual, Richard Posner. He raised objections:

• It's too joyless. I stipulated to that but argued, as above, that making the world better is more important than an individual's pleasure.
• Most people don't want to deprioritize happiness, even if, in the abstract, they believe that happiness should be subordinated to contribution. My response: the perfect is the enemy of the good. As with most philosophies and religious principles, they are ideals to aspire to. Because we are human, we will never achieve perfection but better for even a few additional people to strive toward an admirable benchmark than for them to live the life unexamined or in the service of less worthy goals.
• Most people can't make enough of a difference to make it worth sacrificing pleasure. I disagreed. Take, for example, an accounts-payable clerk deciding on Saturday whether to watch a football game or to pay the bills he couldn't finish paying on Friday. If he chooses to pay those bills, he ensures the recipients have their money to spend when they're supposed to have it. If instead, the clerk elects to watch the football game, the recipient suffers unfairly. So even in this example of a relatively impotent person, his selecting the activity that would score higher on The Meter makes a significant difference. Multiply that by the clerk's countless such decisions and by all the people who might choose to use The Meter, and the total benefit is large.
  
• The lack of recreation would hurt their health thereby, net, resulting in their doing less good for the world. In fact, working at what one does well is usually less stressful than are many recreational activities. For example, many sports game watchers' and video game players' blood pressure likely rise more than when they're doing pro-social work. Even a lauded activity such as taking care of one's child is often more stressful and less beneficial than more pro-social work. Fighting with children to clean their room or do their homework is more stressful and less likely to make less of a difference to the world (the research is getting ever clearer that parenting has far smaller impact than commonly believed) than to spend more time, for example, ensuring even that bills are paid, let alone if it's a cardiologist seeing patients on Saturday, a policymaker taking extra hours to optimize consumer-protection legislation, or a cancer researcher deciding to try another research avenue rather than to play Monopoly with his kids.

Let's say you accept my definition of the life well-led: spending as much of life as possible making the biggest difference possible. If so, key to accomplishing that is simply to keep The Meter top-of-mind: Every time you're deciding how to spend the next chunk of time, ask yourself, "What would that score on The Meter?"

Dear readers, I welcome your comments.

DON'T Do What You Love

Many people insist on careers of "doing what you love," "finding your passion," "loving your work."  

Bob Buford, author of Half Time: Moving from Success to Significance (600,000 copies sold) says they're dead wrong. 

He urges us to recognize that:

It is your duty to do what you're best at, not what you'd love to do.

I can't think of wiser counsel.

What I Have to Say to New Graduates (and anyone else who'll listen)

Yesterday, I gave the commencement address at Columbia College (MO.) This is what I said.

Thank you President Brouder, thank you Dr. Smith. When I hear a flowery introduction like that, I’m reminded of this little ditty: I may pretend the introduction is a bore. But deep inside, I’m chanting "more, more, more."

It feels like only yesterday that I was sitting at my own college graduation trying to listen to some old person giving the speech. I was fading in and out and mainly thinking, “I’m hungry--I can’t wait to go out to eat afterwards.”

Now I’m that old person and I still can’t wait to go out to eat. I will try to keep it short.

Ever since Dr. Smith asked me to give this commencement address, I’ve been keeping a list of all the pieces of advice I thought might really be helpful both to you the new graduates as well as to your family and friends who join you here. These are the seven I believe are most important:

Lesson 1: Savor every moment. Right after I graduated from college, I rewarded myself with a vacation to Europe. I recall rushing through the Louvre so I could squeeze in two or three more tourist spots that day. Of course, I enjoyed the Louvre—one of the world’s greatest museums-- far less than I could have and should have.

Life goes faster than you can possibly imagine. So try to savor every moment-- this very moment, going out to lunch afterwards, looking at the cutie sitting near you.

Lesson 2. Ask for what you want. As I think back on my 3,000 career coaching clients, so many had lived such constrained lives because they were afraid to ask for what they wanted: “I’m afraid I’ll be imposing. I’ll be embarrassed. What if I’m rejected?” Rationally, they knew they could survive the rejection but couldn’t, without some coaching, make themselves ask.

And asking for what you want (if it’s ethical) can so help your life. An example that my wife suggested I share with you: I’m self-employed, have a home office, and take as many deductions I legally can, maybe even a few gray areas. So, perhaps not surprisingly, I was audited twice in three years. And even though the IRS found me clean both years, the next year, I got yet another audit notice. My wife saw me starting the laborious process of organizing my receipts for the audit when she said, “I’m going to try to talk the IRS out of your audit.” She came home bursting with laughter: “I got them to cancel the audit!” As long as it’s ethical, ask; if someone says no, ask someone else, and if necessary, someone else.

Lesson 3. Stop procrastinating--it’s a career killer. When I give talks to unemployed people, I ask the audience, “If you consider yourself a procrastinator, raise your hand." Most do. For curiosity sake, when I gave a talk to a group of highly successful people, I asked the same question and only a small percentage raised their hand.

In college, you may often have been able to get away with procrastination: You waited to start your term paper until the last minute and, lo and behold, you got a good grade anyway. Or you didn’t do the term paper at all and the professor gave you an extension. But in the real world, procrastination usually devastates your career. You must cure yourself of that bad habit.

Decide that you care enough about yourself to force yourself to get started early on every task--well maybe not cleaning out your basement.

Lesson 4: Spend smart and save smart. College may have taught you many valuable things, but perhaps not how to manage money wisely. Such a topic may seem too plebeian for a commencement address, but spending and investing wisely, especially in our slow economy, can transform your life: You’ll have more freedom to choose your career--If you’re a big spender, you may be tempted into a career you like mainly for the money--bond trader, insurance salesman, marketing person, corporate lawyer--rather than something you’d find more intrinsically rewarding: perhaps teacher or architect or writer. By spending and saving wisely, you are also more likely to avoid the terror of not being able to pay your credit card bills (or student loans!,) having your home foreclosed, and going bankrupt. Here’s the world’s shortest course in managing money.

On the spending side: here’s how to spend cautiously without being unhappy for a lack of material possessions:

Housing: Housing is the largest investment you’ll probably ever make. And an axiom of investing is: Never catch a falling knife. Well, housing prices are a falling knife. So even if you can afford to buy a home, this may be the time to keep renting. As they taught you in physics, objects, even prices. tend to stay in motion in the same direction. Right now, they’re going down. Wait for a change of direction: wait for prices to go UP 10%. That increases your chances of getting a house less expensively. And when you do buy, buy in a good but not prestigious neighborhood--you pay a huge premium for prestige, tens maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars, without sufficient recompense. Too, buy a house that has a good layout but in which the veneer needs help: a coat of paint, redecorating, and yard work. You’ll likely save many thousands more than it'll cost to fix it up.

Car. I’ll be very specific here, again more specific than may seem appropriate in a commencement address, but it can save you so much money that you’ll be freer to live the life well-led implied in your liberal arts education. Make your rule: “Buy a three-year-old Toyota and keep it until it’s unreliable.” Why three years old? Because cars lose much of their market value in the first three years yet have most of their life left in them. Why Toyota? At the risk of sounding like a Toyota salesman, Consumer Reports for decades has told us that not only are Toyotas superreliable when you get them, they stay that way for a long time, and with minimal maintenance. All my family’s Toyotas have lasted 175,000+ miles. I kept my previous one for 273,000 and the only reason I sold it is because my wife insisted, “Would you please get a new car already?” If you buy three-year-old Toyotas and keep them until they’re unreliable, you will save hundreds of thousands of dollars over your lifetime without diminishing your quality of life.

Spending in general. Study after study shows that you can’t spend your way into happiness. You buy that pair of shoes and you feel happy for a little while but like a heroin shot, it soon wears off, and to regain your shopper’s high, you usually have to buy something more expensive. And your spending keeps accelerating to maintain your shopper’s high, just like a drug addict’s habit. So many Americans have shopped their way into bankruptcy: If you’re a spender and suddenly you or your cash-cow spouse loses their job, you can’t make that credit card or mortgage payment.

Shopaholics and people who try to keep up with the Joneses are far less likely to be content with their lives than are people who seek pleasure from relationships, volunteer work, and from self-expression, for example, performing, writing, or involvement in politics. Alas, I haven’t been able to convince my wife.

On the saving side: This remarkably simple approach beats most investors’ results including the professionals’--and certainly ensures you don’t get scammed by the likes of Bernard Madoff, who ripped off his supposedly sophisticated clients to the tune of $50 billion.

Every time you have $1,000 extra in your checking account, do one of two things: If you’re risk-averse, visit bankrate.com to find the highest yielding bank CD in the U.S. You’ll get a guaranteed 4% return in an era of 1% inflation--that’s a great deal. Or if you'd rather assume some risk in hopes of greater rewards, without trying to time the market, invest the $1,000 in a solid, low-cost mutual fund. My favorite is Vanguard Index 500, which at very low cost enables you to invest in America’s 500 largest companies, which attract most of the nation’s best and brightest people, and most of which do business all over the world, including China and India, which are likely to grow more than the U.S. during your lifetime. I like the idea of investing my money in the nation’s best and brightest and betting on China’s and India’s growth.

And that’s the world’s shortest course in money management.

Lesson 5. Be kind, even if it doesn’t pay. That doesn’t require sainthood or even a lot of time. It just means, moment-to-moment, doing the right thing without expecting anything in return. In fact, being nice can even bite you. For example, if you're always kind to your boss, he might reasonably assume, “Well, he’s satisfied so I don’t need to give him a raise.” Be kind anyway because every night, when you put your head down on the pillow, you’ll feel good about who you are. Also, being kind ensures that your life will have yielded a net plus to the world. Not everyone can say that.

Lesson 6. Beware of The Parasite Syndrome. Many people expend enormous effort avoiding having to earn a paycheck. They try to mooch off their parents or romantic partner. They’re forever seeking--pardon the expression—a bailout. Being a parasite ultimately  makes a person unhappy and powerless. Doing ethical work that pays the bills is much more likely to make you feel good about yourself and the life you’re leading than a lifeful of recreation, therapy, and affirmations.

Much of my feeling about the power of work comes from my career coaching clients, my friends, and originally, from my dad. He was a Holocaust survivor and rather than try to heal himself by reliving the Holocaust again and again, work healed him. When he was dumped from a cargo boat in the Bronx, NY, without a penny to his name, with no family, no education, and not a word of English, he did not take welfare and he felt no job was beneath him. He took a minimum-wage job sewing shirts in a factory in Harlem. And after a long day of work, he didn’t say, “I’m tired, I want to hang out.” He went to night school to learn English and because he didn’t want my mom, my sister and I to live forever in the Bronx tenement we were renting with the elevated train roaring 24/7, he saved up from his meager salary so he could afford the first and last month’s rent on a store--105 Moore St. in the worst area of Brooklyn--the only thing he could afford, but which offered hope that he might eventually earn more than the minimum wage. He did end up earning a middle-class living there, which enabled him to move our family from the Bronx to the bottom half of the duplex in the middle-class neighborhood in Queens where I spent the rest of my childhood. Hard work healed my dad and did good for his customers, my mom, my sister, and me.

Don’t be a parasite and, in looking for a romantic partner, beware of anyone you sense might always find a way to avoid contributing significantly to the family income. Unfortunately, given America’s likely descent from its position of worldwide economic dominance, it will likely get ever tougher to make ends meet on one income.

Lesson 7: Don’t look back. My father’s store was so small that he needed to display most of the merchandise out on the street on folding tables. He needed someone to watch that people didn’t steal the merchandise. So, as a young teenager, I would do it on some Saturdays. (I was no more intimidating as a security guard then than I am now.) One day, when business was slow, I asked my dad, “How come you rarely talk about the Holocaust?” I’ll never forget his answer. He said, “The Nazis took five years from my life. I won’t give them one minute more. Martin, don’t look back; look forward.”

We’ve all had bad things happen to us: Our parents abused us; our romantic partner left us; we made bad choices; we may have been victim of racism, sexism, classism, lookism, or homophobia. But the vast majority of my successful clients and the other successful people I know do not wallow; they rarely look back; they do look forward. They ask themselves, “What’s the next positive little step I can take.” I can offer you no better advice.

So, to summarize, may you all look forward, may you all not procrastinate (too much,) may you savor every moment because life goes faster than you can possibly realize, may you ask for what you want (as long as it’s ethical,) may you be kind (not a doormat but kind,) may you spend smart and save smart, and may you work hard. But today, have a lot of fun. You’ve earned it.

An Unexpected Pleasure and Life Lesson

As the economy slows, we will need to find non-spending routes to pleasure.

Today, I found a most unusual one. I was walking my dog, Einstein, around Lake Temescal and decided that I was going to pick up all the dog poop that was lying along the trail.

My first motive for doing so was altruistic: It would keep people from stepping in it. But after filling a few poop bags, I found myself deriving pleasure from doing it:

• It was a concrete accomplishment. It took just a few moments per pile yet each one made a difference.
• It was a treasure hunt: It was fun searching for the next pile.
  
• I derived the pleasure of knowing that I was walking the talk: I've long said that all work is worthy work, even the lowliest. It doesn't get much lower than dung remover.
• I felt a pleasant sense of humility from doing such lowly work.
  

I do plan, from now on, to pick up any poop I see when walking my dog.

Perhaps if dung removal were my full-time job, I wouldn't wax so rhapsodic about it, but my honest feeling is that even if it were, as long as it paid a living wage, I wouldn't mind it. It certainly would be a lower-stress life.

In any event, I left the lake in a bit better shape than when I arrived. Hmm: Leave a place better than when you entered it. Not a bad principle for the life well-led.