Retiring at 47How much is too much? |
HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH? - HOW LITTLE IS ENOUGH? It is possible to own too much. A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure. - Bertrand Russell It is the preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly. - Lee Segal Any one who has ever owned a small water craft, be it a dinghy or a forty foot sea-going sailboat soon felled prey to the well known disease called "foot-itis". Loosely defined, this common disease causes one to always want to go one foot longer. The craft he had bought but one year ago represented "in the flesh" what he had dreamed about for years. And yet, after having anchored a f ew times amist dozens of other boats, he soon rationalized his thinking to the values of trading his not-so-beloved-anymore craft for one "just a little bit longer". Glancing through the brokerage section of any yachting magazine will soon prove my point. Every issue of these magazines contain dozens of advertizements of yachts in the thirty to sixty foot range whose only sin was that they were "too small." Their owner wanted to "trade up" to a bigger, larger boat! Now, you would think that if you ever owned one of these floating palaces you would be so happy that you would never even think of ridding yourself of this beauty for a slightly larger boat. Don't you beleive it! It is a trait of human nature to always aspire for bigger, better things. It often has been said that the best part of owning the unattainable is dreaming about it. Look back and try to remember the time you finally managed to buy that brand new car you always had wanted to buy. Or, the time you acquired that fantastic travel trailer. Acquiring these possessions when you did filled a perceived need. But, once you had acquired them, gone was the dreaming about th em. You started dreaming about other 'indispensable' items such as that satellite TV system (similar to the one that your neigbour had just bought) or taki ng that long postponed trip to Europe or, whatever! Gunkholing from cove to cove around the Gulf Islands afforded me several opportunities to discover how happy one could be to do so in a rather sma llish sailboat. It also gave me untold opportunities to discover how 'unhappy' others could be, doing so in a forty foot floating palace. I particularly remember a certain night anchored in a beautiful cove called Pirate Cove. After a full day of sailing I had dropped anchor next to a young vacationing couple in a twenty-foot sailboat. After supper, and just as the sun was quietly giving us the slip over the tree-lined western shore, I had been invited aboard for coffee, a not uncommon occurrence in these friendly waters. Never had I met such a happy couple. We spent hours talking about sailing in these gorgeous waters, reminiscing about the places we had been, the people we had met. Although they had mentioned the fact that they would have liked to sail a bigger boat, (who wouldn't?) they had left me with the distinc timpression that they were quite happy with their present craft. Rather than complaining about the lack of certain facilities on their boat they concentrated on 'having fun', on taking full advantage of what they now had. For example, their dinghy was an old, war surplus type two-man rubber dinghy which left one with the feeling that it had once taken part in the landing at Normandie! But it had provided them with untold hours of pleasure while helping them to explore myriads of coves and landings all along the coast. The following day, I was invited aboard a beautiful forty-five foot sailing sloop. Needless to say, I never turn down such invitations as they giv e me an opportunity to observe what it is like to 'rough it' in style. Now, believe you me, this tub had it all! From its Boston Whaler and high-powered outboard to satellite navigation system and radar, it exuded the good life. But the time spent on board was not as pleasant as it had been the previous night , and for good reason. After the mandatory tour of the floating estate, the skipper let loose with a long list of things which had gone wrong during their cruise. Imagine! The food freezer had gone on the blimp but two days after departing their home port which had necessitated a forced layover at a large marina along the way. Then the skipper complained that he had been unable to use his satellite navigation system (just as if anyone needed such a state of the art system to navigate the Gulf Islands) and, to make matters worse, that his radar had been next to useless. This may be hard to believe but I felt real pity for the man. There was the skipper of a yacht which would have been the envy of any reasonable ma n afloat but also, there was a mighty misearable skipper. To my view of thinking, he had let material things take over. So busy was he fixing things which had gone wrong and trying to operate redundant systems which were 'over his head' that he was totally unable to even enjoy the scenery! In one word, he had two watches! To better illustrate the point, I would like to recount a personal experience. While in the planning stages of my own retirement, my wife and I had envisioned establishing some roots on the West Coast, spending the summer sailing the Gulf Islands and, with the coming of winter, of going south with our motorhome and basking ourselves in the sun until the arrival of the following spring. But it was not to be and for a very simple reason. Although our first two winters spent on the coast turned out to be the coldest in years, according to the long established local residents, they had seemed mild to us who had known but thirthy below zero degree winters in the past. Even during the summer, the motorhome stood idle in the driveway. No matter how hard one tries, only one activity can be in progress at one time. You either sail the Gulf Islands or you travel through the Rockies, another activity we had planned for our motorhome. But the sailing turned out to be so pleasant that any idea of motorhoming around was relegated to the back burner.