Walden Part 2: Work or that thing that you do with most of your time...

I have been asking myself questions about work my entire life.  That has been a huge motivator for this blog as well!  I think that there are many, many ways to look at work, but they all fall into a few categories, of which Thoreau digs into right off the bat in Walden.

First of all, Thoreau paints a pretty stark counter-culture picture of himself here.  Picture the 1800s, industry is just starting to really make some progress, people are working hard, building up and developing the world, which is growing steadily larger by the day!  Only 10 years after Thoreau's death is when the play "Around the World in 80 Days" is set, lauding the modern railway and steamship's efficiency to grant one ability to circumnavigate the globe in an astonishing 80 days!

People were working and people were proud to be working!  Amazing things were happening!  Things that were only dreams a few years before!  So, why is this guy holing himself up in a cabin in the woods and badmouthing people that work?  Well, let me paraphrase a little and then move forward.

STUFF.  We all have it, and no matter what we get, we usually want more.  I am guilty of this all of the time.  There is that bike... oh that sweet, sweet bike, or that new tent, or fill in the blank.  This, to Thoreau is the work of the Devil!  He states that we work so hard for things that we don't need so we forfeit the things that we do need, which is time to relax and be free and healthy.  But in order to be free we enslave ourselves to a wage or an identity made up by our employment and thus are handicapped in being who we want to be!  "You make yourselves sick that you might lay something against a sick day..." (Page 1)

This makes a ton of sense to me.  I have always worked doing something that I loved.  I was able to find a solid and respectable identity in my work and was just fine with that.  My employment now (at the hotel), is solid, respectable work that pays well.  I have a good amount of influence in the company and I can make most of the calls that I need to make.  I manage a relatively large staff, oversee a few million dollars worth of real estate, and have the flexibility to set my own schedule.  All of this sounds really great, but Thoreau would scoff and say that I am stuck!  I am mired!  My time is not my own!

What should I do then Henry?

He said that he tried being a teacher, but he was really bad at it because he saw it as a job, not a calling and he just didn't care that much about his students... Whoohoo!  I think he was right to stop doing that one!  My experience with teaching was about as different as possible.  If I would be fed and sheltered, I would have kept teaching.  Someday I hope to be filling that niche again... He tried managing and business, but found that although he earned more money, he was always on call and that was not up to his expectation.  He finally decided that he would be an hourly laborer.  The work isn't particularly hard, it is honest work, and at the end of the day you go home and leave work at work!  I have often wondered what it would be like to be done with work at a specific time and to not have to think about it "after hours."  I am not sure that will ever happen with me though... Anyway, Thoreau calculated that with his lifestyle he would only have to work 40-50 days a YEAR as a laborer to support himself.  Think about what you could do with all of that extra time!

Honestly, what my mind immediately jumps to is something like, "I could get so much WORK done!"  But what kind of work?  Work for pay?  Work for pleasure?  Or work for something else that you aren't quite sure of?  Work for discovery, either personal or public?

I like to think that Thoreau didn't push off work altogether, but just chose to do something that was more natural to him rather than something that was forced.  For example, Rose is a writer.  It is easy for her to write.  It comes naturally.  When she is at the front desk of the hotel she does a good job too, but often she gets really worn down because it isn't natural for her to be on like that all of the time.  I like to be moving, I like to be interacting.  Teaching and coaching were good for me because I was always doing something.  I would like to think that I could start up a business or three and stay busy and happy, not being mired in the "work of the Devil" though I continue to work.  Only time will tell about that last one...

So, what is YOUR natural work?  At St. Olaf the Class of 2005 started a project that assists students in discerning their vocation, which is a complicated word that means who you are, what you do, how you see yourself, how you see the world, how your identity is and isn't associated with what you do... and much more.  That is where I think that Thoreau is heading with his view of work.  You have to do SOMETHING with yourself or you aren't really a self in the first place!  He chose to intellectually brow beat society while working as an hourly laborer 40 days out of the year... Well, that is the cynical view of it.

Maybe I should do something like that... (Not be cynical, but be more like Thoreau...)

But one forgets that Thoreau was a wealthy person and had some serious cushion for his lifestyle.  His father owned a very successful factory that produced, of all things, pencils!  So, as literacy improved, his father's business did too!  The fact that Thoreau is writing against the machine of possession and consumerism is relatively ironic then, but you know how things can get blown out of proportion or exaggerated a little... it IS election season after all...

The question still remains as to whether Thoreau would have been able to come up with these ideas if he had begun his life as a pauper or a laborer.  Would be have the cushion to think these things or would he just be trying to keep his head above water?  Perhaps herein lies the problem.

Poor people have to keep working because they have to keep spending money.  If they didn't spend money and worked, they wouldn't be poor for very long, but the cost of services in the world doesn't seem to match the rate of payment, so people have to work more and more so that they can have more and more.

This harkens back to my previous post on wealth according to the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad.  Could Thoreau have mustered up these thoughts as a poor person or am I missing the point.  Choosing to not be attached to possessions could be the first step to freedom.  What you don't need, you, well, don't need!  Stripping it down to the bare minimum for a productive life looks different for different people, but I am sure that it includes a lot less STUFF than we currently enjoy... but do we enjoy it?

He tells a story about an estate sale at a large farm where they sold everything that this man had after he died.  He thought this appalling as all of that stuff should have been piled up and burned just as the man's body had been burned.  Instead it carries its burden into a new house to fill up someone else's space only to be sold at the next auction after the next death... We can hope for a greater sense of immortality, can't we?

Anyway, next up on the agenda is philanthropy.  When you have a lot of money and you want to be nice to someone or "give back" how do you do that?

If anyone out there has any additional thoughts on work or Thoreau's idea of work, lay it down!  It would be great to hear what you think!

Walden Part 1: Introduction and Segues...

It seems to me that no self-respecting blog concerning anything "cabin" related can exist for very long without having some commentary on Henry David Thoreau's classic work, WALDEN, where Thoreau builds his own shelter and lives/reflects on life and many of its associated afflictions... even though he himself was pretty well taken care of and wasn't all THAT far out in the woods... but I digress...

I have read Walden several times.  This will be the third time in completion, but the umpteenth time I have visited its pages.  I would like to think that Thoreau would forgive me for blogging about his masterpiece of transcendentalist independence, but I am a little nervous that he would shake his bearded head at the fact that I am listening to it as an audiobook on an iPod... Whoops!  Anyway, back to the subject at hand...  To me it seems that one can gauge the complexity and value of a book or work by the diversity of perspective it can elicit in its readers.  For example, I view the Bible as a magnificent work of art, not so much because of any of the messages it propounds, but because it seems that just about every time I read it I learn something more, either about myself, the world around me, or society at large.  That, my friends, is power!  You find different things at different times because of what you bring to the table.  Likewise, the first time I read Walden I was dabbling in Hegelian philosophy and was seeking his system.  How can a man from Thoreau's background get to these conclusions?  Needless to say, I got more questions than answers out of that reading!  The next time I was enthralled in the beauty of relationships (interpersonal, not just romantic...) and ended up being a little upset with how he eschewed interpersonal connectedness.  Well, it turns out that Thoreau doesn't really throw this to the wayside, but he does think about it much differently than I did, which raises the supreme irony of the fact I was upset with him for thinking independently!  So much for interpersonal relations I guess!

This reading has already proven to be vastly different.  My situation coming into it is different and there are a few situations in my life that are influencing it greatly.  One of which I will introduce shortly:

Rose and I have three neighbors.  All of them have proven themselves to be kind and they all appreciate Ennis's toddler-ness, which is GREAT because Ennis can't be anything else right now!  One of our neighbors, Ted, has slowly been watching his wife of 40+ years approach the twilight of her life.  Rose has been more conversant with him than I have been, but the fatigue of this process is plain to see.  Tonight we watched as the ambulance brought Ted's wife up to the hospital; we walked over to talk with him a little and see if we could help out.  As usual in these situations, I was a weepy mess and Rose was the put together one.  It was touching to see someone who had previously seemed so strong and tough become so tender and fragile.  It reminded me of a passage in J.R.R. Tolkien's book of mythology The Silmarillion.        *I know that I am going to sounds SUPER nerdy here, but stick with me!

In this book Tolkien explains the complexities of the world he created for the other books and the origins of the different peoples.  He explains the elves, who are immortal, the men, who are mortal, the dwarves, the goblins, etc... One of his stories has to do with a unique love story and a deep insight into life.  It seems that at some point in the history of Middle Earth an elf woman fell in love with a mortal man.  They got married, had kids, and eventually they all had to make a decision: to be mortal or immortal.  The way that Tolkien pitches both sides is tremendous.  Immortality gives you constancy across the eons, it gives you perspective beyond a doubt, it gives you clarity of mind and temperance of spirit, it gives you perfection in craft and skill, etc, etc...  It seems like a no-brainer!  Immortal it is!

BUT

Mortality gives you passion, mortality gives you the fire of life that burns so hot that it can't help but burn out, mortality gives you intensity, individuality, creativity beyond the sensical, spontaneity, freedom from the chains of time through your own departure, it gives you pain, but it also gives you love and peace and happiness beyond measure.

One of the children chose to become immortal and became the leader of the elves.  One of the children chose to become mortal and became the greatest king of men ever recorded.  Both chose wisely, both lived honorably, only one died with cause and sacrifice.

That may seem pretty dark and deep, but this came to me again tonight as I watched Ted say goodbye to his beloved and ask himself the question whether he would see her again in this world or in the next. I thought about this tonight as I played with my beautiful family and my little boy who is so full of life.

What does this have to do with Walden you might ask?  Well, honestly, not much, but as I read it this time, I will be filtering it through this as well as many other things.  My filter will help distinguish what I get out of this project, and I believe that it is paramount to taking on a project to know what glass you are looking at it through.

What it does have to do with Walden can be broken down to a few things that are clear to me right now (I am sure that there will be several more things to add later!):  live your life with some sense of freedom and consider your life anew each day.

I will be trying to do these things as I go through the book and I hope to hear your comments on my musings!  I encourage any of you who are reading this post to take up the book (or audiobook) and experience Walden again for the first time.  There are several books I will be working my way through again and hope to be sharing my thoughts with anyone who is willing to listen!

"To be awake is to be alive." -H.D. Thoreau

Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and Me... The secrets of financial mumbo jumbo

A few years ago Rose's dad (let's call him Frank) gave Rose and me a peculiar Christmas present.  A copy of Robert Kiyosaki's books Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Cashflow Quadrant.  This was a strange gift in many regards, one being that Frank has always been pretty tight with his money (the books were purchased used) and that he had never talked about money with either Rose or I at all.  I understood the notion to mean that he was interested in helping us gain an understanding of the use of money so that we would be financially stable or free.  A very nice gesture and one that I very much appreciate...

I sat on the books (not literally) for a few years before cracking them open.  Apart from being a horrendously bad read and illustrating a 9 year old Robert K. as a highly enlightened (or soon to be) burgeoning businessman, Kiyosaki's model for how to be financially liberated is really very simple.  He breaks it down into 4 categories: Income, Expenses, Assets, and Liabilities.  

Income is pretty simple.  Money coming in.  It can come from a steady job, or from dividends from investments... The latter is what he pushes.

Expenses are equally simple.  Money going out... for any reason.  Whether it be that fancy new car or the water bill, these are all expenses, and we all have them!

Assets are things that you own that appreciate in value or produce income.  Mutual funds, a business, a rental property, these are things (other than you personally) that can produce money for you.  This is the literal "money-maker."

Liabilities are things that you own that depreciate in value.  Basically all of your consumer goods that are automatically worth 40% less when you carry them out of the store.

So, what does he say about all of this?  In a nutshell it is to have enough assets to cover your expenses.  

He uses this to define wealth as "Having enough money coming in or in savings that you can pay your monthly liabilities indefinitely."  That is an awesome idea!  Having my assets, things that I don't have to work at or for in order to earn money, produce a seemingly infinite income stream... One question:

HOW?

Well, Robert got rich in the real estate market.  He took advantage of tax loopholes to reinvest his capital gains into other properties that either were worth more money than he paid for them, produced more money than he could spend, or showed signs of potentially increasing in value...

Did I mention that he wrote this book in the late 1990s?

This is when the housing market was exploding and people were finding it easier and easier to get bigger and bigger loans and thus, houses.  

Enter cynicism here.

But to avoid the trap of cynicism and saying that Robert K. is fully of Oscar Meyer weiners (or bologna if you roll that way), I have to say that there is a ton of sense in his model.  Its beauty is in its simplicity and just like a lot of the most powerful philosophies in the world, it is the APPLICATION of the ideas that really make the difference.  

If I were a burned out employee who was working my whole life for my retirement package and read this book, I would likely cuss him out in my head and go back to work, most likely a little less satisfied than I was the previous day.

If I were a young, bright eyed, adventurous soul, I would start working on ways that I could build up unique assets and get them producing money for me asap.  Or if I were a little less motivated I would buy a bunch of lottery tickets.  The jackpot is $250+ million dollars right now!  What?  That is enough to give you a high just thinking what you could do with all of that money.  Maybe THAT is really riches, finding contentment in your mind... But that is a blog post for another day!

If I were a young adult with a family, a solid job, and a lot of good ideas, I would look into how I can use my income to produce more income and thus develop the assets he speaks of while holding down my day job... (This is where I am by the way...)

So he leaves the door open for opportunity and the creativity of the reader.  This way he is off the hook!  He even warns that you will lose money before you make money unless you are an amazing investor.  

The entire basis for these books is that Robert has two dads: his biological dad and his best friend's dad, who teaches little Robbie about money.  Robert's dad is a highly ranked government official in the education department, gets paid a lot of money, but never has enough money.  Robert's friend's dad is a business owner who basically, it seems, runs the island of Hawaii through his holdings.  Robert sides with his friend's dad most of the time as being the one who is right.  This was hard for me to swallow as I owe my entire life and situation to my dad's hard work; he worked a lot like Robert's biological dad.  Robert comes around to admitting that people who work hard for money can still fit his definition of wealth.  They just can't spend their money for 30 years or so.  The rich have the benefit of having their money work for them, basically passively creating cashflow that can be reinvested or spent on other things... like $400 golf clubs or a Mercedes (I am glad that I don't want either of these things!).

So, how does this apply to me?  I WANT to work.  I want to feel my body invested in my daily activities.  Could I create a ton of assets and meet this model?  Sure.  I know that I could.  I could start today if I wanted to.  Would I be satisfied with that?  Maybe, but probably not completely.  I want to live my life in service to something greater than myself.  A cause that it is my generation's privilege and responsibility to effectively address or simply to leave the world in better shape than when I arrived.  Can these things be harmonized?  I am certain that they can.  Do I know how to do that right now?  I have ideas, but I am not quite there yet.  I hope to use this blog to start drilling to the core of these ideas (I am not advocating mining...) and creating some effective models for this.  Wish me luck!