Sitting on my couch in the living room at the end of a long day, I would stare into their doorways and feel the anxiety mounting. I needed to clean them but I was too exhausted. And then one day while making a weak attempt at organizing their contents, I came across a set of index cards in a desk drawer.
Nearly 10 years prior, I had jotted down individual goals and dreams on each card. Water-stained and dusty from years of neglect, captured on these 3x5 cards were ten or so of my hopes and ambitions -- each written with brevity and clarity:
- Have credit card debt paid off by year's end
- Start playing the piano again
- Make monthly contributions to social/cultural causes
- Create the table of contents for a book
- Teach a class
- Have all my student loans paid off by age 32 1/2 (don't ask me why 1/2; my memory isn't that good)
- Travel to Africa by age 35
- Travel to Europe before my next birthday
- Listen to the sound of the ocean more
- Minimize my wardrobe to a few interchangeable pieces
- Make 6 figures by age 30
God, I felt like such a loser! All those brilliant, sparkly dreams suffocating under the weight of the mental and monetary commitments I had locked myself into during the past decade.
Around the same time I discovered the cards, a bout of bronchitis I had been fighting for a few months exploded into pneumonia. A round of high-dose steroids over a two week period barely touched it. My body did not move an inch from the couch. It was like God had kicked my feet out from under me and said, "now sit there! and don't move." It worked. The stress of work and anxiety of the obligations requiring my attention in the office faded each day. I could hear my smug inner voice, 'you did this to yourself you know -- and for what? Did you win any medals for your 12+ hour work days or find fulfillment?' No and no. While fading in and out of a drug induced stupor, I read a book, the focus of which was on personal finances. One sentence within the book captured my attention more than any other and started my course of personal change.
The book was Richard Bach's The Automatic Millionaire (as slick as the title may sound, it does contain some very sage advice re: balancing life goals w/ personal finances). Bach poses the question:
After a long day's work; after giving to your employer,
how much are you paying you?
In the context of the chapter, Bach was alluding to how much we put away in savings for each hour or day of wages we earn while at work. For me, the message resonated to my very core and was more than just about money -- much more. I was forced to ask myself how much of my time was I investing in my own personal interests vs the time I was investing in work and individuals in my life. Not a whole heck of a lot. Something had to give; I may not have heeded my inner voice months earlier telling me to slow down, but now my body was demanding it.
A decade of dust was brushed off the index cards, and slowly first steps were taken towards investing in personal growth and happiness. It would not be an easy process; relationships once meaningful would come to an end, family members would linger on the cusp of death; and tedious introspection would need to take place.
I have learned one thing with great certainty: it takes a balance of courage and patience to sort through the external factors that affect our lives in order to find one's genuine path and most importantly, to follow it.
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