The Perfect Life… It’s All In How You Write It

What, really, is the perfect life? We tend to think of it as being carefree, full of play and relaxation and having whatever we want. We do not tend to think of of boredom, or overindulgence, or the fact that no life is carefree, or that those who have time to relax earned it the hard way in most cases. We just know what we think we don’t have enough of, and want more, without limits.

Much of the perfect life is all in how you tell it. To every perk, there is a price. No one gets everything they want without giving something that most people who want the benefit, do not want to give. Otherwise, more people would be obtaining what they think they want.

• I wouldn’t mind doing something amazing enough to have everyone awed over my brilliance, but I never wanted the privacy invasion that comes with fame.
• I wouldn’t mind driving a nicer car, but I never wanted the poor gas mileage of a sports car.
• I wouldn’t mind having a maid, but I never wanted to miss time with my kids by hiring a nanny.
• I would like to have a larger house, but I don’t think I’d like to have a ton of rooms to clean.
• I wouldn’t mind living a little closer to shopping, but I don’t think I want to give up the quiet slow pace of a small town.

Many times, when people describe the good stuff, they leave off the backlash in the telling. They do this because sometimes the down side is something they don’t mind, or because they know that is just the price they pay for what they got.

I think you can make almost any life sound like the good life, if you tell it right. And maybe sometimes we need to focus on that good stuff more than the down side so that we appreciate what we have. But when HEARING about it from other people, it doesn’t pay to be envious – we may not know what we are really envying.

If I tell you that I live in a small town, with a vegetable garden, fruit trees in the back yard, a shade tree in the front yard, on a quiet street in a town with no pollution, where I homeschool my kids and work alongside my husband, you are starting to think this IS the good life. Add to it that we can leave the house with the doors unlocked and not come back to a stripped house, plus we’ll own the house free and clear in less than a year, and you are thinking this is REALLY good.

But we work long hours to have this, the fruit trees struggle and bear small fruit because this is high altitude, and the garden has to be watered twice a day just to keep the hard clay soil moist enough to not cook the roots of the plants. The lawn has perpetual sagebrush trying to get a foothold, and the streets of this quiet town are unpaved, which sends clouds of dust which permeate closed windows and settle on every surface. We are sixty miles from the nearest shopping area, and from full medical care. And if you saw the house, you might think you would not WANT to own that!

We have good things here. But we have a trade off too, and we pay for each good thing with a deprivation or an inconvenience which many people would feel spoiled the dream. It happens to be a set of inconveniences that we can deal with better than we can deal with crowded streets and day jobs.

Look at your life. What is the perfect life that you are already living?