A Road to Disappointment

Daily writing prompt

What does “having it all” mean to you? Is it attainable?

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Your old buddy Jack doesn’t usually post thoughts on the daily prompt. Being a minimalist he finds this one particularly irksome. If I may, I shall indulge in a short rant.

Jack is no longer a young man, and though he needs glasses to read, he can see the forest for the trees. Rather than answer the prompt, Old Jack answers the question with a question.

Why is it necessary to have it all? Why must we attain “it all”? How much is enough?

Hindsight as they say friends, is 20/20. If Jack were to swim back through the wake of time in life’s voyage, he would have spent less time trying to attain, and been more pleased to simply be.

1. Money: John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in the world always needed “Just a little bit more.” Jack was lucky to be born in a place and time where he is more fortunate than many, and needs not to build a tower to the sky. He no longer allows money to determine his worth.
2. Belongings: Our society bombards us with the idea that “things” make us happier and improve our lives. Jack thinks back on all the stuff he’s owned. Life was more complicated, not less. He realizes that needs and wants are different.
3. Happiness: Jack now believes happiness is a choice, not something that we must constantly strive to attain. He is not perfect, nor always content. Jack is comfortable in his own skin, and enjoys watching a sunrise, the warm summer days, and watching snow fall. Being with friends, or time alone, a good cup of tea. Western cultures’ need to constantly plan for the future seems somewhat foolish as he gets older. He lives more in the moment. Today is what he has, tomorrow will be a gift. After all, “at the end of the game, the King and pawn go back in the same box”

“’Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days

Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:

Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,

And one by one back in the Closet lays.”

-Edward FitzGerald’s translation of Khayyam’s “Rubaiyat”