A race no one can win

A guest post by Lowell Anderson as seen in the May 5, 2006 edition of the Echo Press.

While driving past a convenience store recently, I read a sign that said, “Honk if you like peace and quiet.”

It’s an amusing sign, yet it also tells us a lot about our lives and our society.

Although we yearn for happiness, simplicity, and meaning, most of us are doing the exact opposite of what we should do to achieve those goals.

Big-city life is often referred to as the “rat race.” Yet in reality, almost all of us are running the same race, a race that no one can win.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of being a rat. I’m tired of the constant busyness and the never-ending quest for more money and things. I’m tired of the cell phones, computers and TVs that steal our lives. I’m sick of the advertisers that tell me that I’ll be ugly and unpopular if I don’t buy their products. And I’m fed up with today’s constant attack on anything traditional or moral.

I want to go back to the “good ol’ days.”

Yeah, I know, “the good ol’ days” weren’t always good. People worked very hard, often from sunrise to sunset. People suffered and often died young. They had many of the same problems we have now: wars, crime, corruption and disease. Worst of all, they had teeth pulled with no painkillers.

Yet those days were better in many ways. They had many things that we have lost, such as simplicity, a sense of purpose and a clear sense of right and wrong. And though most people struggled to survive, I believe they had a happiness that came not from pleasure, but from doing meaningful work and focusing on the process of living. Back then, if you had something to eat, clothes to wear and a roof over your head, then you were happy.

In our modern technologically advanced and wealthy society you would think almost everyone would be happy, yet many aren’t. And it’s no wonder, since we are told over and over that we deserve and should have everything we want – and that we should want whatever everyone else has. It’s no wonder that many people, who would be considered wealthy by much of the world, think of themselves as poor and underprivileged. If happiness is linked to getting more, how can we ever have enough?

I think many people yearn for a simpler life. Yet what’s perplexing is how hard we work to make our lives as complex as possible.

We clutter our lives with e-mail that needs to be monitored, computers that need to be endlessly updated, constant bad news, a never-ending list of things to do, and meaningless activities such as shopping or watching TV. And we buy endless lists of things that promise to make us happy, but which only end up needing to be stored, maintained and figured out.

Although technology can be good, it has a tendency to control us and degrade our lives if we let it. Think about cell phones, for example. Think of all the people driving with a cell phone glued to their ear, all the obnoxious conversations we don’t want to hear, phones ringing at the theater, children trying to ride their bikes while talking on a phone, and all the people who are deathly afraid to be out-of-touch for even a single second.

I would like to live in a simpler time: A time where people talked to each other directly; where they weren’t constantly afraid of accidents or disease; where parents took care of their own children and taught them right and wrong; where people were committed to each other no matter what; where we were given permission to be imperfect; where we focused more on people than on things.

That time doesn’t have to be long ago. It could be now. But first we would have to start thinking instead of just copying what everyone else is doing. We would have to get over the idea that things and money bring happiness, and that success is having a big house, new car and a big retirement account. We would have to shut off the computer, the TV, and cell phone and start living in the real world, interacting with nature and real people. And we would need to simplify our lives so that we could focus on what is really important.

If we can’t go back, maybe we could at least quit honking at the sign for awhile.