There’s no need to get up at the crack of dawn, now that you’re retired, translated…
In this current reality, people are pursuing the tangible assets of jewelry, cars, mansions, and, exchange that into dollar amounts, then, it would impress others. In our recent family gathering, my husband heard that a child bought a house to live in, and, the housing prices had gone up in no more than five years, he’d started sighing, “It seems, that buying the houses is the quickest way to accumulate wealth after all.”, and he’d looked over at me, “But you just don’t like to buy the houses”.
I’d started to speak, but stopped myself, after all, we all have our separate systems of values, it’s not a one-size-fit-all, you couldn’t MAKE someone else see your point of view as valid. It’s just that I’d started wondering, if the key goal in life is buying a house, then, wouldn’t I be kidnapped by my house loans and become a “slave” too?
A few days later, I’d thumbed across the book by a Japanese writer, Naoki Shiomi, “Living like a Farmer”, where he’d pushed forth the lifestyle of “not getting pressed by time or money constantly”, that, is exactly the kind of life after retirement I would want to have.
Time and money, are also both, numeric. The itinerary, the wage slips, the bills………everything big or small in our lives, we can exchange them into barcodes, and scan it, and we’d come face to face with all the trials in life we had weathered through.
Before I retired, I’d always felt chased down by the numbers, too tired, too stressed out. After I’d retired, living in the country, I am no longer pressed by schedules, and naturally, I’m no longer pressed by time; I feel so light because I don’t owe any debts, and so, money is no longer “pressing behind my back”. What’s more interesting is that in order to prevent dementia, I’d started studying up on how to buy up the mutual funds online. Put my heart and soul into studying the trends in the stock markets, the funds, as well as the exchange rates, slowly, I’d gotten something, it seems as if I’d started raising this “electronic chicken” inside of my house—and it’s a hen that lays the golden egg too, and, as I’d gotten the money from my investments back, it’s like my hen laid a golden egg for me, it’s truly, interesting.
I’d chosen to have more freedom in the pursuit of more fortune or more freedom. If my husband can learn to enjoy this lifestyle of “not being pressured by time or money”, then, he probably wouldn’t feel pale by comparison to others on the matter of money then?
And so, this woman has the right attitude, so long as she has enough to live off of, then that’s enough, unlike her husband, who’s trapped by the pursuit of fortune, and, the retirement years should be easier, a time when you have everything you need, so you can get the things you want, and start enjoying your lives, NOT get chased down by money!
Life, the Obstacle Course 