Recently some stores have increased the costs of cigarettes due to a governmental increase of the cigarette tax. It actually starts on April 1^st but some are already passing along the new taxes to smoking consumers. How much of an increase? Try a 155% increase on for size… It effectively makes a pack of cigarettes cost $1 more and a carton $10 more. The taxes are a way to increase the revenue of the various government entities in an effort to offset the losses in tax revenue received through the gas taxes. No, gas taxes did not lower, the amount of miles being driven has, thus less gas being bought and taxed.

Back to my threat… My primary reason for even saying such a thing revolves around the various “days off” associated with smoking and the ensuing breaks to feed this harmful addiction. Let’s just say a smoker takes an extended break each morning and afternoon… we’ll just throw 15 total extra minutes a day into the equation. 15 extra minutes devoted to smoke breaks that your normal non-smoker doesn’t utilize. Bathroom breaks and all that other stuff are effectively cancelled out in this simple equation. The bottom line is the smoker takes an extra 15 minutes a day off in this example. 15 minutes per day comes out to 75 minutes per week, 5 hours per month, and 60 hours per year… all devoted to smoking… while at work.

Let’s say we all get 2 weeks of vacation (80 hours) each year. We have just almost doubled it by simply smoking each day. And, we get paid to do it. Sounds great doesn’t it? Well, it does with all things being equal. But, smoking isn’t exactly an equal thing… we all know how harmful they are and over time, can dramatically affect the standard of life. Smokers are known to become more susceptible to various respiratory illnesses among other sicknesses caused by a damaged immune system. We can actually throw in a multitude of sick days taken by your average smoker per year that immediately decreases the hours worked even more. If we just throw in say 3 extra sick days per year as a direct result of smoking ailments, we are now up to an extra 2 weeks per year off.

You may not think that sounds like much, but multiply those numbers out over a 30 year career. That comes out to 2400 hours less work as compared to a non-smoker… 300 less work days… well over a year of actual work. That’s the smoker’s vacation.

But, at what cost does the smoker actually pay for this vacation? Various studies have tried to put a number to the amount of time you sacrifice of your life per cigarette you smoke. Searching the internet for a few minutes gave me an average of about 10 minutes of lost life per smoke. So, a smoker who smokes on average of 5 cigarettes each day is costing 50 minutes of their life. Just using the 5 day smoking workweek, this comes out to a little over 4 hours of lost life per week. Multiplied over that same 30 year period, we have now lost about 200 hours of our life each year because of smoking, or 6,000 total hours for a grand total of over 250 full 24 hour days of our life.

These are small estimates in my opinion. I believe I am underestimating the amounts of cigarettes smoked and the amount of time associated with doing so. But, given this simplistic example, a smoker has traded almost a year of the end of their life for almost a year and a half of extra vacation time over their 30 year work career.

I’m not quite sure the tradeoff is worth it given that the last remaining years of a smoker usually aren’t the most fabulous and of a healthy lifestyle. The tradeoff is probably closer to a 5 or 10 to 1 ratio. Smoke and yes, you get extra vacation time, but the last 5 to 10 years of your life is going to be very poor. Is the vacation time worth sacrificing your last years of life? Quality of life is important and it will be dramatically lower for a smoker in the waning stages of existence. I’ve seen this first hand. So while I threaten to become a smoker to generate more vacation time for myself, I am rational enough to know that is not the right, or sane, choice. Purposefully sacrificing my health for such nonsense is irrational… not to mention more expensive these days. Receive the vacation time, but you are costing yourself more money and pain in the end hands down.

To me, asking people for help involves getting people truly involved with the task you are asking them to help you on. It means giving them important tasks associated with the current issue and it also means that you must still play the integral role. You are the one asking for help right? That inherently means that the helpers are there to facilitate accomplishing goals and not running the task or project.

I must admit, I’m not very good at asking for help. But when I do, I expect people that accept the challenge, to undertake important roles within the project. Given that I don’t like to ask for help, I like to do most things myself, according to my rules… and the project is completed only when I believe that all goals are satisfied over their original expectations. However, as I stated, there are times when asking for help is the only true way to complete a project or task. That’s when I have to recognize that not everyone is going to treat their work the same way I do. Their version of effort may not be equal to mine. Their version of complete or satisfaction may not equal what I believe to be a finished project.

This simple ideology can lead to a very bad thing… micro managing. In my college years, I was involved in several group projects that accounted for a major portion of our grades. I would ask for help as the project depended upon teamwork and group effort, but in the end, I would end up having to oversee every aspect of the project to achieve a satisfactory completion. This happened on more than one occasion… but my grades always came back high so the results justified the means right? But, did the success of securing a high grade do me any good in the arena of utilizing my team and asking for help? Looking back, I can say no it didn’t.

I see many people in the world living this way in both their personal and work lives. They ask for help, but they don’t truly mean it. They either want to oversee every single thing and make sure it complies with their version of excellence or they want to simply disappear from the project all together. In my case, I was always wary of the capabilities of others. I always thought I could do it better so I needed to be involved. In the end, I limited myself and the people within the group. I basically stunted all of our growth in an effort to get a better grade.

How do you ask people for help? Are you actually looking for people to provide you their expertise and effort or are you looking for a secretary or paper pusher to take over the rudimentary tasks? Are you looking for someone to unload a project on which you have deemed unworthy of your precious time? I will admit that I’ve done both… that doesn’t make it right by any means.

Next time you ask for help, make sure you allow those you have asked to help, actually HELP! Also, next time that you are asked to help, be aggressive and try and assume some responsibility within the project or task. Learning more and contributing is well worth the effort. If you have to spend the time anyway, you might as well get something out of it right?

I’ve had to spend a lot of time going against my natural instincts of doing it all and I’m still not very good at doing that. But I do try and hopefully, I will continue to get better at both asking for help, and providing it.

We can develop relationships by consciously looking out for the wants and needs of others we are involved with in our lives. If we focus some of our time and effort in satisfying these wants and needs, we can effectively earn our way into their good graces. Making deposits throughout the course of a relationship can build a nice balance over time just like earning interest on your money. Everything sounds pretty nice and good to this point. Everyone is happy in this situation right? Everyone in the relationship is getting something for their efforts.

Well, I have a completely different view about things… especially when the relationship involves your family, close friends, and your spouse. Initially, I saw this “Love Bank” as a quick fix scheme…. or a relationship “get rich scam.” While I’m sure there are people in relationships where this type of mentality can succeed, at least for the short term, it’s not the answer to building lasting and bonding relationships. Consciously deciding to fulfill the needs of others so that your “account” will grow in their eyes is a blatant form of manipulation.

It’s a simple do this for that mentality. My wife likes French fries so I think I’ll bring her a surprise this weekend… what she doesn’t know is that I am actually building my account up because I’m going to be making a withdrawal from that account by doing something she’s not too keen on me doing. The simple ideology of an account implies that withdrawals are going to be made. Why is that necessary? Are our relationships so superficial and weak that we need to put layers of fake attention on top so we can avoid the most dreaded word in relationships today? That word would be compromise.

Near the end of the discussion, I simply stated that 99.9% of the time, satisfying the needs of my wife occurs unconsciously. Sure, there are times when I plan on certain things to make my wife happy, that’s called being romantic. But, the rest of the time, satisfying her needs just happens. It happens because I live my life by putting her needs first, before mine, every time. It’s how I live… it’s who I am. She is the exact same with me, it just happens. Our relationship is built from putting others first. I want what makes her happy and she wants what makes me happy.

We talked about this on the way home (we are lucky and can talk about everything) and while our life does go through the natural ups and downs all human beings experience, our relationship has always been happy and very strong. Rare is the case where she is not first and foremost on my mind and vice versa. We simply have a relationship built to last because we live for each other. We do not live each day making an effort to deposit money into our Love Banks. Our banks are always full and they never see, or need, a withdrawal.

If conscious efforts are needed to satisfy the needs of the relationships in your life, I can guarantee you that you aren’t living your life by putting others first. Rather than look for a quick fix scheme to cover up the underlying relationship issue, maybe taking a long hard look at the relationship itself is needed. I know everyone doesn’t have a bond like I have with my wife, but I know everyone can have it. All it takes is a decision to live your life unselfishly. I can promise you, you’re life will be happier as a result.

My wife and I were having a conversation today and I had sort of an epiphany about myself. In my late teens and early 20’s, I realized that all I cared about was my own self. I wanted to be the smartest. I wanted to be the best. I wanted everyone to know and to see that. I actively searched for situations where I could grow my pride and my associated ego. I succeeded at my search and I felt pretty good about myself. My self-serving needs were being met and my pride and ego were about as massive as I can ever remember. I was insanely proud of myself.

However, sometime in my mid to late 20’s, I realized that my selfish needs were simple and short lived. I realized that life is better served by caring for other people and putting their needs ahead of mine. At this point in my life, I began to actively search for someone I could spend the rest of my life with. I was ready for commitment. I was ready to grow up. After serving myself for so many years, I now understood that to truly fill your being with an unending supply of personal nutrients for growth, you needed to focus upon those you care about in your life rather than your own existence.

I was lucky enough to find my wonderful wife around this time in my life… my selfish mentality had changed and I was ready for her to enter my life. The 9+ years since have been continually getting better.

As I look back, I know that if I had continued down the path of pursuing my individual needs of pride and ego, I would have missed my opportunity to meet my wife. I would have solely focused upon myself and missed the path in my journey that led to true happiness. We are all given a chance in our lives to make the choice between pride and ego or caring for others. Where are you at in your life? In all honesty, are you pursuing your own selfish desires or are you pursuing what will truly make a lasting difference in your life? Relationships and family are the lasting differences in our lives.

Being that we live in America, we are all taught that we can do and be anything. We are at the center of our known universe. Serving and satisfying our own needs has been taught to us as our primary goal from the beginning of human consciousness in our generation. We can make anything happen if we truly want it. I’ve even seen books tell me that if I truly believe in something that is going to happen, the good vibes in the universe will provide me my wish. You may have heard of a bestselling book touting this idea, “The Secret.” I hate to tell you, but that’s simply not true.

These days, I still have the urge for the prideful event and I always feel the twinge of my ego wanting to grow, but I do my best to keep these chains of desire out of my life. I have found that my life is much happier serving the needs of my family than serving the needs of myself. I’m sure many of you know exactly what I’m talking about and I’m sure there are those of you out there that are still in the self serving mode. In the end, we all have to live through our own trials and errors and if you can be honest with yourself, you will realize that pride and ego are actually some of the chains that will continually hold you down and feed depression and unhappiness.

Serving pride and ego are some of the worst things we succumb to doing as human beings. Break the chains and realize that serving the needs of others is where true happiness is found.

Sure, if you compare the statistical outcomes, you can term the smaller chanced outcomes as accidents, but are they truly accidents if you have prior knowledge of their potential outcome? To me, an accident is a completely random event that could not have been avoided and you just happened to wander across the path of an unavoidable accident.

Situations arise everyday in our lives in which we face decisions and the associated potential outcomes. You are late for work so you decide to speed. Not a big deal, that is unless there is a cop in the vicinity… But, what happens if one day that you are speeding along, and you happen to run off the road a bit and overcorrect and get into an accident? Was it really an accident? It’s a fairly simple example, but I’m sure you get the idea and logic behind it.

All too often, we put ourselves into situations which we could have missed experiencing the “accidents” in our lives. We must pay attention to all outcomes when faced with decisions, whether they are large or small. Sometimes, the flukes are actually quite likely to happen, we just choose to dismiss any potential bad things that may happen and focus on the things that we want to happen.

Most of the time, we make the right decisions. As we get older, we acquire more experience and wisdom and we can apply forethought to how we proceed in our lives. However, I see other people in the world around me make decisions and choose paths which I would never do. Their paths are littered with potential hazards and disastrous outcomes. They are either oblivious to these outcomes or discount the possibilities outright. But, when the bad things happen, and they often do, they appear to be completely flabbergasted when the accidental events occur in their lives.

I’m not saying that we must over analyze everything we do and if there is any chance whatsoever for bad things to happen, to not do it. I am saying that just because a bad result is a small percentage, it doesn’t mean it is by default an accident. One in a million, yes, that’s an accident. A five percent chance of a bad outcome, that’s not an accident. That’s a potentially likely event.

Start thinking more about the decisions that you make each day. Start focusing more on your actions. Realize that you are in control of many of the “accidents” in your life. You can nearly stop your own participation in creating the “accidents” in your life. Yes, there will still be bad things that happen to you and me, but that’s because this is the real world. Accidents happen, but in my opinion, the majority we have experienced, we could have avoided by simply making better decisions.

If you sit back and truly think and be honest with yourself, how many true accidents have you experienced? How many of your perceived accidents did you play a major part in creating? If I look back at my life, I think the 80/20 rule can apply nicely. 80% of the accidents in my life, I played a part in. The other 20% were probably unavoidable and there was nothing I could have done to avoid the outcomes. Going forward, I think… no, I believe… that I can drop that percentage even further. How about you? What have your experiences been as far as accidents in your life? Did you play a part in your own or were they truly accidents which were completely unavoidable?

Is the motivator in your life something physical, spiritual, or emotional? Can you quantify your particular motivator? More often than not, I would bet my money that the motivators for most are emotional and spiritual. Physical motivators are fleeting and are vastly overrated. Shooting from the hip here, I would guess that the physical factors for most are money/wealth, physical attributes/looks, and possessions. These are things people can easily touch and quantify. They are also things that are very shallow and volatile. For the most part, physical motivation does not last and only creates a continuous need for more because satisfaction can never be achieved without having more and more.

On the other hand, we have spiritual and emotional motivators. These factors can also create a constant state of dissatisfaction because many people cannot honestly express themselves and sacrifice their true needs for the needs of others or for fear of public retribution or humiliation. There are also situations where these needs can mimic that of a possession motivator. They can be a never ending hole that cannot be filled for whatever reason.

What makes me tick? At one point in my life, I can honestly tell you that physical possession meant more to me than anything. I wanted the best and more of it. I wanted the top of the line and wanted better than anyone else. I wanted it, I needed it. Many, if not all of us, probably go through this period of selfishness and greed in our lives.

Later in life, I entered an emotional motivator focus on life. Within this segment of life, I was specifically motivated by appreciation received from others. I would do anything as long as I felt that I was being appreciated and respected for my efforts. If I felt that I was being taken for granted or slighted, I would be immediately angered and become very aggravated. This emotional motivator is a very sharp two-edged sword. Very rarely is there balance or a middle of the road. I lived a hot and cold life while focused on my appreciation motivational ticker.

Now, I believe that I am entering a new stage in my motivational life. My life has become more motivated by my spiritual relationships. I still cling to the remnants of physical motivation. I don’t think any of us can truly be rid of our basic sense of want, not 100%. I am still holding on to my appreciation motivator too. I am trying to temper those times when I feel like I am underappreciated. Even with those still hanging around, my single most motivating factor in my life is becoming my spiritual relationships.

That truly makes me tick these days. As each day progresses and my previous motivators diminish in relationship to my core motivator, I feel more at peace. My spiritual relationships alters my outlook on the world we live in and provides me the necessary buffer against the damaging emotions other motivating factors bring with it.

My relationship with my wife and my Savior are my two most important motivators in my life. As I focus on these types of relationships, the other motivators become meaningless. I believe my progression through physical, emotional, and spiritual motivation is the path most of us walk through as we mature. Some may experience these motivators earlier in life or in a different order, but I feel that spiritual motivation is the pinnacle of life.

That’s what makes me tick. What makes you tick?

Yes, we are/were in an age of excess, you cannot deny it. While your particular purchasing habits may not have been of epic proportions, society as a whole focused upon possession and more of everything. After so many years of living beyond our means (I’m at fault here myself), we are all paying the price of our past mistakes. We were all blindly led to believe that the future offered everything that would satisfy our monetary needs because our equity continued to build as we bought more and more stuff. We kept expanding and living upon the faith that a dollar spent today would turn into more than a dollar in the future. However, that future was expected to be the VERY NEAR future.

In between the buildup and that seemingly promised future, we have experienced a major issue, our economy buckled under the constant pressure of excess living. No longer do we have that “guarantee” of future monetary reward for our past greed. I say greed because what other term can you logically apply to how we were living? We were ALL at fault for living greedily. Blame who you like, but we are all responsible for our own decisions in the end.

Now that we are experiencing the cyclical nature of the free markets and the dire consequences of our actions, we are left with a very important decision to make. Are we going to try and persevere through these “tough” times and continue our previous way of life or are we going to change how we live and change our purchasing habits? I for one am going to enter what I call an Age Of Minimalism. My purchasing habits will be directed by a set of strict guidelines that focus upon need and not greed.

Do I actually need what I currently own? Of course I need a house and a vehicle, but do I need a huge house and an SUV to satisfy those requirements? Outside of food, shelter, and other life necessities, what do we truly need? Do we need multiple televisions? Do we need a library of books and DVDs? Do we need new furniture and all the knick knacks that make our home cluttered? You get the idea. Sure, there are some things that we do need, but there is a very clear line between things we truly need and those which we don’t. There is also a clear line between satisfying your need and EXCESSIVELY satisfying your need.

We have been inundated with the big box stores promoting greater savings by buying larger packages of stuff. Do you need a gallon of ketchup? Do you need 36 cans of Spaghettios? Do you need 48 rolls of toilet paper? If we are buying these things, we have to have a place to put them right? So, we need more of everything… more stuff that we “need” and more space to store this “stuff.”

Our nation is facing a turning point and I believe that either by choice or by economic force, our citizens are going to each have to make the choice and choose to live in an Age Of Minimalism. Our President Elect Barack Obama rode the winds of change to the White House based upon his promises for a better economy. However, his latest speeches have been ENTIRELY focused upon the need to temper our expectations about what can be done. He says things will likely get worse before they get better. He says it will take time to fix what years (a generation) have broken. Really… and here I thought his election was a magic pill for our economy and people would somehow wake up with thousands of dollars in their bank account so they could go about their business and merrily spend their money…

The choice we face could determine the long term existence of our country. If we fail to change our lives of excess, our economy could disintegrate and we would no longer be a relevant nation in the global economy. We must change from being greedy to being focused upon our needs. If we satisfy our needs and save our money, we will return our nation to economic prosperity and our lives will in turn become more satisfying. We are worried about our economy because we chose to live excessively. We are now paying that price and that price may destroy our nation’s long term economic success if we fail to recognize our ignorance. Change from greed to need and happiness will return, along with economic stability.

One simple example of this mindset involves our past history. Try as we might to wish things were different in our pasts, we cannot ever change the results. We can learn from our past, but other than experience and memory, they are set in stone. The past is the epitome of what cannot be changed. So why are so many of us wrapped up in the past? Wrapped up in the past of who we were? Wrapped up in the past of the wrong decisions we made? Wrapped up in the past decisions our government made? The list could go on forever. Everyone has a closet full of wishes that would result in changes of past history. Entire countries look back and wish about what might have been.

Nothing good can come out of all this. Yes, we can learn from our mistakes as we should analyze what went wrong so we can take the lessons forward. But, we cannot continually harp and worry about the past as it will destroy our present. As Twain suggests, we must forget and potentially ignore what cannot be changed. Our past is the example of “what.” Do you have anything in your present which is being affected by your holding on to the past? I’m sure most of us do. Human nature is to hold on to things. Letting go is one of the toughest decisions we must all make throughout our life. It could be something small in relation to everything around us, but major to the individual. It could also be something life changing which we hold on to that completely clouds our decision making and living in the present. Some things create such an impact in our lives that we cannot seem to release its hold from our present and future life.

What happens when such things happen and rule our present? We allow our past to define our present self along with our future. Our past is the single most unchanging event we can possibly know other than death. Once that fleeting moment of time has passed before our eyes, we can no longer alter the course of what has happened. Why should we allow the past to control our daily life and future? Let go, forget, and ignore. Allow the past to become the past and a part of who we are. Learn from it, but leave it behind.

It becomes a mindset. Live for the now and the future and leave your past as the part of your life which helped build you into the person you are now. At this very moment, you can choose to release your attention to what was and begin focusing on what will be. What will or can be in the future could possibly never happen if your eyes are looking the other direction. Our lives are going in a million different directions, but backwards shouldn’t be one of them. Too many of us are treading water with who we were as the definition of who we are. We are focusing on our past decisions without paying attention to our daily decisions. We have allowed past mistakes as individuals, society, and government destroy what happiness we could experience in the future.

Everyone likes to look at the facts of the present and apply them to the past. It’s easy because we all appear to be geniuses. We make mistakes because we never have complete information available to us. We are only making the best educated “guess” at any given time. Yes, most decisions are guesses as we hope our decision leads us to the best possible outcome given the circumstances and knowledge at hand. This simple standard of decision making applies to all of us as individuals, societies, and entire countries. We do the best we can.

Sometimes things don’t work out the way we wanted. Things go bad and decidedly in the wrong direction no matter how hard we try to steer it right. Should the past overwhelm us and destroy our ability to move forward? No. We must take the opportunity to remove focus from what went wrong and focus on what we can do right. We can all take this advice to heart and apply it to our lives, our jobs, and our country. Live life moving forward, forget about the unchangeable past. The past will always be a part of us and we can learn from it, but we must never allow it to define us.

How would our country’s society be affected if our political parties weren’t always focused upon the past of everyone else but themselves? Rather than looking backwards at a past which they cannot change, they should be focusing on leading our nation forward. The past plays too big of a role in our politics and government today. If something is wrong, fix it, move forward, and forget about it. But, if we as individuals fail to let go of the past, how can we expect our country to move forward?

It all starts with you, the person reading this. Each of us can choose to allow the past to be the past and move forward. The future and now contains happiness, the past is a memory. Remove the stranglehold your past has on you and let go. Our future awaits us… all of us.

Not to demean professors of philosophy, but generally speaking, the subject matter lacks a sense of excitement. Yes, I mean it’s boring. I instituted a personal goal requiring that I finish this book. I started it and that means I have to finish it, at all costs. So, I weathered the droopy eyelids, the constant mind wanderings to what else I could be doing with my time, and the endless looks forward to see how many pages until the chapter end. I finished the book. Yes, I became enlightened as I had imagined I would when I procured this book from the bookstore. However, it was an enlightenment I did not expect. Given that Seinfeld was a comedic sitcom known for their outrageous takes on daily life, I was expecting a light hearted, funny look at life, while applying some philosophical theories. Well, I did get that… minus the funny.

I’ve never been one to read a chapter or two at the bookstore to determine if I should purchase the book or try and “rent” it from the library, but this book has opened that realm of possibility for me. The book wasn’t “all” bad (boring). Of the 14 chapters, three or four were in the range from entertaining to even bearable, the other 10, not so much so. While it’s always a fun lesson to apply scholarly teachings to subjects we enjoy, sometimes it just doesn’t work too well. Comparing Jerry Seinfeld, the character, to Socrates? Wondering what Aristotle would have thought about George? Determining if Elaine exhibited the philosophical traits of feminism? You get the idea. Not funny. Yes, it could have been, even with the above questions, but the “professional” philosophers were actually analyzing Seinfeld in a philosophical distillation of actions and thought.

Enough with the “book review,” what does Peterman have to do with any of this? J. Peterman, an interesting character from Seinfeld, is a focal point of one of the more interesting essays in the book. Pulling a quote from Seinfeld, Peterman states “Clearly, people want things that make their lives the way they wish they were.” While Peterman the character, truly believes this to be true, is it true in our lives on this side of the television screen? His statement is a great philosophical statement because it offers a point of view into our own actions and thoughts. Are we trying to live a life we wish we were or are we satisfied with the life we have?

America has long been at odds with satisfaction. Are we ever satisfied? If we were satisfied, would we be wishing for a better life? Do you know anyone who is satisfied with their station in life or is everyone always focused on the next step to supposed happiness? Satisfaction in our country has been placed on equal footing as surrender, settling, or giving up. Why should we want to stay the same if there is always something more out there? That something more could make us even MORE happy right? So, as millions of us trudge along in pursuit of the life we wish we were living, satisfaction will ultimately elude us. More often than not, our lives equate any amount of satisfaction to immediate gratification. It has no lasting impact on our lives.

I admit that I look towards the future in search of the next hurdle to surpass on my way to “satisfaction.” While focusing on this next hurdle, how are you applying yourself in your current day to day life? Are you 100% living each day or are you living for tomorrow? Are you wishing your time and life away for a sense of who you wish to be in the future? When and if that time comes, can you truly admit to yourself that you will become instantly satiated and your life you have wished for will become your “real” life? More than likely you cannot. We are trained to want more, be more successful, gain more power, accrue more wealth, etc.

Peterman’s simple statement is a magnifying glass we can utilize to analyze our own lives. We are constantly wanting (or some may say needing) things in our lives to make our lives the way we wish they were. The American environment has destroyed the ideology of contentment. Satisfaction can almost never be truly achieved. We are constantly struggling in our pursuits to acquire “things” that will theoretically make our lives better. In reality, we are all searching for our own fairy tale. The truth that the fairy tale is impossible to grasp escapes us.

I believe we can be truly satisfied. There are those among us who live a life of contentment. They are the true torch bearers of happiness. They no longer want things to make their lives the way they wish they were. Their lives are exactly how they WANT them to be. Satisfaction is a true philosophical state many of us can never achieve because we cannot let go of wishing for something we are not. I still find myself wishing but more and more, as the years pass through the hourglass, I am finding that contentment and satisfaction are what I am “wishing” for. No longer are the things I find myself wishing for, tangible objects to satisfy my fairy tale of life. I wish for a state of true satisfaction and contentment. Will you join me or will you still be wishing as the twilight enters your life?

Bill, our down and out “hero,” has a moment in the movie where he expounds to his student about how (and I’m paraphrasing here) “if you work for someone else your entire life, eventually, all you will care about in the end is the paycheck because work sucks.” I’m pretty sure every generation of our existence has come to believe that for the most part, work does suck. We are constantly told from a very young age, find something you love to do, figure out a way to make money doing that, and you will be happy. However, the real world exists and not fantasy island. As rational human beings, the great majority of us in this life are destined to work and make a living doing something we do not particularly love because we must support our life and/or family. Doing what we love doesn’t necessarily offer the best monetary rewards.

Sure, there are those lucky individuals in our society who have hit their niche and uncovered a goldmine of riches because of their persistence and focus on their true talent and ability. For every one of those, there are hundreds if not thousands of us who never reach that point of perpetual bliss. What differentiates those who “succeed” and those who are left working in a less than ideal job for the rest of their lives? Not much. There are some key ingredients of course that must happen for the possibility to even exist. Among those are: timing, perseverance and persistence, sacrifice, faith, and of course, luck. Without these key ingredients, the opportunity cannot exist. While some people may be lucky enough to have their fortune seemingly “drop into their lap,” the rest of us must actually apply the above ingredients to change our way of life. You may be thinking I am missing the most important ingredient of all, money. Sometimes, money is the only factor keeping the dream from happening in the form of startup costs/etc. However, giving the right timing and focus on the other ingredients above, I believe money will come.

Have you ever seen the stories of the “stay at home mom” who has an idea and puts her entire focus on making it happen and she ends up turning a simple idea into a fortune? The mom has turned her life around without the money ingredient. She applied the other key factors and focused entirely on making something happen. Money eventually came. There are many stories such as this. People have found a way to change their lives, but only if they try. Not just try, but give everything they have to make it happen. They BELIEVE they will succeed. They truly believe that everything they do is working towards their goal of achieving the life in which they are working at something they love doing.

I’m not saying that you have to work for yourself to love what you do either. There are many jobs in the world that you can absolutely love what you are doing while working for someone else. However, even for these individuals who have found their calling working for others, I will bet you they can immediately give you a list of what they do not like in their current position. I would place a bet that management would appear on almost every list. The job is great, but management is not. But, it’s a tradeoff they are willing to make because of their love for what they are doing.

Even in the above situation, the individual worker would be better off working for himself because he is making a tradeoff. But you may say that we cannot all work for ourselves. We can’t have 250 million sole proprietorships. No, we can’t and I agree. That is where the statement from Bill comes into play. Work does suck. It sucks because you are doing something you don’t truly love and you are doing it for someone who likely does not reward you appropriately for your effort. If that isn’t the definition of work sucks I’d like to see a better one. Are the rest of us destined to work in these jobs while only a small fraction of us succeed at making a living doing what we love? Sad to say, but given our current and past job and market climates, I don’t think anything will change in our near future.

Our capitalist economy prides itself on one thing, profitability. To achieve profitability, most companies depend on workers being highly efficient and productive while at the same time, not being paid what they are worth. This tradeoff is where the company makes their money. Get more out of the worker, but trickle very small portions of the rewards down to them. Are you currently in such a job? More than likely, but so are the rest of us. Very few of us will realize what it’s like to live a life doing what it is we love doing. We are “forced” to spend the majority of our able years doing something for someone else to support our families. Yes, it is an honorable and necessary thing to do, but is it right that we are “throwing” the greatest portion of our lives away when our time could be better spent?

We know everyone cannot achieve the dream of doing whatever they love because like I said, there cannot be 250 sole proprietors and have a successful business market. Where does that leave us? It leaves us with the knowledge that for the greatest percentage of us, we are left to work in positions where we are likely to think that “work sucks.” This can be changed. Work, which you do not truly love, does not have to suck. To accomplish this, we need better management. We need better employee treatment. We need the wealth to be shared fairly within each business. While computer programming may not be your true love, if you are treated with respect and given your appropriate human and monetary rewards, you will not believe work sucks even though your true love may be farming. At that point, work is a means to an end, one that you are not throwing your life away at, one that does not remove your happiness and imposes stress during your hours off the job.

I will agree with Bill in the movie that for the majority of our society, work does suck. But, I place the blame on those we work for, not the job itself. Every job can be made satisfactory, it’s how we are treated that makes work suck. Some people are able to leave this world behind completely and move forward in a business they truly love, but they are the life lottery winners. We all have an opportunity at it, but the practical reality is everyone cannot win. Works sucks, but it doesn’t have to.