Taking Stock

OK. What’s going on here? Why am I feeling this way? Let me take stock of things, in a cool and level-headed way. 

However, taking an honest appraisal is more difficult than it seems. I am biased, I find. Some things are worth more right now, then worth less in a moment’s time. It all depends where I put my focus, knowing that every list I make loses its accuracy soon after it is made. Things change, and so does their value. Material things get in the way, and their lack – an overdraft, debt, bills to pay – overwhelm me. I need other people to provide perspective.   

When I was on the ‘phone to my friend before his fifty-first birthday recently, he lamented that he didn’t own a house or car. There was lots that he did have ‘though. A wonderful girlfriend; great and satisfying work that took him all over the country and the world; and a bevy of good old friends. Plus a massive collection of vinyl records that get lots of airtime. He’s moving house, which seems a natural time to take stock of things. His landlord is booting him into the neighbouring cottage. What I saw in his life wasn’t that obvious to him, behind the absent shadows cast by the non-car and non-house. I told him what I saw he had, and I think he was grateful. 

I find that I also rely on others to remind me of what I have. When taking an inventory of my life, I can be blind to the most obvious things, the ones I almost take for granted. These are often the most valuable things. It’s good to tell people what you see, I think, to remind them. I feel I can easily get distracted by something I don’t have, and imagine that if only I did have it, I’d be happier. As for the people who tell me, sometimes they’re not around, and I have to remind myself, not matter how trite or mundane this seems. 

I have my life, that’s for starters. It’s no mean feat I tell you, just to be alive. Think of all the energy I expend just to keep on living, the industry and effort to earn a crust and make sure to eat it. I can’t take that for granted, although I do, with every carelessly strewn bit of bad mood or gratuitous sulk.   

I have my health, although it is declining as I age. Muscles and joints aren’t what they used to be. Old injuries keenly remind me of their nagging presence. I read once that we are not in charge of our bodies, that they are in charge of us. This becomes most apparent when a morbidity appears, a cancer or heart condition, for example. It’s now that I remember how I used to be able to run for as long as I liked, an hour or two, all over occasional towns and through familiar suburbs. I didn’t know then that this ability was limited. I think back to my panting strides and endurance, and am grateful that once I felt so alive.

And so, taking stock can be seen as an accumulation of things achieved, but I think this is a dangerous way to go about appraising my life. For my marriage, I also had a divorce. For my children, nestling in my arms and we lay and read stories, I also have their loss, as they grow up and into the world. And so, both sides of the list are equally weighted. It depends where I put my focus.  I am at the fulcrum of times good and bad, happy and sad, of plenty and of scarcity.

I find that seeing the good in others helps me to see the good in myself, and not its absence. It puts me into an appreciative frame of mind, which is easily disrupted by the multiple distractions and petty irritations of the world we live in. If I keep coming back to the good I see, instead of news of the many, many bad and tragic things the media feed me, I can stay positive. 

In this way, the overdraft and maxed-out credit card are just what they are – they are not the sum of me. Perversely, they motivate me to be clever with what little cash I have, to stretch the food in my fridge, to cycle instead of going in a car, to look after what I have. Living a modest life in this materialistic world, where self-worth is all too easily hitched to the accumulation of goods and status items, needs its own system of accounting.

Focusing on the quality of my relationships, both with myself and others, and how honest these can be, is a good place to start.