Things are different.
The priorities that we had just a year or two ago have shifted. I am finding that many things that I once valued no longer matter quite as much. Take home ownership for instance. My wife and I recently moved into a wonderful home in a fantastic neighborhood. What I love most about it is that we don't own it. We're living in it until it sells. We're still homeowners, but only until the house we moved from sells. We, as many of us have discovered, recognize that the American Dream of home ownership ain't what it used to be. A home today is not an investment vehicle, nor should it be what defines your social and economic status. A home is a thing. What matters is what makes you happy. Believe me, I like to live well and enjoy the amenities and qualities that a fine home offers, but these are things. They just don't seem to matter that much anymore. Things are temporary. They may help in the pursuit of happiness, or at least we may think they do, but what I have discovered makes me happy is quality of time with family, friends, business colleagues and everyday positive experiences in life and in business that stay with you forever.
I am an avid boater, and in recent years, owned three boats (at the same time). As of about two weeks ago, the last of the three was sold. Technically that was my son's, and he just moved to Boston where he can't even park a car outside his apartment, never mind dock a boat. There was a time that boat defined him, was his social and activity center. But it's a thing. He was the first to recognize it.
I admit that I missed not spending the first labor day in a decade not out on the Lake, but my wife was quick to remind me that if I really had to be out on the lake, I could speed dial any number of friends who would be more than happy to meet me at the dock or rent a boat. I opted for none of the above, and instead we spent a great day listening to blues and eating barbecue at the park followed by a dip in the pool and a backyard cookout with friends.
Sure there are cycles, and I'm not an economist, but I feel like I am experiencing an evolutionary tidal shift in thinking. Do you feel it, too? I have begun to call it the "New Real". This is what I see as the developing focus for what I have dubbed AMERICA 2010: The Great Recovery.
We are all thinking a little differently than we did two years ago. We're thinking differently about things. And that will lead to new ideas, new businesses, new social trends and a general resetting of goals and how each of us define success and happiness. It's wreaking some havoc in the markets, where the consumerism of the past is no longer.
That's just more proof that it's not about things. So what is the NEW REAL for you?
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Response from a seasoned Network Televison News executive I worked with at CNN with permission to post: "(My wife) and I have been retired for 12 years. We no longer feel that we can influence events. We are subject to the political decisions of others. We own our home and one car, a Prius. Once we sell the house, the proceeds will have to support us for the rest of our lives. We are sufficient to each other, and happy that way. We've been married 49 years, and are confident we'll make it to quite a few more."
ReplyDeleteHere's Bob Clinkingbeard's perspective on his NEW REAL. I've invited him to be a guest poster on this blog,so you may be seeing more thoughts from him as we evolve the discussion:
ReplyDelete"I’m trying to figure out what the “old” one was. It HAS been a long time.
My new real started a bit before yours Michael. I had a minor heart attack in March ’08. Thankfully I only needed a stent and I made some lifestyle changes, including quitting cigarettes cold turkey after 25 years, lowering my cholesterol and blood sugar dramatically.
Then pressed the ‘pause’ button on life for a bit.
After 26+ years, I have produced, written for or overseen the production of more newscasts than most people have ever watched. It was a 24/7 job. But when it became 25/8… I stepped back. In my professional lifetime, television news has simultaneously transformed, exploded and morphed from a novelty to a necessity to an omnipresent force. With 24-hour cable channels and 24-hour satellite radio and newscasts streaming live on the web, it is practically impossible to turn off. I found myself watching my newscasts from my hospital bed and I found myself finally seeing just how our world is shrinking. I don’t think the world shrinking is necessarily a bad thing, but for every gain in this life, there's usually a cost. And I started thinking more and sleeping less, wondering how I was going to gain a balance of everything I needed to do and not have it cost me to miss out any more than it has.
So my “new” “real” is my pressing the "pause" button on my life for a bit to see, feel, smell and taste a little corner of the world around me before it gets any smaller. I packed up the Harley and rode 5,000 to see family and friends that I had neglected because I “couldn’t get away.”
You know, the Harley people like to market the notion that the focus needs to be on the journey, not the destination. I buy that to a great degree. But I tend to go along with comedian Dennis Miller’s summation of our dance from the cradle to the grave. He once said “Life is like riding the bus. It requires change.”
So I’m changing and now I’m looking for my next stop. Until then, see you on the road until the next “real.”
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Bob Clinkingbeard can be friended on Facebook or contacted by email: bobclinkingbeard@bellsouth.net.
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