Ok, so it wasn’t a LOT of caution, but it still required some mental gymnastics to call AAA and say “sign me up!”.  So yes, I will be going on a river cruise in May.  It’s been an interesting week.

In the end, my fear of regret won out over the argument to be more “careful” financially.  I am sick and tired of working just to pay bills.  Or working to possibly save up for “something” even though the day may never come that I can do the thing I am saving up to do.

I got to thinking about how a lot of people spend their lives.  We are weirdly afraid to be happy or do what makes us happy.  We are afraid to take chances – possibly because we are afraid what other people will think.  We are afraid of what might happen, or not happen, in the future.

We spend so much time preparing for some unknown disaster that we forget to live.

One day, I went to lunch and took my Kindle as usual.  I thought I had downloaded a new book to read but it wasn’t showing up for some reason….so I decided to go back to reading a book I downloaded some time ago called “Simple Reminders”.

The amusing part is the page that opened – more or less random – was talking about listening to your inner voice.  Yeah, that was my problem! That annoying voice in my head is always trying to talk me out of doing things.

“You cannot always trust your inner voice. Often, your inner voice is not really yours.  You are not who you think you are; you are someone else’s ideas…. A great deal of fear has been intentionally put into people…. We are so immersed in fear that we have accepted it as normal. It is often invisible.  But the signs are there if you look for them: anxiety, uneasiness and a malaise of nagging feelings that things are not right – and always, always – the voice…  

The false voice speaks portrays timidity as safety.  The false voice speaks of consequence but never of constitution.  The false voice whispers of loss and regret, but never the hidden beauty of the moment. When you are feeling strong, the false voice reminds you of past ordeals, and takes you back to relive the anxiety and trauma, over and over. The false voice is a master doubt whisperer.”

While the author then went on to talk about other people (or institutions) making us feel fear and how strong really are, the inner voice thing really spoke to me.  I think my inner voice sounds like my parents.

When we were kids, my parents worked hard at blue collar jobs.  They worked, took care of the house, and then worked some more.  They scrimped and saved for some nice things, maybe a new car.  We always had decent Christmas presents but we shopped for school clothes at K-Mart.  We were not exactly poor but we definitely didn’t have all the trappings of a comfortable life.  There was not a lot of time and energy for frivolous stuff.  Definitely not enough money for extravagant things.

So it’s my parents who I hear in my head.  And my brother.  He has had a comfortable life and has lived carefully enough to have no debt.

But I wonder.  How sad would it be to live carefully, save money, and then die without actually ENJOYING it?

How sad, indeed.