In Nov 2019 Mae Yo sent me a number of YouTube videos to aid my practice and fuel my contemplations, this is the forth and final in a series of blogs that documents my conversation with her/insights on the videos she sent. Again, I will link the videos she shared below, I would encourage you to watch the clips prior to reading the rest of the blog.

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On the spaceship video:

The boy works so hard for years to save enough to achieve his dream. When I watched, I didn’t actually think the ship would take off, but it did. So then my next question was “and then what”?

Even when we achieve a goal or get something we want it doesn’t predict the future, or make any guarantees, or prevent suffering and decay. It’s just a different twist on more of the same (apparently those 3 characteristics are called ‘common’ for a reason).

When I got my job back in SF after moving away, I thought my problems had been solved. My dream of a return (at least partial) had been fulfilled. But my dream came with a whole new set of sufferings. Before I missed my job, now I miss Eric half the time. Before my life felt overwhelming because of being in NY all the time and now it feels overwhelming because of all the travel.

Obviously, I still do it 2 years on, so in some ways I think it is better than an alternative. But when I really think about it I realize that what drove me to want to come back in the first place is that I missed my old Alana life, the identity I had built. Between an apartment, a part time living situation and the old job back I thought I could “reclaim” old identity.

But the city has changed, my job has changed, I have changed. It’s like even the stuff I get after the goal line is still shifting and impermanent( imagine that ;)). I am constantly working to focus on the stuff that seems the same (that bridge still looks golden) and to close one eye to the changes and the stuff I don’t like ( what needles? Of course my job is still the same even though half of the staff has changed since I left the first time). That denial, that self-imposed delusion, is how I convince myself that my efforts are worth the ‘.success’…to the stars and beyond…

… A bit more on the spaceship clip and my question of “and then what”...

It seems like so many movies or books just end with the characters ‘sailing into the sunset’, some happily ever after. But the only reason I think it is a happy ending is because I don’t know the ‘and then what’. I don’t know about the disease or the death or the breakup or the loss. My inability to see further in time gives me the illusion that perpetual happy endings are possible.

For Eric and I, the happy ending we dream about is an early retirement. A time in some near distant future where we can travel where we want, do what we want, be free to enjoy life together. Ironically, nothing else in my adult life has been as stressful as our efforts to achieve this goal. The move to NY and us staying on the East Coast despite hating it, that was in service of money for early retirement (plus the move to SF when I didn’t want to leave Texas, the move to Texas when I wanted to stay with my family in Atlanta). All the late nights of Eric working, the ruined vacations, the holidays he wasn’t around are costs of a high-powered job for early retirement. The office Game of Thrones style politics that has us frequently fearing Eric’s job loss, or scheming to stay ahead is a roller coaster of constant stress. A current legal ‘thing’ I can’t legally talk about has our stress level through the roof, courtesy of his working life.

And I trade all of this stress for an imagined ending I can’t even guarantee is happy. And if it is happy, then happy for how long?

I think Eric and I sorta see travel as ‘practice’ for our early retirement, a taste of what is to come. But if I am being honest travel has its stresses — planning sucks, missed flights and trains, total crap hotels (which are really a problem for me when they trigger my asthma).  Downright dangers even (let us not forget the run down by a rhino on Kenya). And vacation is a time I can usually set aside a number of daily stresses, put a hold on the todo list of tax returns and drs appointments and diets and house repairs for a few weeks.  But do I really think that I can avoid taxes and drs in retirement? It is like my whole paradigm for the ‘and then what’ isn’t even realistic when I take a closer look. And yet, I keep piling on the stress to get there.