I mean...I guess I'm speaking to people who don't have money. Obviously this question doesn't pertain for people who are wealthy. The interesting part of this post is at the end, so skip ahead if you want to, to the header "Photographically speaking...."
This much is interesting: I find I don't want much these days. Believe it or not, my strongest desire is to get rid of stuff. I have a lot of stuff around the house that I don't want or need but am having trouble letting go of. (Camera, darkroom, and stereo gear for starters). I would like it to be gone. But as far as things to want, there's actually not a lot, once I sift out and separate the daydreams from reality.
I really like my car. I just bought new tires (had to; the old ones weren't going to pass inspection), ran it through the fancy car wash in Geneva, and cleaned out the interior. It looks and drives fine. It's the only car I've ever had that I like more now than I did when I first bought it. It has 113k miles on it. My plan is to try to drive it to 250k miles, which, at my current rate of adding miles, means I won't need a new car till the beginning of 2032. That next car will probably be my last one, as I will be 75 then.
I tell myself that I would love another Miata, and if I could have one I probably would. But do I need it? Not in the slightest.
I have a pool table, which is my choice of recreation. While it's possible to daydream of a much better-built pool-table shed and a nicer table, even in my daydreams I'm at war with myself, because I go back and forth between thinking of something nicer and thinking that what I have is just fine.
Bookshelves. I think I need bookshelves, but do I really? I read on the iPad now if I'm honest (right now: Ferry Pilot: Nine Lives Over the North Atlantic by Kerry McCauley, a nonfiction page-turner which is making my exercise hour fly by every day at the speed of a small Cessna. Up next is the 1991 bestseller and Pulitzer-Prizewinner Den of Thieves by James B. Stewart, about the misdeeds of the American financial predators of the 1980s and their eventual comeuppances). I've quickly learned that my daily exercise is almost completely dependent on having a good book to read. Exercise time = reading time and reading time = exercise time. The fact that I'm on an exercise machine is coincidental. What I'm really doing is reading.
(The artist Peter Milton, when he decided to be an artist full time, forced himself to get up in the morning and "leave" for his studio as if it were a 9-to-5 job, even though his studio was upstairs in his house. His rule for himself was that he didn't have to work, but he had to stay in the studio eight hours a day. And listening to music in the studio was so important to him that he said that sometimes, when work was going slowly, he felt that he was going to the studio just to listen to music.)
Speaking of exercise machines, I no longer covet any. Just the treadmill that I use at the Community Center retails for nearly $7,000. I would never spend that much to have one at home—and there are four other machines and a rack of dumbbells that I use at the gym. Plus—being totally honest here, at the risk of sounding like a male chauvinist pig—there are beautiful young people at the gym. I know full well that people do not like to be ogled when they work out (surveys have made this quite clear). Even half of the women who doll themselves up in sexy outfits don't actually like to be stared at. So I'm very strict with myself; I never stare, often don't look at all, and if I do it's just the lightest, most casual glance. But, even so, let's just say it's nice having other people around when I work out. At home I'd have nobody to look at but a dog. Whom I love, but still.
Plus, I see some friends at the Community Center, and socialize a little.
But bookshelves for my photobooks—there is no acceptable digital equivalent, yet, for photobooks—yes. I could work on that. But do I need to keep all my photobooks? I could probably get rid of half of them and never miss them.
As far as a house is concerned, I've been very interested in house design literally since childhood. And I still am. But hey, I'm 66. Would I build a house now even if I could? It's getting so that I wouldn't have all that much time to live in it!* And I love my current house, the main drawback of which is that it's too far from my son and his family. Also, "building a house" is a conventional sign of status and prosperity in this culture, like an American Indian warrior in 1870 having a lot of ponies. And I'm always suspicious about giving in to standard ways of expressing status just because it's what everybody is supposed to want.
But the freedom to travel to see family and friends is another thing on the sparse wants-list.
I didn't pay much for this house by the inflated standards of today, and my interest rate is extremely low. If you subtract the principal I pay every month, the rest of my mortgage payment equals the rental cost of a mid-level apartment locally—and local rents are on the low side nationally. And the principal I pay is the best thing I've ever invested in: just the equity I've invested in this house so far has more than doubled. That's in the current market, which can always change, of course. Still, there just aren't very many opportunities in the entire country for housing that gives me so much for so little. It's true that the maintenance costs are significant, mainly because of my vast and complicated yard as well as the age of the house (built 1888). I could live more cheaply, but I wouldn't be living as well. For the future, a smaller house with a much smaller yard that is closer to a hospital will start to be desirable, but I'm not there yet.
The only thing I would really like that I don't have is financial security...first, enough money to meet my expenses without agonizing over it (this winter and spring have been really painful, with big hit after big hit), and—this is currently in daydream territory as well—enough set aside for retirement. Realistically, I might never get to that.
Well, no, there are actually two things I would want money for—security for myself, yes, but also the ability to help Xander and his family! Or, expressing the same thing negatively, to not be a burden on him in my old age. That is high on the wants-list.
However, even in daydream territory, I wouldn't want but so much money; I feel like it would be too much responsibility. I don't know for sure, but I imagine that large amounts of wealth would be a headache. You have to curate it, so to speak. And worry about people taking it. And this is just me, but I'd have to worry about myself doing foolish or impractical things with it. (Every time I do something stupid or rash I think, "good thing I'm not rich." Because then it would have been worse.)
One more thing: at a certain level of excess, wealth becomes an illusion, because you're still a mortal body and your happiness is still tied to your spiritual and emotional states. Obviously massive wealth engenders and encourages feelings of power, superiority, and entitlement, and it permits self-indulgence, but those things aren't as conducive to contentment as most of us assume they are.
Looking at the it the other way, though, it's possible that I'm not well-sustained financially, because I can't afford to maintain what I have with ease and lack of stress. Really, to be well-off in the best sense, you should be able to sustain and support your present lifestyle without strain or worry.
Photographically speaking...
How about cameras? As I was taking pictures yesterday the thought crossed my mind that when my current Sigma expires, that will be it for me and photography. I like using it, it does what I want, it's fun and satisfying to use...and it's totally unique and absolutely won't be replaceable if it's discontinued by the time it breaks. So when it goes, I'll probably be done with photographing.
But let's look at that the other way around: over the years, I've heard from a great many of you about your cameras, and a strong current in what I've heard and observed has been people saying something along the lines of, "this is it for me; I'm done, I'm never getting another camera"—and that is almost never true. Everybody always gives up their "forever" camera sooner or later in favor of the next one. So now I'm the one saying that. Is it true when I say it? Experience would imply that it is not. So maybe "I'll never buy another camera" just means "I'm happy for now with what I have." And yet...I'm happy with what I have.
There might be one thing I would do with photography that I'm not doing now if I were significantly more prosperous. No, two things. First, I would collect prints. Not just photographs, prints.
I go back and forth on this, but I believe I might restrict myself to photographer/printmakers who are working right now, making new, contemporary work. It would be a challenge to find them, and a greater challenge to select pieces that I believed really had merit and deserved preservation. But that's an old idea of fun that's been hanging around in my head for a long time.
Of course, in no sense do I "need" to do such a thing, not even for my happiness. And I wonder if I could pull it off in any event: my friends Jay and Mary are significant "normal people" art collectors, but they are extremely organized, thorough, and fastidious with their art and their records. I can't even be organized if I try. So maybe having lots of fine art would not be good for me after all.
The second thing is that I would organize my own photographs, both my personal work and the family photos I have. If I do it myself, I estimate that that would take two years (4,000 hours) of full-time work. It would probably take a sensible person about 1,000 hours of work, so 4,000 hours is probably about the right estimate if I have to do it.
An exercise
I took a workshop with Hal and Marilyn Shook in the Shenandoah many years ago, and here is their exercise concerning money:
- Imagine you are given ten million dollars. Half you must give away, and the other half you must spend on yourself.
- First, make a list of ten things you would buy or spend money on for yourself. Then make a list of ten charities, causes, or people you would support.
- Order these lists, from most to least important.
- Cross out the bottom seven things on both lists. If there's something you really hate crossing off, reconsider whether that thing ought to be in the top three.
- Once you have your top three in each list, consider whether there is a way you could satisfy your intentions on a smaller scale, without needing to be rich. For example, if one of your causes is to help dogs, perhaps you could give a couple of bags of dog food every month to a shelter. Or, if your desire is to help a grandchild, perhaps you could give "starter" money to the child's parents to start a college fund. On the list of things for yourself, if one of your goals is to travel the world, perhaps you could save up enough to go on one overseas vacation every three years. If your goal is to eat in the finest restaurants, perhaps you could resolve to eat at home to save money and then once every month or two splurge on a fine dinner at a famous restaurant. If you want a Ferrari, perhaps you could find a place that rents exotic cars and occasionally treat yourself to a day with a fancy car.
You get the idea. There are ways to indulge your fondest wishes short of throwing large amounts of money at them.
I was young when I met Hal and Marilyn, but I'm still glad to have known them. I learned a lot about myself at their life-planning retreat, which was a memorable experience, in many ways.
Sorry about the long post today; to paraphrase Mark Twain Blaise Pascal**, I didn't have time to write a short one.
Mike
*Have you ever known anyone who built their "dream house" in late-middle- or early-old-age and expired promptly thereafter? Or was forced to leave it for some other reason? I've known several such. It could be tempting fate to build a "dream house" too late in life.
**Thanks to Sean for the correction. It's a popular joke attributed to many people, but Twain never said it and Pascal evidently said it first: "Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte," "Lettres Provinciales," 1657. Source: Quote Investigator.
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V.I. Voltz: "My father, who was an optical engineer, bought a Zeiss Contaflex III in 1957 and has used it ever since. Günther Leitz, who dad knew well, gave him a beautiful Leica IIIg and collapsible Summicron when my parents got married in 1959, but it’s still in the box at their house. When Kodachrome was discontinued dad got me to buy him a pile of Portra. He doesn’t take many photos, but at 93 he still uses that Contaflex. He is the only person I know who photographs even semi-seriously who really did settle for a 'last camera.'
"I knew a couple who built their ‘forever home,’ a concrete, steel and glass monument on a cliff overlooking the Southern Ocean, but the wife got so obsessed with the build that she became remote from her husband (and children too). They split up just after the house was completed and it was sold in the divorce. As my son used to say when he was two, 'happened!'"
