For years, I used to think about three things. Cars, Computers and Health. I thought about them because they were either expensive to buy or expensive to maintain or both. They still are for the most part. Now computers maybe not as much and you get a lot more out of a similar priced computer today than say the Tandy Radio Shack model I paid $1500.00 for. I still think they are overly expensive but you could try to persuade me otherwise and I might agree with you some.
Cars on the other hand, no, I would not move in that direction because, I mean, have you tried to buy a new car lately? Or anytime in the last 30 years or so for that matter. I’m not sure, but I think I have bought maybe 4 or 5 new cars in my whole life, and all of that 30 years ago or more. Why? you might ask. Because I did research into the difference between new car costs and used car costs and how quickly a new car depreciates, and how much money you spend on maintenance for a used car and how you might save money if you fix the car yourself.
This was also the pattern I learned from my father. Fix what you can fix and then turn it over to the repair shop. So we changed radiators, alternators, tires and brakes and minor repairs like that. If the engine went bad, it was probably time for a new to us used car to replace it.
He did his research and learned how to fix things.
In order to be like this, you have to take responsibility for your own knowledge and for the source of that knowledge. And you have to know your limitations. You can’t fix everything on the car, especially these days. And if you have lots of money, you might not care to get your hands dirty at all, even changing something as simple as a windshield wiper. But having lots of money doesn’t help you to learn more about your life in this case, it just means you don’t have to do something that you can pay someone else to do. That’s a nice bit of luxury that we all can enjoy today, as long as we have money to cover it. But what have you learned?
The downside of having that money is that we never really learn to research for ourself what is going on, with Cars or Computers or Health, or now I would like to complicate it, just about anything else that is important in our lives like family or economics or political leadership or our future welfare or how late will I have to retire in life because I have very little in my retirement fund? And one of the big questions about retirement goes back to health, will I have enough to retire on to pay my cost of housing and food and health care?
To many of us, most of the above doesn’t seem to matter much. That is, until you wake up one day and it really does matter. Then a crisis of health or economy hits us head on and we have not done the research to get though the crisis with a high quality of life on the back side.
When my wife got cancer, the whole trajectory of her life changed, in ways I could write a book about. But research was the foundation of that change. She dug into her type of cancer and the treatment for that cancer and what kind of success she could attain from following different kinds of advice about treating that cancer. Research is what distinguishes the successful from the average life or even inadequate life.
Search, research and source your research. All this is another way of saying, fall in love and become an expert in Learning again, no matter your age. Your life will thank you for it.