While we have been able to extend our scope quite a lot in regards to our renovation, we have now crept too far into the financial red and will have to work a bit harder over the coming months to collect a little additional fundage to cover the delayed payments. We aren't that far out of our budget, but small changes to the plans have added up quickly and pushed us over the edge - things like the electricity for the lighting and power upstairs, a new ceiling (rather than painting the old) and of course the garden work that was unexpected, but had to be done.
It was always going to be tight, but now it is getting stretched far too thinly and we will have to scale back or slow down in other areas. Scope creep is of course expected, but it isn't always budgeted for and we underestimated some of the early costs significantly, which affects the costs to come. Still, I am pretty happy how much progress we have made on what is a relative shoestring budget.
Today, the neighbor and I did a couple of runs to the dump with garden waste from both our yards and one load of construction waste material from our house. We were talking about quite a few things along the drive that I might get to later, but one of the things was hobbies and how various people approach them.
Some people seem to commit to one hobby for a long enough period of time to come close to mastery, whereas others chop and change often. I know quite a few of the latter who get "passionate" about a new activity, buy all of the equipment and then sell it again less than a year later. I also know a few who get passionate about their hobby but build up their equipment over time and these people tend to stick to an area for longer.
What I was wondering is if being able to buy up front means one gets the sense of disposability of the activity - whereas a person who slowly builds in over time is consistently "buying-in" to the activity - making them more attached. If money was of no concern and things could be bought and put down with a low sense of cost, perhaps it means that a person is likely to chop and change more, especially when things get difficult. However, if the economic impact of disposing of an activity is significant, a person is more likely to push through and stick with it. This can mean that when things do get difficult, they are more likely to overcome the difficulty and therefore, get that sense of satisfaction of advancement, which justifies their continued investment into new equipment.
I am a pretty strong believer that when things come easily, we do not value them as much as when we have to work hard and stretch ourselves for them. I would suspect that this is the same for at least most things we do or have in life and perhaps the sunk resource costs also give us a "blurred vision" in regards to what we have.
For example, if I was a millionaire and could have paid for the house to be done perfectly with money not being a defining factor, would I appreciate living here or the work as much - even though things might be done in a more precise way without compromise. However, us doing the work, us budgeting, us shopping around, us making compromises, us making mistakes, us over extending, us having to find money and us dealing with the stresses of resource scarcity - might mean that we are more attached and appreciative of what we end up with, even if it is not quite what we had envisaged to begin with. It is easier to accept compromise when one is part of the decision making process for that compromise, but if one is paying for the result - compromise is much harder to accept.
I think this is part of the reason that "rich people" are far less compromising in their wants because they can afford to be, as they can pay for the result to be precisely what they desire. However, if for some reason there must be a compromise made, it affects them more, as they aren't part of the process as to why. This means that if for example there was an unavoidable compromise in the way their house was built that they didn't want, it will forever annoy them.
While we all want to live in a world of abundance, scarcity is also an important factor in how we manage our lives and belongings, and having unlimited resources isn't necessarily a good thing, as we will much more likely be wasteful with them. However, with scarcity, we are more likely to appreciate and love what we have as we know that we can't just replace it with another, we have to care for it. This I think is pretty obvious if we look at the difference in how a child who has an unlimited supply of toys and one who has a very limited supply, care for their belongings. Does a "spoiled" child on average treat their toys with love - do they care as much if one breaks, or gets lost?
There are pros and cons to this process of course, as being attached to belongings comes with its own set of problems, but being completely detached also has negatives. This is especially true when we apply attachment to people and relationships, with this becoming a very large issue since we have now branded and productized ourselves - making us purchasable and therefore, disposable. There is less need to work to build or work to keep a relationship when there is no scarcity - there is plenty of fish in the sea.
Again, this creates where there is no commitment necessary, as there are always options to dispose of and buy again. However, we as humans who value connection and rely on each other for some level of trust and stability in our lives, can no longer trust others to go through the thick and thin with us, and they can't trust us. The problem is that while we treat people as if there are plenty of fish in the sea for relationships, people are actually a finite resource when we consider things like our location, our mobility, our age and our personality. We can go on the internet and connect with people from all over the world that we might find desirable - but how many are available to us in a meaningful human way?
Life itself is a finite resource and these days many of us seem to think that we are going to live for ever, so we do not use our life resources well and instead flitter it away on a lot of meaningless and valueless experience - after all, there is always tomorrow to do the things we really want to do - until there isn't. Perhaps this is why those who have near death experiences often start living more fully, because they recognize the scarcity of their existence and no longer want to waste what they have frivolously.
I think a lot of our wasted potential is due to a fear of commitment to experience and rather than focus our attention, we try to expand the number of experiences instead. This means that we take a quantity over quality approach to life and while we might experience a lot, we don't necessarily get much depth of experience and therefore miss a lot of value in the process. We become insensitive to loss and ungrateful for what we have, as we are continually looking for what is next.
As a closing example - imagine a person having 1000 one-night stands in a lifetime and finding out one of those people died. How do they feel? Now, imagine the same person having 20 short relationships when young and one committed long-term relationship for decades - and then they lose that person - is there a difference in their experience and sense of loss?
I find that these days, people struggle to stay committed to even the simplest of things, with many young people unable to even make it through a 2-hour movie without feeling trapped and getting fidgety. When we are unable to focus our attention for that short time, what does that mean for skill development that can take years to and a mass of effort to master, or the "love" relationships we have and the relationships with each other and our children that support healthy and long-term development.
If we feel that resources are unlimited and we owe nothing to the world in which we live, we might just waste everything we have. Perhaps for some things, we are better off being a little in the red, so we feel we have to work, stretch and continually buy-in, so as to improve the conditions of our lives. After all, we work harder for things we love - perhaps we should learn to love a little more, rather than continually throwing life away.
Taraz
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