It Gets Easier
Pretty much everything that we can practice, gets easier as we improve - yet it is only relative, isn't it? After all, we are improving on a current position so comparatively what we were able to do before is easier, but because we have improved, the road ahead gets a little harder, because in order to improve again, we have to up the challenge. Things really only get easier when we have decided that we are satisfied with a certain level of result, meaning that while we might still improve, the only thing that changes is the speed at which we reach satisfactory.
Are you satisfied?
It seems a silly question perhaps, but I am yet to meet someone who is so satisfied with their lives, that they wouldn't change anything at all, even if for the most part, things are very good. There is always something that they want to improve and it is that which sticks out, like a thorn in the side of life. Happy or not, no one seems satisfied completely.
It is part of human experience it seems and as I see it, it is what keeps us evolving ourselves in a cycle of creation, where we develop something to solve a problem, but once the problem is solved, we move to the next problem, or the newly created problems from our solutions. For instance, it might be comfortable to think that "returning to the past" would improve the condition of our environment, but this doesn't take into consideration the condition of human, where we are evolved to change our conditions. Yes, we can improve how we do this, but this is a forward movement, not a backward one.
And this is the challenge, because we are continually advancing, we are also adding increasing complication. Life was far simpler earlier and the further back we go, the simpler it was - all the way back to single-cell organisms. Our potential building blocks are increasing and therefore the creations fractal, combining in new ways, which exponentially increases the range. We can simplify, but even the simplification process will lead to releasing resources that can be used to complicate further.
It doesn't get easier.
However, we are also able to increase our skill levels continuously, meaning that while life is getting more complicated, as long as we are upping our game, we are able to cope. The challenge is, that the range is also expanding, so we are unable to learn all that we need, which is why we are also increasingly specializing as individuals and becoming more reliant on others to share their specializations with us - for a cost.
The simpler we keep our lives, the cheaper it is, because we are able to service more of our needs ourselves and when we do need support, we need it in areas that aren't as specialized, meaning there is more competition to provide service, lowering the costs. Overcomplication raises costs, because more people and more specializations are required to service and often, the "parts" are more expensive than the value of the whole.
Just imagine the cost of a car built entirely from aftermarket spare parts costs - and the cost of work involved, once it is no longer part of the production line. How many specializations are required?
So, saving money doesn't just come from buying cheaper products, it is also about going without, which is essentially simplifying the personal consumer landscape, which reduces the chances of things going wrong and, the cost of specialized repair or replacement. It also means that more can be self-learned, because the knowledge and skill models needed are also reduced.
This isn't convenient.
No. It isn't convenient. Complication is convenient because it gives us a tool for every purpose, but it also means that we become beholden to the tools and the maintenance, service and problems they will face. It is far more convenient for example to have a mobile phone, but when we had hardwired phones, how much time did we spend keeping them up to date and how often did they breakdown? How much time did we spend using them, and what did we do with all the extra time we had?
So much of our lives today are dictated by running errands to maintain the level of complication we have onboarded out of convenience. The problem is, that we only focus on the immediate return of what we buy, not the ongoing cost of having it. We end up with a lot of convenient items that breakdown and need replacing or, just don't get used much, or at all. They sounded good at the time, but once the initial novelty was gone, they were discarded.
We are creatures of comfort and convenience is a form of luxury. But, it likely has an inflated cost, especially when the time we are saving is not used well either. That means we are paying for the convenient solution and its maintenance, and also paying in not taking opportunities that are presented. If we aren't going to use our saved time or resources well, we may as well have kept doing what we were doing, even if it is inconvenient to do so. At least then, we would save the money and, possibly improve our skillset, or look to create our own innovative solution.
And that is one of the funny things about creations of convenience, because the more we use them, the less creative we become, because we are facing increasingly niche problems that we can't solve ourselves, they take a specialist. So, if we want a solution to more problems, even though it is not going to make much of an impact on our lives, it is going to take a specialist and due to the niche, it is going to be expensive.
Life is getting harder - because we are overcomplicating our needs for living. If we want to improve our immediate wellbeing and have more time and resources available, we should be looking at ways to simplify our lives, rather than adding solutions that complicate our toolkit. We might have to work more in some areas, but we will have a lot less to pay for in others.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]