There's something to be said for the ordered life.

Yes, it's kind of boring. The same thing every day, day after day. Breakfast or lunch at such or such an hour. Dinner at six. Maybe a movie or something on TV. Blah blah blah. Yawwwwn!

But what if you'd come from a Nazi concentration camp, where people died of starvation every day, to the point that you stepped over them or walked around, but with no more thought than you'd give to a mud puddle. Suppose you'd been freed by the Allied forces and eventually found your way to, say, Cincinnati. Not speaking any English, maybe with some of your family, maybe not, haunted by all that horror . . . and you're supposed to fit in?

Wouldn't you welcome an ordered life? Breakfast, lunch, dinner on a given schedule? Bedtime not full of nightmares (but probably so anyway)?

Okay, that's an extreme case. Consider this one: You've retired from a high-pressure job you didn't like but endured -- and maybe even did okay at -- but now you're a certain age, ready to cash in and sit back and relax. You've got a measly pension and Social Security, plus what you've managed to invest. You and your mate -- maybe just you -- can now afford to get out of the rat race and do nothing. Whew!


This is the ordered life, deserved. The right to travel -- as money permits -- or play golf or just sit on the porch and read newspapers all day. I know a retired guy who said that someone asked him what he planned to do with his free time, and he said, "Not that job." For lots of us, that's enough. To just not do what we've been doing for twenty, thirty or more years. No boss, no appointments, no quotas (if we were in sales), no travel to places we don't want to go, no nothing that we don't want to do. In short, the ordered life for the retired is just relief from having our days and weeks and months and years laid out for us by someone else. Our retirement means that we will determine our own schedules in the future, for better or worse.

At last!

Interestingly, we all start out life -- unless we're from dysfunctional families -- pretty much taken care of and with life ordered by our parents. We don't have to think about anything. We get dressed in clothes laid out for us, take lunches prepared for us to school, come home to our rooms and all that familiarity we take for granted.

That ordered kind of life frees us to grow.

When we hit our teens, and then later, our twenties, life gets less predictable, less orderly. We meet and date and have sex with all sorts of inappropriate people. We start one thing and drop it and start another. We graduate high school -- or not -- and then try to find a job or go to college and not get pregnant or get a disease. We set up a checking account and struggle with credit card debt. We may have to buy and insure a car for the first time, unless our parents already took care of that for us (which is just delaying the inevitable). Everything is new and exciting and scary.

We're young and energetic but not so good about navigating our way through the real world. Life in our teens and twenties -- even into our thirties -- can be chaotic. It is also, of course, when life presents its biggest surprises. Not knowing who or what waits around what corner. Exploring, chancing, just diving into a new experience without looking first. It's when we test our wings, sometimes flying, just as often crashing. But we're young, so we get up and soar again. Nothing is guaranteed; all is possible. Orderly life? Forget it! What happens happens!

Then the work years set in. Our late twenties to who knows when. And someone else is setting a schedule for us. It goes on, I'm sorry to say, for a long time. Decades. Until we have enough money saved/invested to retire. And live an ordered life again. Not theirs but ours! Finally!

It's always tempting to think that there are people who live un-ordered lives of great pleasure. Oh, to just let the tides of fate sweep me away! Be careful what you wish for: It might sweep you under the current and drown you. The un-ordered life is usually the result of poor planning.

Those rich people who live the lives we envy so much and think of as spontaneous are anything but. The privileged live VERY well-ordered lives. They control every aspect of their lives because they can afford to. Do you think any Hollywood celebrity wakes up in the morning and strolls outside, unaccompanied by security people, just to smell the air? Not unless she lives in a gated community no one of us can think of approaching.

(But their lives may be TOO well-ordered, don't you think? Wouldn't you feel constrained if you couldn't do your own grocery-shopping?)

On the other hand, think of the CEO of a huge bank. Who is ordering HIS life? He makes millions every year -- yes, millions, and yes, every year -- but can't take off a few days and not say where he's been. No way. Every minute of his time is accounted for. He lives an ordered life but, even at his high level, it's not ordered by him. He'll have to retire to enjoy life on his terms.

The ordered, the orderly, life is greatly to be desired, I think. We all want to do what we want to do, when we want to do it. It's just a matter of whether the ordered life is ordered by you or by someone else. Unless you're born rich or get lucky with some invention or some talent, you're probably going to have to make a living, and you'll soon discover that what you most want is to
be in control of your own life and to have enough money to feel comfortable.

When you're young, it sounds like so little to settle for; when you're older, it's the goal you've achieved.

Perspective is all.

Grow well and prosper. Regret what you must. Love what you can.