It starts with my car: It has a squeak. It's not a serious squeak, just an irritating one -- as in: it drives me nuts. If you told me you could fix it for $5, I would give you $7.50 and invite you to keep the change. But if you said you could fix it for $50,000 then I would continue to just live with it. Somewhere between $5 and $50,000 is a line, a threshold of sorts. On the one side of the line I "live with it" and on the other side I do what it takes to remove the irritation.
Just a couple years ago I was in graduate school. I finally graduated and got a "real job." My income rose a bit, but my wife and I have remained true to our desires to not succumb to "lifestyle escalation:" We like the simple wholesome life; we like to live debt free, like taking saving and financial security seriously; we don't like indulging in general, nor waste; we like growing some of our own food and being self-sufficient to some extent. We left grad school happy, and still are.
But a couple years have passed since then, and I've been observing something odd in my life: a drift in my irritation thresholds. It used to be, when the threads came out in that one part of my winter glove and the snow got under there, that I would live with it for a while longer. Of course, at some point I would decide it was a better use of my life to get some "new" gloves (often from the thrift store). I still do that, but the number of threads that needs to be out before I make the transition has mysteriously shrunk a little over the last couple years.
I'm no more "indulgent" than I used to be -- just trying to keep my fingers warm. I'm no more picky about my shoes -- just avoiding the ones that hurt my feet. I'm no more a car snob than I used to be -- just wanting one that doesn't have that squeak. I'm no more a mansion lover than I used to be -- just don't want the irritating problem of not having enough space. I'm not the sort of rich guy that has his own jet just for fun -- I just hate standing in lines at the airport and had to do something about it. And suddenly (ok, so I don't have a jet, or a mansion, or a new car, or new shoes, or even new gloves for that matter), suddenly I find myself sympathizing with some portion of the "lifestyle of the rich" which I had always eschewed: it is that little portion of their lifestyle which is attributable to Irritation Threshold Drift -- why put up with an irritation if it's essentially free to fix it?
Wanna know something that irritates me all to pieces:? Finding myself more sympathetic to lifestyle escalation than I used to be. Argh! It means I'm choosing to be wimpier than I was just a few years ago -- and this hurts double hard as my body gets creakier already: I don't want to be an old wimpy guy... do I? What's wimpy about getting that squeaky part of my car fixed "for free?" Anybody would consider me nuts to not get it fixed if it were free.
My definition of “essentially free” has drifted. As a consequence, the threshold for when I decide to pay for removing an irritation has drifted. And I find myself sympathetic to that. But Irritation Threshold Drift is multi-faceted: Another side is “mind over matter...."
And so, standing there in the rain, I decided I could pull out some "Zen over body" skills and not let the rain in my pancakes bother me so much. And in fact it wasn't so hard, hence my personal victory and the satisfaction. Being soaked to the bone somehow makes me feel "alive" -- as long as my toes are dry. And therein lies the rub: Some portion of Irritation Threshold Drift lies in our minds and is rewarding to conquer (like standing in the rain); some portion is very difficult to master (like wet toes, or being hungry because the soup kitchen is out of food this weekend); and some portion is in that nebulous region in the middle (like deciding when a pair of jeans is too worn for me to keep wearing).
It comes down to Irritation Threshold Drift having two components: changes in the relative cost (caused by changes in my income) and changes in my head (mind over matter). I only have limited mental control over what irritates me, and sometimes I can use money to reduce or remove an irritation. Being aware of these two factors, and their limitations, empowers me to control the drift -- to some extent.
Irritation is "life" and it's good to be alive. But I still hate hiking with wet toes.
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Everything in this essay up till now was originally written with a focus on my money management, as a context. But my wonderful friend pointed out that it actually applies to all of our irritation thresholds -- when is the noise from the kids "too much" and when can I let it go? In these areas my natural drift has been in the opposite direction: I'm more patient than I used to be. But perhaps "grumpy old men" come from the direction of that natural drift reversing at some point in life -- when it becomes essentially "free" to remove the irritation, perhaps. I'd like to see that now and take more control over my drifting, before I end up a creaky grumpy old man. I think this quote summarizes well:
"Both abundance and lack [of abundance] exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend . . . when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that's present — love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature, and personal pursuits that bring us [happiness]—the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience heaven on earth." --- Sarah Ban Breathnach, in John Cook, comp., The Book of Positive Quotations, 2nd ed. (2007), 342.
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