“It behooves us from time to time to take stock and realize we are already living a life we once only dreamed of.”
I did stop to take my own advice last night, as a Milwaukee Brewers fan watching the clinching game of the World Series — I took a moment to savor the moment. You only get to relish your team’s first championship once, so I drank in the feeling.
Still, I did not stop to write a new blog post for today, and so I dip into the archives for the piece where I wrote that sound (if I say so myself) advice. And, I might add, I now find that wanting your team to win the World Series was not quite as sweet as having your team win the World Series.
Oh, and last but not least, this is another preview of the material you’ll find in my upcoming book What I Came to Say: Making the Most of the Time That’s Left.
Toward the end of “Amok Time,” one of the finest episodes in the original series of Star Trek, Mr. Spock tells the man who desired and now has Spock’s former betrothed, “After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.”
The first car that I consciously purchased for myself was a used 1974 Ford Pinto wagon with a faux “woody” finish. I liked having a small practical car with space to transport something bigger than a bread box. Still do, actually — I’m currently driving a box chiefly purchased so the dogs have plenty of room to bounce around when we go for a ride.
When I walked into the showroom to ask the dealer about the Pinto, a Studebaker Golden Hawk was sitting on the main floor. It was a gorgeous vehicle, one of my dream cars. My dad was a Studebaker man — that’s all he bought from the late 1940s until they closed the plant in South Bend in 1965. He bought practical Studebakers like the Commander or the Lark; I fantasized about Hawks and Avantis.
“You want to drive her?” the guy asked, seeing the light in my eyes.
I was sorely tempted, but the sticker said $7,500 — a lot of money for a used car in 1975 — and so I confessed I was interested in the $1,750 Pinto out front. That remains the only time in my life that I had a chance to drive a Hawk, or any Studebaker, come to think of it, and I turned it down.
The first new car I bought was a somewhat less practical 1978 Pontiac Firebird. I loved the look, my girl was impressed after the Pinto, and it was a comfortable ride. But when the transmission failed after less than 20,000 miles, the last straw after a series of minor irritations, I realized the wisdom of Spock’s words.
In the 1990s I caught a bug to complete my collection of the Bantam reprints of the original Doc Savage pulp novels from 50-60 years earlier. There were 182 of them in all, published first one at a time, then two in one paperback, and finally a series of 13 omnibus editions collecting four or five of the short novels, between 1964 and 1990 — someone at Bantam was devoted to completing the task.
All the while I was collecting, I would read the stories, at least a dozen a year — it originally was a monthly magazine, after all — until I finally found the last omnibus I was seeking.
The complete collection holds an honored place on my shelf, but years now pass between my reading one Doc Savage novel and the next. I loved the thrill of the hunt, but it turns out that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting.
An old friend who ran a homeless shelter once told me the secret is not to go after what you want, it’s to want what you have. He and his wife never had more than about three months’ living expenses on hand, by design. They seemed like a happy couple.
We always fret more than we should about what we don’t have and think life will be better if only we could have it. It behooves us from time to time to take stock and realize we are already living a life we once only dreamed of.
