I gotta say, there’s something untouchable about music in the 60s and 70s. As much as it pains me to say it, I find myself going back to that era more than my beloved 90s comfort zone.

Even looking at my students, who are on the frontlines of what’s new and popular, still flood my classroom playlist with suggestions from that time.

While I’m sure music buffs and audiophiles can send me a thesis on why that’s the case, I’m going to give a hot take:

That’s when we peaked with music.

Don’t get me wrong, people are still writing and producing tremendous music, but the fragmentation of the industry, reduced capacity of our attention spans, proliferation of mobile devices and competition with many other forms of entertainment have fundamentally changed the way we listen to music.

More importantly, it’s changed the way music is produced. It’s produced to target the attention span of people on the go rather than the few who put on an album to just sit back and listen.

Given that, it’s kind of hard to make something evergreen when you’re only thinking of making it go viral right away.

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

Humans have this horrendous habit of taking pleasure in watching others fail. We love tearing others down and feeling satisfied at watching them fall. It’s like we feel so insecure about ourselves that our only recourse is to bring misery as our only output.

Case in point—the Internet has been our greatest experiment in anonymous commentary (or commentary through an avatar of ourselves) and we’ve seen what that brings. It didn’t even take social media to bring that out in us because this was happening in the early days of message boards.

However, the level of malice normally reserved for the virtual world is becoming commonplace in public spaces.

It’s become such an accepted part of who we are that we now give advice on how to “block out the noise” or “rise above” or “accept the haters.”

Then we have the audacity to turn around and complain that our communities, and our countries, are in such disarray.

They will continue to be this way until we set a new standard. A standard in which we work towards building each other up, challenging each other to do better, encouraging when we’re down, being honest when it’s required and celebrating our successes.

If we can do that, then we won’t have to talk about building a better society because we will have created one.

For such people, the problem is not that the future holds a new danger, such as a nuclear war, but that there might be no future at all.
-Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer

Right now, it appears the sentiment is there will be a future, but there’s a general elation among people who won’t be around for it—and a dread for those who will.

In other words, you’ll be hard pressed to find those who see a brighter tomorrow.

However, we’ve been here before and the question we should be considering is this:

What’s the timeframe we need to make our future bright again?

I’m sure it was on the minds of those living a hundred years ago.

At my home growing up, we always had treats and drinks ready in case people suddenly showed up, which was often. The house was always kept clean and (aside from the drawers and closet in my room), tidy.

My friends used to joke that they sometimes would throw food on my floor to eat off it just because they could. These same friends would also knowingly show up at my house when I wasn’t there to eat the leftovers out of my fridge. My mom was happy to oblige because I was such a poor eater.

Whatever the case, my home was always ready to receive people.

This was the baseline I had for my own home, which set an expectation, to be honest, that’s been driving me crazy. Failure to reach this level resulted in feelings of constant embarrassment because I never felt like people can just stop on by. If they did, I felt apologetic the moment they came in the door.

That was until I finally understood a distinction and recognized an issue.

In the world of constant comparisons with others online, there is a feeling of inadequacy that your home can never measure up. While I still strive to keep a somewhat clean home (I’m told trying to clean with kids is like trying to brush your teeth while eating Oreos), these perfect setups online are only good for the camera.

Which helped me finally make the big distinction between hospitality and entertaining.

When you’re entertaining (e.g. birthday parties and Christmas dinner), you set your home up in a certain way to accommodate the event. Everything needs to be in its place.

However, hospitality is very different.

If you come into my home, I can easily make a cup of coffee, put together a few snacks and pull up a few chairs.

If you bring your kids, I have toys scattered everywhere and assure you, nothing is precious around here that they need to tiptoe in every room.

I got popcorn if you want to watch a movie, blankets by every couch for you to be cozy and a cat that might show his face when he wants attention.

Sure, you might not be able to eat off my floors (yet) and I might not always be ready to entertain, but you are always welcome to come on by because I will always strive to be hospitable.

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.
-Thomas Sowell

Of course, this is all predicated on people willing and ready to hear the truth.

And actually accepting it.

When pressed to remember the happiest years of childhood, many will recall memories from the ages of 9-12. There’s been studies to suggest this is also the point of peak happiness in life that you don’t achieve again until your mid-sixties.

It doesn’t surprise me that people often look back at those years as the golden era of humanity.

My typical summer day during those years involved waking up, having a bowl of sugary cereal, getting some pocket change from my mom and taking off on my bike for the day. Sometimes I would bike alone, but each day felt like a new adventure to somewhere in the city. Provided I came home to eat a proper meal at some point, no one thought any different of it.

Yet, despite this being my own childhood, I hesitate to do this for my own kids. In fact, in speaking to my mother, even she remarked she wouldn’t have allowed me to do this as a child today. Part of me feels torn on this as it’s difficult to reconcile my protective instinct as a parent with the carefree memories of my childhood.

However, I can’t help but think younger generations will think of different reasons why their “golden years” shone so much. Maybe their golden time wasn’t marked by taking off on a bike and ending up halfway across the city, where they would eat a popsicle at a convenience store and ride back, but by something different.

After all, the golden era for me, is different than the golden era for my parents, and it will be different for my kids.

My only hope is that it will continue to exist for all of us.

During a discussion with my wife, we veered into the ideology of the FIRE community. From the surface, it’s a very laudable goal: save 50% or more of your income, living as minimally as possible, invest the rest and retire early.

My wife relayed the story of a family member of her coworker who did this very thing. Their kids are off to school now and they are retired early with no debts, however, all their opportunities to travel or be part of community activities as a family are gone. Since they never did any of it (focusing purely on the goal of retiring early), they missed out on something they can never get back.

I get the appeal and the arguments for pursuing this route as you wind up with no debt, no mortgage and no fear of being locked down to any particular line of work just to pay the bills. The common phrases thrown around within the community include, “getting out of the rat race” and “not waiting until a time when you can’t enjoy life anymore.”

This also stretches across the divide from the ultra-frugal community to the “make mad bank” entrepreneurs looking to build a multi-million dollar business to sell. Same type of sacrifice, but with a heavier dose of luck required for this to work out. Actually, luck is required for both these camps, but that’s beyond what I want to get at here.

There’s good lessons to take from what they’re doing (mainly a rampant stampede upon mindless consumerism and learned helplessness) and everyone should have a strong foundation of financial literacy. However, I find their arguments beyond the numbers a lot less convincing.

People today are living longer, aging better and have a much better understanding of health than at any point in history. Yes, the vitality of a twenty year old will always be superior to that of someone older, but to say you’re wasting your “best” years needs another follow-up question:

Wasting them how?

I assure you the way a young person treats swaths of free time will seem incredibly more wasteful than an older version of themselves. Also, preferences, tastes, hobbies and even goals change over the course of time and as a young person, you just don’t know what you want. Rather, you think you know until you get there and then have to contend with the disappointment that it’s nothing to celebrate (I’ve heard it referred to as the arrival fallacy).

I think beneath the surface is an underlying issue that says we don’t know how to enjoy ourselves until we’re free from having to do anything. That the allure of never having to work again is a retaliation against this North American value that your meaning in life is tied to what you do. That putting your faith in a market that must grow is the only solution.

When we focus on the numbers, we miss the moments we could’ve had with our family, friends and community.

There definitely comes a point when, as my mother-in-law so wonderfully put it, you hit your “best before” date. But there are many ways to enjoy your life along the way before you get there.

I like people admitting they were complete stupid horses’ asses. I know I’ll perform better if I rub my nose in my mistakes. This is a wonderful trick to learn.
-Charlie Munger

Despite shaking my head at some of the stuff I’ve written over the years, I have chosen not remove a single word of it. This includes the stuff I don’t necessarily believe anymore, agree with, have moved on from or is even in contradiction to where I am today. I mean, a few of my posts on LifeHack had glaring grammatical and spelling errors, and I’m okay with it still being posted.

I keep it there because it’s a chance to see the best of what I could produce at the time.

A chance to see where I’ve been wrong, how I’ve evolved and where my writing has been.

More importantly, a chance to see who I was at that moment.

In looking at the broad span of time in which I can see myself, it gives me the encouragement to continue with the path I’m on right now. It shapes me, keeps me honest and helps me avoid the same critical errors (although committing new ones is still pretty easy to do).

There used to be a real feeling of shame over other mistakes in life—a pang of regret, mired in anger, for doing such a thing or being such a way. Admittedly, ego and stubbornness also play a part in this as it’s responsible for protecting my current self by distancing it from any other version of me that existed.

It’s taken a while, but that feeling is (almost) gone.

I can now look upon those moments and say,

“Yep. That was a mistake. Here’s the correction. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.”

In 1958, Leonard Read published an essay titled, “I, Pencil” which is arguably one of the most famous essays in economics.

The basic summary is this:

Not a single person today knows how to make a pencil, from beginning to end.

When you consider the resource extraction, the transportation, the manufacturing, marketing, shipping and all the ancillary industries that feed into its production (right down to the person who makes coffee for the workers), it’s a very complex system.

And we’re talking about a pencil.

I look upon this essay now in a world that is incredibly interconnected and excruciatingly complex, but people insist on reducing it to the most simplistic ideas, and sincerely wish more people would heed its message.

If we want to understand things, we have to be ready to wade into incredibly deep waters.

One of the major themes I’ve been touching upon in my writing here is solitude and admittedly, that comes from a complete projection of my own life.

I grew up in a very busy household with a revolving door of surprise guests, endless phone calls and what appeared to be a weekly family function given the numerous relatives. It only occurred to me recently why the library and Church were two of my favourite places.

And given the hidden hunger for peace and quiet, it was no wonder I always signed up for a retreat. While I don’t want to completely disregard the spiritual fulfillment they would provide, I cannot deny my attraction to them came for a longing of quiet solitude.

However, as we are creatures of habit, my first few years living alone wasn’t the seamless transition you would expect. I spent most of my time with other people or inviting them over to my place rather than settle into the peace I was really seeking in life. I wanted solitude but I didn’t want to be alone.

Humans are social creatures—who knew!?

As the world became more interconnected and the romanticized idea of “cabin in the woods” drifted away (I mean, find me a wooded area developers haven’t put a bid on), a hunger for the solitude I once sought increased. Not just for me, but for others as well.

The idea of going on a retreat now seems superfluous as any given retreat getaway is marketed and advertised to attract as many people as possible. The irony of economics trumping the very thing it’s trying to sell is not lost on me.

Even the monasteries, temples, ashrams and hell, campsites, are flooded or closing down in light of the continuous expansion and development of our world, which leaves us the question:

Where can we go for solitude?

Or, as the titles of this post asks, where do we retreat to now?

The person who can answer this question will be doing a great service to the world.