The Rules

If you’ve been to “The Trip” page, you’ve probably seen the rules.

We didn’t draw them out of a hat.  Here’s the breakdown:

Rule #1: $32.25 per day.

This is based on a simple calculation.  A family with one wage earner making minimum wage will take home about $1,000 per month.

We’re trying to make ourselves less, so that others become more.

This isn’t an endorsement of any minimum wage legislation, just a simple fact.

$1,000 per month is equal to about $32.25 per day.

Essentially, we pretend that we get paid $220 every Sunday.  It’s comforting to know that we have a significant cushion in the bank, but we don’t touch it (unless we need a new transmission).

Rule #2: Money does roll over.

Simple enough, if we only spend $200 this week then we can add the remaining $20 to next week’s $220.

Rule #3: 100 miles per day maximum

This is based more on our budget than anything else.  At 11 miles per gallon, and a price of $3.00 per gallon of gas, it costs about $27.27 to drive 100 miles.

This gives us a little money to eat.

Rule #3 is also philosophical.

To be cliché, life is a journey, not a destination.  The point isn’t to get anywhere (besides, we don’t really have anywhere to go) but to be going.

The American economy and philosophy is based on production.  The best way to do something is the fastest, cheapest or easiest way to produce results.

This hampers our religious outlook.  God doesn’t work in products.

There aren’t seven easy steps to being God’s perfect Christian.  God’s work in us is never complete.  Unless we’ve reached nirvana we can still grow in the love of Jesus.

Our American lives our built around the idea of production.  We work to produce a college education.  When that product is complete we work to produce a career.  Then we work to produce a family.  Finally, we produce a retirement.

At the end of the day, we’ve got an impressive list of things we’ve accomplished, but little life to speak of.

In the words of the Buddha, “It is better to travel well than to arrive.”

Rule #4: No touching of the hair or face.

I quote Ron Burgundy.  This rule has no significance whatsoever.

These are the rules.

These aren’t commandments, these are principles.  They can be bent and broken.

We have chosen to stop walking through our lives according to a production plan and to begin living our lives according to principles that make sense to us.

It is no longer important what we get done, as long as at the end of the day we can say that we were pleased with the way that we did it.

Did we do all that we could do?  Not anymore.

Did we live all that we could live?  Did we love all that we could love?

We’ll see.

Comments

i give English lessons to a Czech banker every Monday. Its conversational so I basically just sit there and he talks to me about everything.
anyhoo. we were talking about american lives vs. european lives. he broke it down very simply.
Americans value money over time.
Europeans value time over money.
Time is more important than earning that extra money or staying late at work to get stuff done. 
They take a month and go to the sea to relax.
Enjoy time. Not the money.