I've arrived about where I'd hoped to be. Maybe my story can help a younger person choose their own path and avoid the rat race.
Halfway through college I and many others looked around and asked just what are we being educated for? Berkeley's Free Speech Movement started from that question; asking why California's finest public education was programmed to produce cogs in a machine. (Much of Berkeley's research funding came from sources that Eisenhower had labelled the Military/Industrial Complex at the end of his term in 1960. That's where many graduates were programmed to go after graduation).
A lot of crazies climbed on board the Free Speech movement and I claim no affinity for them but the original, core question, asked by some very well educated young citizens, implied: can we create a more satisfying culture than that we were born into? Why accept that which we are programmed for? That was an era of idealism inspired by JFK, manifested as students helping with voter registration to share the American dream with more of its citizens, and JFK's creation of the Peace Corps as a means of furthering America's international interests using new forms of diplomacy.
I left college (Not Berkeley, but the JC down the street from it) and applied to the Peace Corps. Got my acceptance letter just before the US announced that 5,000 US 'military advisors' would go to Vietnam. I had an awful premonition....
I returned from the Peace Corps and returned to college with a pretty clear idea my government had gone off in one direction and I was going in a different direction. I got student deferments like Cheney, then that draft lottery determined that I would not have to serve a second period of service so I was free to script my own future.
One book I read in college as I neared graduation left a lasting impression: 'Of Time, Work, and Leisure' by Sebastian de Grazia, an American political science professor who spent part of each year at his second home in Florence, Italy. His point was fascinating, that with modern automation, it should already be possible to live a comfortable life with less than the traditional 40 hours/week paid work, and he predicted the work hours necessary for a good life would decline *if* individuals could resist the pressure in our culture to consume more.
I happened to be raised by a world class cheapskate (drove his last car 30 years, for example) so the minimal spending part was easy to attain. I got into construction for the income side of the puzzle and worked my tail off, but my largest year was only 1300 paid hours. (de Grazia was right!). I used the remaining time to buy and refurbish rentals. By year seven the rentals paid enough to allow me to take two years to go to grad school. (MBA).
That put me into the white-collar world at an income well above my day-to-day needs, and with two new daughters it was time for some stability. I started individual funds for the kids' college and started saving to eventually buy the other half of Dad's ranch upon his advice; he said expect to inherit half but to pay cash for the other half imediately upon his passing.
When I had accomplished what I needed to do, ie kids' college funds, ranch fund, savings, and a civil service pension with health benefits as underlying security for my own old age, I retired at age 54.
Life always has surprises. My free time was suddenly filled with helping elderly Dad deal with his second wife who was becoming uncontrollably crazy with Alzheimer's, then Dad's difficult final years, then Father-in-law's followed by M-I-L's decline including unravelling much chaos throughout their final years. Today we were over there cleaning out the house for the estate sale. Now finally it's just Mom who at 94 is clear-headed and proudly lives independently. (with a little help from a part-time paid caregiver. I strongly recommend this - trying to do elder care yourself will age you faster than them).
Responsibility for the kids is nearly over, one graduated and the other halfway there and fiercely independent. Both are sincerely thankful that their education is paid for and they won't have student loans. I want both of them to have the freedom of choices that I had. In this generation education loans are the leash that forces graduates to start the work/consume trap.
Older daughter continues working on campus as a research assistant and talks of going abroad as a contract English teacher, and younger daughter is leaving soon for semester abroad in India. I don't expect either to settle down in a conventional job for a while. I guess we raised them right.
Maybe this clarifies why I started with a used tractor at a quarter the cost of a new one. It does everything I need. What more could I want, that would be worth the hours work it would take to buy it?
As Don said a lot more concisely than I can - life is good.
