Every Form of Refuge 

is a song about how we manage our time and money resources. 

I am in my 60’s, and the older I get the more I think back about life in my earlier years. Not sure why this happens, but I feel that I am comparing my experience back then with my experiences now.

All Resources are Scarce !

As a young single man I always earned money by delivering papers and later as a drummer playing gigs in local bars. I always had a few dollars in my pocket.

As a young family man raising a family, I quickly realized that there is only so much money we can spend. There is also only twenty four hours per day. So time and money are scarce commodities.

Money Scarcity

I can remember times when the kids were young, and we would have $100. of disposable income to spend. I wanted something, and my wife wanted something else. Priorities had to be made, and sometimes our personal desires got put on the back burner for the kids or the family’s greater good.

Time Scarcity

There is a natural rhythm of life, just like day and night. We get up in the morning and work through the day, relax in the evening with the family, and sleep at night, to rejuvenate ourselves. We work and rest.

There were times in my career, as a commission salesman I worked evenings and weekends to make a living, putting more time in for work, and having less for family time. A few years later with some success, I was able to work less than forty hours per week and make a living, in part because I had over worked the hours, building up a clientele a few years before.

Life is About Options

I look back on my problems in life, and there were usually a few options. These choices sometimes broke down to instant gratification or delayed gratification. I made my share of both instant and delayed gratification choices.

The Marshmallow Experiment

In the 1960’s, Walter Mischel, a Stanford professor was conducting a series of psychological studies with young children around instant and delayed gratification.

The experiments now are believed to be an important indicator of how a person will fair in their health, work and life in general.

Read more on it here.

https://jamesclear.com/delayed-gratification

Decisions ?

In hindsight, the best solution may be easy to see, but in the moment we don’t have all the information of how things will turn out. There can be many variables to consider.

Maybe people will let us down, maybe we will let ourselves down by not doing what we had to do. Maybe the task is too difficult for our abilities, or the environment circumstances have changed for better or worse.

We all make these types of decisions as we go through life. Sometimes we get it right and sometimes we get it wrong. That is how life goes, we can’t know everything at the time we make the decision, and we can’t make right decisions 100% of the time.

Financial Comfort

Sometimes we get a glimpse of what people feel is their financial security. Some people feel fine spending all their money, and living pay cheque to pay cheque, because they feel secure in their ability to work and earn money.

Others feel insecure if they have don’t have 6 months or more of savings in the bank, and are saving some of their income every pay day.

Living In Tents and Riding Bicycles

If a cheap price is the most important thing, we would all be living in tents and riding bicycles. A tent provides us shelter and a bicycle provides us transportation. Neither are very comfortable or practical in the winter, but they are the cheapest solution.

But price is not the most important thing. We all want some comforts in our lives. We also want a good reliable product, and maybe a little status to go along with it.

So lots of considerations as we make choices in our lives.

Every Form of Refuge

I wrote a song called Every Form of Refuge, included on my first album, Balance In Life. The lyrics of the song talk about the balance of time and money in our life.

The lyrics pose the question, is it better to overwork to have a higher lifestyle with a newer car and bigger house or, do we lower our lifestyle and enjoy a better, less stressful, quality of life ?

We each have to answer that question for ourselves, and we’ll will make our decisions based on varying degrees on the above question.

Time of Life

Time of Life, plays an important role here too. As a young family man, I worked hard because I wanted to obtain more and better things in life. In middle age, I tried to work smarter and earn more, to maintain my lifestyle, and increase it when I could. In retirement, a newer car or bigger house are no longer key desires for me. Health and enjoyment of daily life becomes a more important goal.

Every Form Of Refuge Has it’s Price

I observe young people making their way in life, with varying degrees of debt for vehicles and homes. They then spend varying hours of work to pay for these items.

We have probably all felt the urge to keep up with the Jones’s at some point in our lives, and I wonder how much that that plays in our decisions.

We each have to travel our own path in life, asking which Form of Refuge is better for us ?

Do I want to pay Price A or Price B ?

And with each answer we learn over time that – Every Form Of Refuge has it’s Price.

Watch the lyric video of Every Form of Refuge here –