A t-shirt as soft as a Carter’s onsie after many washes against my skin. The night sounds and a new moon. These are the things I want to fill my senses when living no longer has meaning.
Making ends meet implies you know what the ends are. Oh I know the traditional definition regarding financial means, the balance sheet of life, the P&L statement that proves your decisions were prudent and in the best interests of those involved. But then there’s that “Do the means justify the end?” question.
I have to take comfort in my vision of what the “ends” are before trying to make them somehow meet. Because when in life do ends ever meet? A picture comes to mind of the braided rag-rugs that adorned the hardwood floors in my Grandmother’s cottage. They had ends, or a beginning and end if you wish, but there was never an intention for them to meet. In fact, they purposely didn’t meet to create a beautiful, spiraling whole.
The end of the day never meets the end of the night. It seems to me that ends are singular; the end of the road, the end of summer, the end of life.
Curious to learn the origin of the phrase, I googled it. How simply accessible is knowledge these days? But do the means justify the end? Of course it comes back to financial terminology and the need to make enough to support oneself. What bothers me, is not knowing what the ends are, beyond numbers on paper. If the one end represents satisfaction, or better still happiness, the other end is the amount of wealth you can accumulate to provide that joy. Happiness and wealth are slippery slopes paved with rather vague words.
Last night, Julia and I sat on the front deck watching shooting stars and trying to name the constellations. We broke down and cracked out the iPad, tapped on the star-gazer app and counted satellites. Tonight, as I stood on the Whale Rock, feeling the warm granite through my bare souls, I imagined what else could define wealth? I took another bite into the security of “savings” today, I can’t help but think that I saved that stash so I could enjoy it and that is exactly what I am doing. Making the ends meet…
Therapeutic Misadventures 
Rock-Eating Microbes Found in Buried Antarctic Lake
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I’ve never thought of “the ends justify the means” as financial. I’ve always thought of it as it is ok to do something “bad” to accomplish something “good”. We all have different ends in mind, to me every end is only the beginning of something else.
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Good point Laura, I agree that every end is in fact a new beginning!
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I’ve learned that true happiness has nothing whatsoever to do with money. In fact you can be deliriously happy when you’re poor, and I know that from experience. Need and want are two very different things.
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It seems so simple, right?
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Oh, this is a good one. Conjuring up the image of your grandmother’s rug, nodding my head in agreement about the easy accessibility of knowledge (many a time I’ve wondered where or how a saying or term originated — ah, Google it!), replaying the time my husband walked the golf course and gazed at the sky — and being rewarded with seven (yes — seven!) shooting stars that night.
There are moments when I truly do ‘get’ what is really important in life and then the mad dash of everyday living blurs it from sight.
I’m 57 and hoping to retire in two and half years. And then — mad dash be damned!!!
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I’m 59 this year with no retirement in sight – if retirement means not having to get up and make a day’s wage. But then again, the mad dash has slowed to a gentle saunter so perhaps I have retired already?
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What is the point of money if you don’t enjoy it? One of the most distressing things about Commando Senior’s death was finding how much money he had stashed away while living a very frugal life. It seems to us he should have enjoyed it. On the other hand my mother left nothing but a falling down house. She didn’t have two pennies to rub together during her life and constantly struggled to survive. She was happy though.
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I will be like your Mum, not two pennies left but I will leave a home full of odd art relics from past lives! I would say its a generational thing with Commando Senior’s frugality but maybe it is more a personality trait. I just want to leave them laughing…
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