In a way, I embraced the lying back principle years ago. I knew not long after high school that i would never be financially wealthy. I really never much cared though. I love the life i have lived thus far, and I don't feel like i have wasted it rotting away in some cubicle, slaving away for things i don't need.
Lying back isn't as passive as it might seem.
Lying back is how the mantis seizes it's prey.
The other day, one of my friends was talking about borrowing my car for his regular trips to a city about two hours drive from here. I have an electric car, and gas is costing him around $75 per week. Now, I spend a fair amount of time charging my car. In order to keep electric bills from jumping, I charge of free public stations as often as possible. There is a time cost there, but... I certainly don't have to pay $75 a week to do it.
Every few days I drive out to a charge station, one of a couple of my favorites with nice trees and flowers, and I get situated. Instead of trading a couple of hours for cash so that I can pay for gas, I trade a couple of hours for energy by waiting for it to be delivered to my car. That energy, if I paid for it, might cost me $25 a week, but not paying for it forces me to slow down a little.
I sit in the passenger seat, plug my laptop into an inverter, connect to public wifi and crank up the music.
That time is my time.
Instead of trading my hours for money to give to a gas station so they can give it to someone else to engage in an activity diametrically opposed to everything I believe in, I reclaim my hours and spend them as I choose. Maybe I take a walk. Maybe I sit and think. Maybe I take a little nap or write one of these blog posts.
I hear all of these complaints about inflation, but it doesn't really stress me. I'm laid back. A few weeks back I spent a little cash and got a 55lb bag of flour. Do you know how many loaves of bread I can make with that? Let bread cost what it will at the bakery, flour costs less and coming home to the smell of fresh baked bread has it's own value. Kneading out a dough ball only takes ten minutes, the rest is almost entirely just waiting. Patience leads to goodness.
I had a time in my life when I really stressed about money. Look at these bills, how much do I owe? How am I going to get it? I need a new computer, how can I get the parts? What do I have to do to finally get ahead? It was an endless cycle of work and frustration, always focused on what came next and how to get there. And then I got smart.
I grew up poor. My family has always been poor. I went back to my roots.
There comes a point when you have to take stock of the situation and prune away the unnecessary. Sure, you need a certain amount of money, but according to most sources it takes more than practicality dictates. When you lie back, it takes less than you think.
Poor doesn't exclude happy. It just means that when something breaks you scratch you head, look at how it goes together and then try to fix it. If you succeed, great. If not, you strip off the useful parts, scrap the rest and then you only get another one if you need to. Lots of times you just cleared off a little extra space on the shelf. When resources are limited, you limit your use of resources. It is that simple.