Spending

References to "lost youth" amuse me. The years of a healthy young adulthood are not lost. They are spent. How they are spent determines the future life of most adults. 

The concept of loss has merged irrationally with the concept of victimhood in U.S. media culture. Loss implies the passive, unavoidable subtraction of a benefit, talent or capability by accidental circumstance. Spending implies the conscious decision to participate in behaviors with probable or at least possible repercussions. Smoking, drinking and violence are clear examples of spending. Smoking cigarettes is a conscious decision to spend a certain amount of a body's capacity for healthy respiration and metabolism. Drinking alcohol is a conscious decision to spend a certain amount of the body's capacity for brain function, liver function and kidney function. Spending time in violent occupations, such as making war or policing, have potentially crippling and lethal repercussions.

Like compulsive shopping, habitual or addictive spending of the body's health has a cumulative tab to be paid. Hundreds of nights of inebriation inevitably yield an irreversible price. Years of smoking inevitably yield an irreversible price. Those who run up these tabs are not victims of lung cancer, emphysema, cirrhosis or diabetes. They have spent their capacity for health to acquire these conditions. 

The Buddhists speak of cause and effect. Part of the concept of cause is how a person spends time, thought and action in life. Effect is the result of cause. Good cause yields good effect. Bad cause yields bad effect. We are only beneficiaries or victims of our own spending, in other words.

Practice is a way of living on a spending budget for personal energy and health. The person who develops a practice based in intelligence and responsibility does not see himself as a victim when he reaps the effects of his own spending. Letting go of unfounded victimhood is part of liberation. Taking control of and responsibility for my own spending of time and energy is an essential part of what I call humanist practice.