LIVE LIFE TO THE MIN.

I really can’t be bothered to live my life to the max. It seems such a busy and frantic thing to do. And is that what the world needs right now? It’s not the do-nothing stay at home people who are ruining the planet. It’s all the go-getting people who are going and getting and soon there won't be anything left to get!

Nothing beats the minimum! Think about it in terms of the law of diminishing returns. When you are hot and thirsty a glass of cool water is refreshing. But the second and third glasses, not so much. I could try to “live life to the full” and go on an expedition to stand and stare at the Pyramids but I would rather have a close look at this flower in my garden first. Would the satisfaction I get from looking at the Pyramids be greater in proportion to the effort it takes me to go and look at them as compared to the effort required to look at the flower? In general the increase of satisfaction in excess of the minimum is marginal.

The goal of living your life “to the max” is an impossible one to achieve. It's a permanently receding target. Because there's no such thing as a max for what you might want. Once you’ve got what you want you can start wanting something else; there’s no end point. On the other hand some sensibly defined minimum goals can be achieved in a sustainable and stable way. To all of which you might object that I am denying myself so many pleasures for no reason. Well first of all I'm not advocating some kind of asceticism. I’m not disinclined to enjoy myself as I see fit. But I want to be sensible about it.

If a bad person lived their life “to the full” it would be a life full of doing bad things. Is that what we want?