The Status Quo Trap?

I’ve been thinking lately about well, the future, and what that holds.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a working crystal ball (and I don’t know anyone with one), however, it is always going to be something to consider – where are we going to be in a few years time.

At the moment, I hope to have finished paying down sufficient amounts of the mortgage to a state where we can add the necessary third bedroom, and finish off what would be the long term plan for our house.

The planning always changes though – always. The granny flat out the back could easily be extended to, and we’d have that as a second living area – something an architect contact I have insisted was a necessity.

Back to the topic though, the random thought that was the subject “The Status Quo Trap” – I don’t know if I do or do not want to be doing the same thing, day in, day out until we reach some desired objective (mortgage paid off).

The trap would be where one would be caught up in the ‘norm’ that they find themselves unable to adapt should the future force a change. I think I would liken this to some of the people I’ve met in my younger years.

Thinking on that for a minute, I do realise humans are indeed adaptable to the changing world – basic survival instincts and the like.

Perhaps the trap is simply the outcome of having the same set circumstances for so long, that they accept that as normal.

This can be seen perhaps more so in my mother, more than anyone, who readily adapted so much to receiving government disability payments, she thinks they are a basic right. And then gets that for my brother and sister – who are certainly able.  She’s been on government payments so long, that any suggestion that there could be better is just unrealistic.

But I think back to my younger years, and well, I never saw kids at a younger age, I did somehow envision paying cash for property *yes, cash – my own money – but that was never going to happen!

Maybe that’s where the expression “Live life one day at a time” comes from – take each challenge that presents itself. And perhaps don’t aim to ‘better’ the present.

This has ties to sustainability too. If the situation we have at the moment, i.e. the ‘status quo’, is not ‘made better’, our world, regardless how it is perceived, is continually being abused and won’t ever recover.

The trouble with the ‘status quo’ is, because everything works, there’s no incentive to make it better, even if X has Y flaws.