the beach life

Yesterday when it got cold, after overhearing several people talk about moving someplace where it doesn't get cold, I started trying to imagine what it would be like to --
Live Someplace Where It Doesn't Get Cold.
And I found I could hardly imagine such a thing.
Which is weird because I have an active, flexible imagination -- I can imagine a lot of stuff -- why can I not imagine Life in a place where no winter coats are ever needed...??

It's like -- it's not My life.  That wouldn't be "reality."  It's something I'm so unaccustomed to, it seems -- foreign, and like something I never even consider....

Why don't I "think outside the box" on this topic?  Hmmmh.

Am I trapped in my Protestant Work Ethic, believing Life has to be challenging, Winter has to be cold, and Work has to be Hard?  (Some ancient Calvinist tendency, inherited in my genes and DNA from generations past -- nose-to-grindstone, work-work-work and Maybe there will be a reward and Maybe there won't....and going through life dogged by the nagging suspicion that somebody, somewhere, is Having A Good Time....What am I, a f-----g Pilgrim-?!...?) lol

--------------------------- And then, somehow, the consideration of Life in a Place where it Doesn't Get Cold -- migrates -- or -- expands into thinking about it as
Life
in a place
where it doesn't get cold
AND
you have financial security and leisure.

I don't know why -- we were talking about No-Winter, not Wealth & Leisure, but somehow once you tune-in your imagination to No Winter, other images crowd in, at least they do, for me.

Thinking of a movie where this guy writes to a high school and asks them for their yearbook -- he looks up the photo of this woman he was in love with -- under the photograph, it says her name, her extracurricular activities, and "Ambition:  to be rich and live in an exotic land."  Then at the end of the movie we see the woman -- reclining in a deck chair, or chaise lounge, her head tipped back, proud and haughty, or maybe just relaxed and bored.  Or -- calm.  Unsmiling.  She's wearing sunglasses.  Blue sky, a tree-covered hill in the background, beach, and ocean is either seen, or implied.  A man next to her says something in French. 

And you think, "Ah!  She achieved her high school ambition -- to be rich and live in an exotic land."

(My high school ambitions were not like that -- I didn't want to leave the country and live in Europe or on an exotic island...)

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