It’s a played-out reference, but retiring is taking the red pill.
You question all your previous beliefs and realize you were trying to accumulate money for the illusion of happiness. You can’t hide behind the guise of being a good person by working for your family. You now understand to be a valuable member of your society; you need to improve the lives of those around you.
Money only empowers you to understand how pointless it is.
A certain level of money is necessary to avoid homelessness and famine, but the chase for it only clouds your understanding of your existence. Most Americans live with tunnel vision and money on the other end. They don’t understand that you can’t hold the people you care about when you wrap your arms around them.
The world spends so much time thinking about how great it would be to win the lottery or get the item they’ve always desired. Few take the time to figure out what life will be like when they reach their ultimate prize. We convince ourselves that obtaining our dreams will solve all our problems once we get what we want. This dream can be different for everyone; it was not working for me.
I believed that if I didn’t work anymore, I would have time to spend with the ones I loved and create the things I told myself I didn’t have time to make. But unfortunately, the reality is that I have even more time to question how I am spending my time. I spend more time thinking about the optimal decision versus actually doing anything. Even worse, when I make a decision that I feel is best for my future generations, I wonder how pointless it is when so few other Americans follow suit.
I don’t have a solution to my problem, but I hope I have at least another forty years to figure it out.
- Treat people how you want to be treated.
- Try to understand other people’s situations.
- Be willing to change.
These are some basic tenets of my life, but there is much more to learn.
