TIME
Time is the most valuable commodity. It is possible to buy time, if you have enough money you can buy incomes, pay someone to do your cleaning etc. So, by definition, money becomes the most valuable commodity. I therefore should be correct in saying that the goal should be to achieve money for the purpose of buying time, right?
Here’s the irony, the most common way to achieve money is by giving up your time. For the purpose of buying back time? Or as they would say, to have enough to retire. Weird.
When all is stripped back all we have is time, and we are all equal, we all have the same time to begin with, i.e. we all have 7 days a week etc. Then when we are an adult we are forced to sell some (most) of it. We are forced to; we have to give some away for the purpose of money. To be able to live. You could say it is the law to go to school so we give time away as far back as this but this is something we should choose to do anyway so we’ll skip that, besides, using time to gain intelligence is no waste of time. So anyway, as already mentioned it is possible to buy this time back, albeit very expensive, say £2m minimum to achieve freedom, probably more like £4m to be honest?
Take someone like Ronaldo (this doesn’t have to be a celebrity) who is worth a fortune. He uses his time (playing football) the same as when he used to sell it, although he no longer sells his time. He is free. It’s just choice now. It just so happens that how he spends his time continues to earn him more money. The money aside, it’s the freedom bit that must be a good feeling. I guess the question is would he still use his time this way if he wasn’t paid? I’m assuming he would (although a ridiculous notion) but if the answer is no then he is missing the point. Something to bear in mind for ourselves.
Freedom isn’t about not doing anything with your time; it’s about owning all of your own time and never selling it to anyone ever again.
Here’s an interesting (yet debatable!) idea, we look down on the seedy parts of the world, take prostitution for example. We say they sell their bodies. Yet you sell your time. Time we have defined earlier as the most valuable commodity, so what’s worse? Leave aside that the prostitute also sells their time I guess. In fact you could say that if the goal is to achieve enough money to buy back the time you constantly sell then it should be commendable for her to sacrifice her body as opposed to (let’s not judge here) receiving less money using her waitress skills instead. As long as the money is spent on time in the end. I’m not saying this analogy with the prostitute is my opinion but it’s interesting to note the value of time vs other things we apparently value.
Obviously that paragraph is deliberately extreme but to highlight that people are so preoccupied that they miss what’s it’s all for. I guess the trouble is, most people sell their time and will never see it again. They will never be able to afford to buy it back and are resigned to this fact. In fact they haven’t even thought about it. So they end up ‘playing a new game’, they choose to just work a job they can bear and set random new goals within their game and just live, well not live but just exist. Because the real goal is unachievable. And that’s what I mean by being preoccupied.
They say money doesn’t buy you happiness. This is so false. It buys freedom which completely raises the ceiling on your happiness index. You stop being preoccupied. You can now achieve a level of happiness you couldn’t achieve before. People don’t like to hear this because it’s fear, it’s fear of being inferior I guess. With freedom you are leaping above them. Money is not the root of all evil, it is the root of, not all, but a higher happiness. But it’s about intelligence, even with money it’s lack of intelligence that doesn’t buy you happiness.
I guess the real goal is to achieve happiness, or the most happiness I think is better. But this is achieved by acquiring money and buying freedom which brings us back to our first goal.
I think in summary we never stop and see that we sell our time for money for the purpose of buying time. Life is baffling really. The goal for me is to buy freedom and never sell it ever again.
I’ll keep you posted.
The end.