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Make sacrifices, but don't get too carried away
Wednesday, 29 March 2006
We all have to forgo things we'd like to have today in order to get a bigger reward tomorrow. We spend unpaid time educating ourselves so we can get a better job, we save for retirement, and we work hard to buy nice things.
This is all necessary and is the way the world works. You reap what you sow. But in the rush of modern life, we sometimes lose sight of what it is we're sowing for.
All these sacrifices should have one end - to improve the lives of yourself and your family. You might be working hard to achieve what you want to achieve, but make sure the cost is worth the benefit.
A big house in a nice suburb is a great thing to have, for example. No family would turn one down. However, such a house is no substitute for having a parent around. Someone who works a seventy hour week to pay off a house they only sleep in, isn't giving themselves a very good deal.
Likewise, achieving something like building a great business can provide enormous benefits. But if it's coming at the cost of your health, your happiness, and your relationships then it's simply not worth it.
How about saving money for a better future? This is all well and good. But living in exaggerated frugality during your young and healthy years can be a terrible waste if you're too old and sick to enjoy the eventual benefits. Or worse, if you work hard and save your whole time on this planet away only to pass on just before your retirement is due. No matter how much money we've put away, it doesn't help us once we're in the grave.
As usual in life, it's about balance. You must often be prepared to give up something you'd like to have today - time, money, stimulation - in order to get something better tomorrow. Most people understand this, and struggle to get ahead.
But some people go too far - giving up everything that's good and happy in their lives because they feel they must do. The ultimate reward becomes almost secondary to "doing the right thing" and martyring themselves to some illusion of "success".
The one thing in definite short supply is our time on this planet. There's more than a billion years of time either side of our paltry eighty years or so of life.
Our time alive is one of the rarest commodities in the universe. Don't waste yours doing only things that make you miserable simply in order to appear virtuous.
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