The Path to Wealth
On Living True to Yourself, Money, Wealth of Time, Connections, Vulnerability, Risks, the Square Footage of your House, Meaning, and Meritocracy
I woke up Friday morning with the day off of work. I had nothing planned for the day, which is very unlike me. Like most of us, I want to travel, see the world, and be with my friends. I’d much rather be hostel hopping in Europe or spending a long weekend on Bourbon Street! Instead, I had zero plans. Nada. To think I must always be doing something on a day off is probably a wrong mindset to have but I am working on that.
So when I rolled out of bed at 7:30 am, I was surprised. This was a little late for me! Most days, I am already up and moving by 6:30 am, no matter how hard I try to “sleep in”. The typical day is a quick breakfast and gym time, but this day, I decided to be slow. Slow in the way that you make your own breakfast sandwiches instead of heating up a frozen breakfast sandwich, you know? I wanted to savor the morning, to feel the breeze and smell the metaphorical roses. I had some plans (lift, run, dinner with friends) but mostly, I wanted to relax and recuperate.
Relaxing in the morning is hard for me. I don’t give myself the time - mainly because I feel guilty, or feel the constant need to be productive. But today, I talked back at that voice that shouts in the head of so many early-twenty-somethings like me. I needed slow. I needed peace. I needed to find myself outside of the noise of routine. I needed to separate myself from the patterns that forced me to think I must be doing something.
There was no rush. No hurry. And to me, in this moment, I realized that true wealth was being able to sit here and relish in this slowness. No set schedule is freedom, and freedom is its own form of wealth. As Nietzsche once said “freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves” - and that’s what I felt this morning.
The Wealth of Time
This type of wealth sounds weird. The definition of wealth is ‘an abundance of valuable possessions or money’. So we go and collect those, mostly because we can. We live in a meritocracy - we advance in life through career achievement, which often comes with monetary wealth. The more you achieve, the better off you will be. Good grades, good school, good first job, good career path, good gravestone, something like that.
This is a good thing. It’s very good that we are able to advance through achievement because it incentivizes people to achieve and make something of themselves. But we associate the rise through the ranks with material prosperity… but not always time prosperity.
My argument is that we forget that wealth is more than just money - it’s not just the freedom to spend money as we wish, but also our freedom to be able to spend our time as we wish. Chase freedom, not money.
David Brooks, a writer for the New York Times, touched on this in an interview on How To Live A Meaningful Life -
“But if you talk to people at the end of their lives about the times when they were most meaningful, it was not when they were self-sufficient. It was when they were utterly dependent on other people. And so it’s the opposite of self-sufficiency, but the meritocracy doesn’t tell us that. And the big lie of the meritocracy, which we pretend not to tell each other but we do in our actions, is that people who have achieved more career success are worth more than other people. And if you want to rip apart your society, that’s a very good lie to spread into it.”
What he is saying here is that yes sure, it’s great to have independence and to be able to do things by ourselves, but when we really find meaning is in connection with others. But the system that we live in, that tells us to achieve no matter what and no matter how, doesn’t tell us that connecting with others is the way to find wealth.
To be clear - you should want to chase the job, the career, the city, but none of that is any good if you’re rattling around alone at the end of the day. It’s easy to run on the hamster wheel and collect the accolades along the way but we have to remember what truly matters.
What’s usually most meaningful to people? Someone to share the house with. Friends to call. Working with people you respect. Finding joy in connection with others.
Connecting With Others
I think relationships with the people around you who you admire, love, care for, and respect are a huge determinant in how “wealthy” we are in life. Studies found that the effect of poor relationship quality on mortality is as strong as the effects of smoking and alcohol use, and even stronger than other important factors, such as loneliness. The people in your life matter and I have always tried to pour into those around me. Having good people around you is a simple way to make anything better.
No matter how much you dislike your job, you hate the hours, the work, the travel, etc. it can always be triumphed by the people. If you respect, admire, and genuinely like the people you work with, a lot of that hate can disappear. It can make the work and the hours more bearable. Traveling to boring places can be a lot more enjoyable. The people who you surround yourself with matter. Real luxury is having people in your life who energize you and who leave you wanting more. People who make the bad days better.
But to ever get there with those people and to ever have meaningful relationships with anyone takes vulnerability. Being able to be vulnerable with someone is a form of wealth, a form of power that supersedes any dollars and cents. It is part of a valuable relationship. You have people in life whom you can lean on when needed without fear of judgment, are willing to be upfront and honest in conversations with you, allow you to be your authentic self, and leave space as wide as an ocean for you to exist in is what creates meaning. Vulnerability is necessary for anything meaningful. It is almost a prerequisite because anything meaningful comes with risk.
Take Risks, Be Vulnerable
To take a risk is to be vulnerable. Being able to take real, substantial risks like starting your own business, publishing your thoughts on the web, saying yes to things that you fear, and whatever risk you desire to chase are a true sign of wealth.
Life is a journey up the ladder of success and it requires risk and vulnerability. David Brooks describes this as resume virtues and eulogy virtues in his book The Road to Character. Resume virtues are the things that make you good at your job, whether you’re good at Excel, a good public speaker, or a good leader. The things that make you objectively successful.
On the other hand, the eulogy virtues are the things they say about you after you pass. Whether you’re courageous, capable of great love, honest. There is an illusion that resume virtues and career success makes you happy and wealthy. We are led to believe our career is the core of our life. We are taught how to be externally successful and how to be competitive in the job market. It is important to succeed in our career but that alone doesn’t truly bring you joy.
Life requires the eulogy virtues. You have to live true to who you are and recognize we all come with weaknesses in our careers, our relationships, and our everyday lives. We have to understand these shortcomings and openly recognize that yes, there is where I may fail and yes, this is something I am working on. The world remembers you not for your accomplishments but for who you are, the depth of your character. It requires you to be vulnerable.
Being Yourself
In the Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware, a nurse who worked in palliative care, spoke of the most common regrets shared by people whose time was coming to an end. The most common was “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
Living true to ourselves is not easy in a world that wants us to fall in line and to be normal. It requires intentionality and us to wake up each day and go against the wind. The wind that tries to push us to fall back in line. A life lived on the expectations of others is time spent cultivating professional skills on a career path that is not best for you. Living on the expectations of others allows life to pass you by because you are busy but you haven’t found what truly makes you click. It is doing boring things that other people promote and approve of, but may not be right for you. It is judging others not by their worth but by their accomplishments. And it is a life that lacks commitment in a world full of options because we are led to believe something better has to eventually come along, right?
Live true to yourself.
I always think of this quote from Norm MacDonald to remind me the days might be slow but the weeks, years, and months, well, those go by fast.
“The only thing an old man can tell a young man is that it goes fast, real fast, and if you’re not careful it’s too late. Of course, the young man will never understand this truth.”
Wealth is more than the money that sits in your bank account or the square footage of your house. Wealth is living true to yourself with those that you love while doing things you love.
Appreciate you reading.
-Scantron
A lot of times we have our deepest, most meaningful and vulnerable conversations with strangers. Maybe we feel that because we'll never see them again, we have nothing to lose. Its so strange how in our day-to-day life, we get hung up on sharing the "what": what we did today, what our plans our for the weekend, etc. It's like our brain short-circuits into putting as little effort into conversation as possible. Of course, meaningful conversations every single time can get exhausting, but I think the point you're getting at is that our society is "vulnerability-poor". Great stuff as always man, looking forward to next week's issue!