Category: Philosophy

The highest dividend money pays is the ability to control time…

The highest dividend money pays is the ability to control time…

— Morgan Housel (link)

“Being able to do what you want, when you want, where you want, with who you want and for as long as you want provides a lasting level of happiness that no amount of “fancy stuff” can ever offer. 

The thrill of having fancy stuff wears off quickly. But a job with flexible hours and a short commute will never get old. Having enough savings to give you time and options during an emergency will never get old. Being able to retire when you want to will never get old.

Achieving independence is our ultimate goal in life. But independence isn’t an “all-or-nothing” — every dollar you save is like owning a slice of your future that might otherwise be managed by someone else, based on their priorities.”

Why has time disappeared in our culture?

Why has time disappeared in our culture?

— Jacob Needleman From “Money and the meaning of life” p. 29

… How is it that after decades of inventions and new technologies devoted to saving time and labor, the result is that there is no time left? We are a time-poor society: we are temporally impoverished. And there is no issue, no aspect of human life, that exceeds this in importance. The destruction of time is literally the destruction of life.

…

We rarely feel that our time is ‘our own.’ We rarely sense that we are consciously alive, now and here, free from compulsive worry about the past and the future, free fully to experience our lives. The coin of time has been degraded and cheapened to the point of vanishing.”

You really don’t own anything in life. When you’re born, and you come out of your mother’s womb, and you’re kicking and screaming, and you go through your 60, 70, 80, 90 years of life, you think that you own stock and money, and this, that, and the other, but really, you don’t own anything, because it all disappears, it all goes away, and you die, and there’s nothing left. The only thing, the only thing that you own, the only thing that we can say is that you own time. You have so much time to live. … Let’s just say you have 85 years to live. That is yours … Alive time is time that’s your own. Nobody tells you what to do, nobody is commanding you how to spend it. … Taking ownership of your time means I only have this much time to live, I’d better make the most of it, I’d better make it alive time, I’d better be urgent, have a bit of an edge, be aware of each moment as it’s passing and not in a fog.

You really don’t own anything in life. When you’re born, and you come out of your mother’s womb, and you’re kicking and screaming, and you go through your 60, 70, 80, 90 years of life, you think that you own stock and money, and this, that, and the other, but really, you don’t own anything, because it all disappears, it all goes away, and you die, and there’s nothing left. The only thing, the only thing that you own, the only thing that we can say is that you own time. You have so much time to live. … Let’s just say you have 85 years to live. That is yours … Alive time is time that’s your own. Nobody tells you what to do, nobody is commanding you how to spend it. … Taking ownership of your time means I only have this much time to live, I’d better make the most of it, I’d better make it alive time, I’d better be urgent, have a bit of an edge, be aware of each moment as it’s passing and not in a fog.

— Robert Greene

And now, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual, but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life — achieving a sense of peace within oneself. I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one’s life as well, when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest

And now, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual, but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life — achieving a sense of peace within oneself. I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one’s life as well, when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest

— Oliver Sacks