June 14, 2024
Few things, wish you learned early
First published in Jun 2024 on LI
As you mature, you realize there were few things you wish you were taught in high school that could make the world more peaceful and joyous around you:
- Optimize Ending Things on a High with Someone:
Anne Frank once wrote- “Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude”. This leads to irony where we celebrate someone’s life, write eulogies and bring flowers when they are no longer there to experience any of it, but we rarely send flowers to someone when we end things with them. Because we fail to realize the ephemerality of Life until it’s not there.
End things on a High with someone no matter how bitter the end.
Send a bunch of flowers to that person who broke off with you. Cut a cake for that person you worked with, on their farewell day. Say an eulogy when both of you are alive to witness it than wait for the day when one of you aren’t. Celebrate the gratitude of good moments with them, then the Regret of bitterness in relationship.
- Optimize Maximizing your Free Time as soon as possible!
Life’s purpose, whatever you realized it might be for you, isn’t truly possible if you don’t maximize your “free” time in life. Time that you have full control on, that is not defined by having to sell your time to someone else, just so are able to support you and your responsibilities every day.
Only when you are not busy chasing things, and have free time, is when you can actually chase your “purpose”, however small that could be.
Because Time is the Original Currency of Life. Rest everything is a derivative.
However, Money is the currency of Time.
The greatest inequality of Life is not Money. It’s TIME. Money buys you time.
When you hear some wealthy person say that how they can buy anything but can’t buy time, they are ignorant of how much time advantage they have.
Take Uber vs trains. Have multiple nanny and stay at home parents instead of both parents juggling between jobs, racing to work and coming back to take care of kids.
Have your whole tuition paid by wealthy parents rather than working side jobs, waiting tables at a restaurant or spending few hours a week grading tests for professor and still getting in debt. Want to buy groceries, have someone deliver it to you at extra fee rather than choosing out the budget stores and picking things yourself.
Money makes society consider you credit worthy, gives easy loans, higher capital to start that business or passion you dream of rather than keep pushing hard, spend more days, weeks, months to get access to that loan to finance your aspiration
And over the years all these little differences in time that money creates starts to add up. They build into something bigger.