Waiting until you’ve earned enough?
We just recorded our autumn film for YouTube. A ritual we will repeat seasonally, but this just happens to be our very first one. It’s centered around the theme of journeys. The idea that there are seasons of life, just like there are seasons in nature.
So maybe because I’m so excited — or maybe because I’ve been thinking about the subject so much the last few weeks — I want to deep dive into just one concept from the video.
The slippery slope of chasing enough.
There are seasons of life, just like there are seasons in nature.
Perhaps without realizing it, we have chained ourselves to the worst tenets of the capitalist mindset. We have tied our earning ability, held to some arbitrary standard, as the threshold for worthiness. When we have made enough, then we can relax. Then we can really live.
It’s a consumer mindset in the most extreme way. But the thing we’re consuming is our life. Our days begin to exist primarily as the thing we trade for currency.
It’ll drive you mad if you let it. And you’ll miss your life in the process.
If you can resist the temptation to think of your life this way, to instead make up your own mind about how you choose to see the world, you can free yourself. Choosing to live now instead, to find joy and contentment while also continuing to work toward things you care about, this is truly rebellious. It undermines the globalized capitalist ecosystem.
In a world where success is monetary and our days are not gifts to be enjoyed but minutes dedicated to production, this shift of focus from enough to the journey is nothing short of radical.
Chasing enough often proves elusive. It’s as if it’s a carrot on a stick, always hanging just beyond reach. If you decide that a certain amount is enough, chances are when you get there, you’ll decide that a little more is actually necessary.
Our days begin to exist primarily as the thing we trade for currency.
It’s a hamster wheel. And it’ll drive you mad if you let it. And you’ll miss your life in the process. The one that exists when you stop thinking of yourself in terms of what you can produce. And ironically, this might be the very thing that sparks a flurry of a different kind of production, one full of things you actually care about.
And that is how you build a life where, at the very end, you look back proud of yourself. So next time you find yourself worried about producing enough or earning enough, just make sure you’re defining it all on your own terms. Because otherwise, the world is only too eager to define it for you.