Money, meaning, and happiness

"I just work, work, work," he said. 

His wealth is way above average, but he does not want to call it quits because he doesn't know what he would then do with his spare time.

He asked me if I have changed my car.  I told him I have, and that it is a small little car.  His is a northern European luxury car.

He has added quite a few pounds since I last saw him. He doesn't have the time to regularly exercise, he said.

He is not the only one either.  I know of quite a few--my age and older--who work despite being well-beyond a comfortable retirement savings and investment.  And they also complain about not having time for the things that they might enjoy.

Such is the life of the wealthy and the miserable!

It is not as if they have not heard, or read, or talked about the cliche that a dying person does not ever think that they should have spent more time in the office.  Yet, the lure of money keeps them doing time in the office, even when they hate themselves for doing that!

One classmate described having to invest $5 million a day — which didn’t sound terrible, until he explained that if he put only $4 million to work on Monday, he had to scramble to place $6 million on Tuesday, and his co-workers were constantly undermining one another in search of the next promotion. It was insanely stressful work, done among people he didn’t particularly like. He earned about $1.2 million a year and hated going to the office.
“I feel like I’m wasting my life,” he told me. “When I die, is anyone going to care that I earned an extra percentage point of return? My work feels totally meaningless.”

Earns $1.2 million and gripes.  It is more than the work being meaningless--it is about the feeling of a meaningless life.

Perhaps they never constantly ask themselves a simple question: "What if today is the last day of my life?"

I have blogged in plenty about meaningful jobs that may or may not pay well, versus bullshit jobs whether or not it pays well.  I, for one, am glad to be doing something that provides me with meaning, both at work and in my personal life.

The author of the piece in the NY Times that got me thinking about these, Charles Duhigg, is a journalist.  A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.  And, with an interesting academic credential: He is an MBA from Harvard Business School!  He writes:

Some of my classmates thought I was making a huge mistake by ignoring all the doors H.B.S. had opened for me in high finance and Silicon Valley. What they didn’t know was that those doors, in fact, had stayed shut — and that as a result, I was saved from the temptation of easy riches. I’ve been thankful ever since, grateful that my bad luck made it easier to choose a profession that I’ve loved. Finding meaning, whether as a banker or a janitor, is difficult work. Usually life, rather than a business-school classroom, is the place to learn how to do it.

I am all the more convinced that I am a lucky guy!