What Makes a Life Rich?

You see a name on your phone and remember you have been meaning to call. You miss talking to them. You wonder how they are and whether that thing they were worried about ever worked out.

But tonight you are tired, and tomorrow turns out to be busy. You keep telling yourself you will call when you have a bit more time. Then you open the conversation one day and realize your last message was a month ago.

There was no argument. You still care about each other. Somehow, keeping in touch became one more thing you were going to get around to.

That is worth paying attention to. We can spend years making life more comfortable while leaving very little room for the things we hoped the comfort would give us.

What freedom is for

In The Simple Path to Wealth, J.L. Collins treats money as a way to gain freedom over your own life. Having enough gives you room to leave a job, take a break, or choose work without depending on the next paycheck. His discussion of life beyond retirement makes that freedom the point of building wealth.

Having enough gives you more choice over how you spend your life.

It is worth thinking about what happens after that. Suppose you had more choice. What would you actually want to do with an ordinary week?

You might want to keep doing work you enjoy, with less worry about losing it. You might want to be available when someone needs you. Or you might just want to finish the day with enough energy to have a conversation and mean it when you ask how someone is.

It is easy to imagine freedom as a big change somewhere in the future. The smaller version can be harder to notice. Sometimes it is an afternoon you could keep free, if you were willing to leave something else unfinished.

That is where this reflection goes beyond Collins’s book. Some of what we hope to gain from a freer life may already be possible. We have just become used to putting it last.

What would enough look like on a Tuesday?

Collins also uses a story about a monk and a minister to explore the relationship between needing less and being free. In the story, the monk’s simple life lets him avoid depending on the king’s favor.

It is a useful thought to carry beyond money. The more we require before we allow ourselves to feel satisfied, the harder it becomes to arrive at enough.

There is always something else to work toward. A better job, a little more security, the feeling that you have finally caught up. These can be reasonable things to want. The trouble comes when reaching them never changes how you live.

You get through one busy stretch and immediately begin another. The break you promised yourself moves back again.

It helps to think about an ordinary day rather than an ideal future. Imagine a Tuesday you would be happy to repeat. Think about the work you would do, the people you would see, and how you would feel when you got home.

Some parts of that day might take years to make possible. Others might be as simple as having lunch away from your desk or leaving one evening without plans.

Of course, having a choice matters. Someone working two jobs or caring for a sick parent cannot simply decide to have more free time. Secure housing, food, and care make an enormous difference. There are seasons when getting through the week takes everything you have.

But when there is a little room to choose, it is worth noticing where that room goes. Otherwise even a more comfortable future can end up feeling much like the present, with every hour already spoken for.

Some things will be different later

You can love someone and still miss the chance to know them during a particular part of their life.

A friend who lives nearby may move away. A child who wants you to sit beside them may eventually prefer to shut their door. Your parents may be well now, while an ordinary phone call still feels like something you can put off.

There will be good things later too. But they will be different things, and we do not get to choose which parts stay available.

That is where memento mori can help. Remembering that life ends makes it harder to assume that everyone and everything will wait until you are ready.

It does not mean every visit needs to feel important. An afternoon spent talking about nothing can be lovely precisely because you are comfortable together. You do not need to improve it. You need to be there for it.

Looking at your weeks

A life calendar gives every week the same amount of space. A week spent recovering from surgery looks much like a week spent on holiday. The picture cannot tell you what either one meant.

There is something useful about that limitation. There is enough pressure to make good use of our time without adding a score to it.

Some weeks are hard. Others are repetitive or mostly taken up by work that needs doing. They still belong to your life. You do not have to make every one memorable to justify having lived it.

What the calendar can do is help you notice something you have been overlooking. Maybe you keep saying you miss someone but never make plans to talk. Maybe something you enjoy has slowly disappeared from your days. You might realize you have been tired for a long time and need to stop asking more of yourself.

Once you notice it, the picture has done its job. You can close it and decide what to do next.

Start with the week you have

There is no need to redesign your whole life tonight. Think of one thing you would be sorry to lose touch with and see whether you can make a little room for it in the next seven days.

That might mean moving something else. It might mean accepting that the call will be short or that you will still be tired when you make it. Waiting until you can give something the perfect afternoon can become a way of never giving it any time at all.

You can keep preparing for the future. There is nothing wrong with working hard toward a life you want. It is also worth letting yourself have some of that life along the way.

Open the conversation. Ask when they are free. You probably have plenty to catch up on.

See your weeks

Source

J.L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth. The ideas about freedom, having enough, and the monk and the minister are paraphrased. The highlighted passage is adapted rather than quoted verbatim.

Keep reading

• How to Practice Memento Mori

  Five concrete ways to remember you will die without turning it into a mood. Includes the morning question, a weekly calendar, and what to skip.

• A Life in Weeks

  An 80-year life is about 4,160 weeks. A life calendar makes that number visible so you can stop spending time you do not have.

• Famous Stoics on Death

  Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus treated mortality as a working tool. Here is what they actually wrote, and how to use it.