The idea of spending the best years of your life going to work makes no sense. Work is a form of slavery with the only difference being that slaves were provided for, whereas workers must provide for themselves. If you are at work as you are reading this, ask yourself: “What would you rather be doing right now?” When I asked myself this very question sitting in the cubicle of my fine government job, I imagined myself climbing on top of the Kaieteur Falls in Guyana to feel the power of this mass of water plunging into the abyss below my feet as I look over the edge of the crevasse. The obvious question that followed was: “So why are you not there? Why are you sitting in the cubicle? What are you waiting for? If you keep waiting, soon you won’t be well enough to make it up there.”
The thing is, as I resumed traveling, the days while I was on the road felt so fulfilling, it gave me the sense of purpose. After I have returned to my cubicle, that purpose was gone, but desire to come back to it was red hot. To keep the spark alive, I travelled and travelled and travelled, visiting three foreign countries and two exciting places in my homeland within a span of a few months. I spent my evenings exploring the world from my computer chair putting a list of next places to visit together in my head. And the more I was digging into it, the more I felt like each day I spent at work is a day wasted. I felt like I should be doing something exciting because that’s what makes my life feel fulfilling but spending the best part of each day at work wasn’t it.
The scenario of enslaving yourself by going to work during the best years of your life in order to save money so overtime, once you have reached retirement you can take it and fulfill your lifetime wishes makes no sense. There is simply something terribly wrong with that equation: first of all, you may not even live long enough to reach retirement. If that happens to be the case, then all you will have known your whole life is work. You will not have gotten a chance to enjoy yourself because your life has ended before you reached retirement. Secondly, even if you are one of few who live long enough to reach retirement, by the time you get there, you will not be physically or otherwise fit to do all the exciting thing this life has to offer.
It’s a long way to retirement. Anything can happen during those endless years. You could get involved in an accident that will negatively affect your mobility. Or you could develop bad disease that will in some way limit your ability to enjoy life to the fullest. Taking all that into account – don’t you feel the same way I feel? I mean, what sense does it make to spend the best years of your life, years while you are still able bodied – going to work, wearing yourself out performing your job duties – so one day, in the future, when you retire you could start enjoying yourself?
You don’t know what tomorrow brings. The time to enjoy yourself is now. Seize the day as it will never come back.