August 3, 2010

Why is Wealth Always Wasted on the Driven and Motivated?

I dreamt I had money.

And not just money, but money. It was two hundred yards of immaculate bluegrass from the lakeshore to my whitewashed chair on a whitewashed deck between white oaks and an avalanche of kudzu, and a humid breeze evaporated the traces of grapefruit juice and Bookers on my top lip. There was nothing to pull me away – no meeting, no timeclock, no errand – and if the notion took me, I could have lethargessed in that chair for a month.

And that’s exactly why – outside of a dream – I will likely never find myself in that chair. An interviewer once reportedly asked Warren Buffett why he wasn’t content to stop at, say, a billion dollars and spend the rest of his life relaxing. Buffett tersely replied that anyone who aspired to stop working didn’t have it in them to ever become wealthy in the first place. I’m despondently certain he’s right.

Given the means and the time, I wouldn’t collect cars or finance films or tend topiaries, so there are no secret clues to what my destined vocation really is. Given the means and the time, I would sit in the sun and read for days on end. That’s it. And don’t tell me I’d get bored. Like the midlife salesman who swallows his fury every time someone tells him "Oh, I enjoy traveling! I think I’d like that!", equally complete is my dismissal of the limits of my languidness.

In a literal sense, of course money can’t buy happiness. But it can buy a functional copy of The Great Gatsby*, a whitewashed chair, and two hundred yards of immaculate lakefront bluegrass. Explain to me the difference.


*Yes, I get the irony.

No comments:

Post a Comment