On Time - The Real Currency
When I see a young woman dating an older guy for his wealth, I think, she has not yet learned the value of the material she craves. The cost is her youth. Time is the ultimate currency. Life of the moment.
We amalgamate access to a currency, as it is currently (in step with social currents) welcomed that we are given the level of responsibility to save time, but time is the valued commodity and is finite, equal in value and potential between us. The bank of a river is still a bank regardless of the width of the river. A bank is also an institution or individual responsible for holding a currency, large and small.
A business owner employs an individual to assist him with a task related to his business and would find no time saved as the business owner carries on his task of business with still the same rest time as a man working for himself, by himself.
Wealth may be paid to someone else to accomplish a task in a faster time than it would take us, someone who is more inclined to another particular task—but we still have to work for a result. Typically someone who allots the currency in a socially preferred way, responsibly, becomes in charge of more.
But our capacity to experience a moment in time is no greater than someone with more money. The bank of a river may have more pressure on it as the river grows, but it is still only the water that it feels.
I can afford things Elon Musk (a bank that determines the allocation of currency) can't on a regular ongoing basis. Privacy. Anonymity. Appreciation of the natural world. Wild deer meat. A self-made wooden bow. A trip alone to the Canadian outdoors. Not to shower at all during the week. To change the task, I am working on ten times in ten minutes. Eat with my hands. Eat whatever I want. Have a robust physical disposition. Some of those things he would not value. He can afford them, but to purchase many on an ongoing basis is probably not an option. On the other hand, Elon wastes time experiencing things I could not be paid enough to endure.
As certain commodities become available, others become too costly, and so it was never about the price at all but the time we chose to invest in acquiring that thing or state. What was sacrificed to get what we only imagined would be the result, would be the end goal—because what we get is often never really what we thought we were trying to achieve anyway.
Time is the ultimate currency, as we think by spending it, we will save it too; but is this really the case on scales? We practice to achieve a state of excellence in a discipline at the cost of potential.
We've all had those thoughts—"Why does he need all that money?" The rich guys are still on the edge; they have only so much of a belly to fill, so much time to have fun, and so much they can experience joy, sadness, hunger, and worry.
How many times has your tether to life reached a hair's breadth? So close have so many of us stared death and the devil in the face, and sometimes we capitulate for another day, quit with regret, or stand halfway to the summit freezing, and never did the number in a computer somewhere representing our available funds mean a thing to inner success or feeling of failure we experienced in that moment.
Money does not buy freedom. The meaning of "current" as applied in the label of "currency" is a force that is not extinguished but transferred, moved around, or redirected. People do not acquire abundant wealth; they control more of a particular form of force and thus less of another form. They trade time for experience—if you are efficient with it, all we get is the responsibility to access more. They trade in opportunity. The economic term, opportunity cost, is ever present.
Anyway, why do I feel like so many people around me chase money, only money? Maybe I'm just looking at the same things?
Time is most precious; invest it thoughtfully.
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