Don’t measure me by things
Yesterday, someone tried to get under my skin by throwing in my face that facts that I don’t own a car, that I don’t own my own home, and that I live in a bad neighborhood in a spare room with family. This person thought that would really hurt my feelings, but they couldn’t have been more wrong. If you think that bothers me, you don’t know me at all.
Fitting, then, that after this happened, I went home and opened Google Reader to find the latest post from Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar, talking about what it all means:
That luxury car and that sweet house in the suburbs are balms. They’re like putting calamine lotion on a very bad case of the chicken pox - you might lessen the itch, but the itch is still there and it will keep coming back no matter how much lotion you put on it.
What is the itch? That itch is your dreams, what your soul tells you that you should be doing with your time. That itch is the dream that you’re not chasing so you can drive that Lexus on your dreaded morning commute. That itch is the time you spend at meetings when you’d rather be your son’s Little League coach. That itch is the realization that you’ve just sold your dreams for a house full of consumer goods that are gathering dust while you sit in a hotel room watching sports on basic cable after a business meeting wondering what has happened to your life.
Exactamundo. Money comes and money goes, but time is in limited supply — once it’s gone you can’t get it back. I’m chasing my dreams, and they’re bigger than some mortgage or car payment. To quote Trent one more time, every time we make a purchase that doesn’t have real meaning for us, we’ve added another bar to our prison cell.
Tags: finance, life, money, self improvement