Chasing the Right Treasure

My whole life I was taught that money is the most important treasure. Work hard, go to school, study it (accounting), work to control it (be a controller) and then I could achieve the American dream of happiness.

Except, that’s not what happened. Getting there was quite miserable. When we did get there and had $100,000 in the bank, a nice house, and a kid… it didn’t bring happiness. It brought a strange sense of emptiness and a constant fear that we could lose it all if we didn’t make the right choices.

Looking around in the gated Utopia that we lived in I noticed we weren’t the only ones that were kind of grumpy and miserable. 

I remember going to the pool and no one would talk to us except the staff. The staff of this luxurious place were actually far happier than the residents. As I got to know many of them, I realized that wasn’t just because they were paid to appear happy: they just were happy...

This is the finish line? A gated community where everyone is locked away from other people and miserable?

When I look back on it, I often think about how gaining that life and then losing it all was probably the best thing that could happen to me. 

Yes, it was an extremely painful reset, but it really showed me that the “luxury life” wasn’t actually the finish line and it shouldn’t be the goal. 

It turns out, the most important treasure is NOT a big pile of money.

So, what then?

Elon Musk recently said in an interview that as AI starts to take over, that he predicts we won’t need money.

So, what then?

What do we do with ourselves if we don’t spend our whole lives chasing money?

What should we chase?