Isn’t it funny how you can spend your whole life perfecting your craft, only to have it all come to an inevitable end?
But that’s the big picture, isn’t it? That’s life and whether it makes sense or not, it’s totally out of our control.
In our few years here on earth, we should have enough time to accomplish goals, learn skills, or even become experts in our field. We should be able to learn, get experience, and make a comfortable life for ourselves.
As time goes on, we start making more money and are able to pay off a house, invest in the market and finally start getting a foothold. By the time retirement comes around, we should have enough money to have some freedom and do the things we want to do. Of course, that is as long as our health holds out.
Let’s look at an example:
John graduates with a business degree in finance at the age of 21. He is lucky to get an entry level job at a major bank right out of school. For the next 40 plus years, he works for 3 different companies, getting raises and promotions along the way. Working his way up the corporate ladder, he accepts a position as CFO at a prestigious firm for the last 10 years of his working career.
Meanwhile John got married, bought and sold a few houses, had 3 kids, learned French, and mastered the guitar.
Seems like a very well rounded life. Now that he’s retired, John decides to do some travelling, learn Italian, and has his eye on purchasing some vacation property in Italy.
Fast Forward 20 years, and John and his wife are retired and living in Italy. Finally, he can relax and look back on a life well-lived. He knows he doesn’t have much time, but he’s made peace with that.
Once John and his wife are gone, his assets are divided amongst his 3 kids. That wealth may or may not carry on, depending on how it’s managed. As for John, all his skills, everything he’s learned, practiced, mastered, experienced is gone for good.
Like every other tangible thing in this life, you can’t take it with you. Sure, you can pass on certain things, but a life’s worth of experience, talent, knowledge dies with you.
Some would say it’s a complete waste. Why bother doing any of that if, in the end, it’s all for nothing?
Well, I’d venture to guess that we do it because we either enjoy it, or the alternative (being poor and having nothing) is so unpalatable that we force ourselves to get up in the morning and go through the motions – even if that means going to a job we hate.
Most of the time, the experience, talent, and expertise that you bring to the world is replaceable. Someone else will be graduating this year and stepping in to fill the void.
However, in some circumstances, those skills really are irreplaceable. Take a surgeon who is one of few people in the world who can perform a certain complex operation. Their death is certainly going to be felt by many people. The same could be said for famous musicians and actors – one of a kind right there.
Looking at life from this perspective really opens one’s eyes to how wasteful the universe is. Or maybe it’s just that it looks that way from my humble perspective. I doubt that anyone completely understands life in terms of the grand scheme of things. Maybe it has to be this way or we would not exist at all; hard to say.
In the end, you have to trust that the system that is in place which brought all this into being is capable. We have to trust that there is a reason things are the way they are.
We may not like it, but it’s out of our control.
