People want to retire. Retirement is understood as stoppage of work. And work is understood as the set of things you have to do, and don’t want to do.
The fundamental delusion is that idea : someday you will be able to rest, and you will enjoy it for the rest of your life. Being relieved from work seems appealing, but it usually means old people sitting in a nursing home, waiting to collect their paycheck every month.
You have to get rid of this idea of stopping to work. For retirement does not mean that.
Here is the true definition of retirement :
When you stop sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow. You are retired when today is an end in itself.
Confucius put it like this : “We have two lives, and the second one begins when we realize we only have one.”
Truth is, you do not actually want or need to stop working. What you want is freedom from your money problems. Which means freedom from the things you have to do and don’t want to do.
In fact, working for a reward, supposedly obtained later, is a trap. Anytime you look for ulterior motives down the line to your actions, the satisfaction you will ultimately get will be short-lived. Anything you want in your life, cars, girls, money… when you actually get it, you go back to zero less than a year later. Your brain has hedonically adapted, and you are on the next thing, the next desire.
Of course, we are all humans, we all have desires, but to me, our job is to keep them from becoming too numerous. And to not let their satisfaction become the condition to our happiness. To some degree, we need to replace desires with intentions, and embrace what we are doing in the present moment, what we already have.
But that is only one of the three ways you can stop sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow — the three ways to retire :
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