Don't die before you're dead
Money buys the freedom to say no. On comfort, expensive cages, and running out of time while waiting to live.
Sounds like another quote under a photo of some guy wearing a watch worth twice your house. But at least there's some will to live in that line. Some intention. Instead of this bullshit of yours: “Well, it's basically fine.”
Fine is the most dangerous fucking thing that can happen to you. Because when things are bad, at least you try to change something. When your ass is on fire, you run.
Once your ass settles into a comfortable chair, that's it. End of the road. You can sit there until they put you in the ground.
There's that worn-out saying: when you were born, you cried and the world smiled. Live so that when you die, you're smiling and the world is crying.
Yeah, fuck it. Today we're a motivational quote club. You'll survive.
There's one thing about that line that interests me. Will you have anything to smile about? Not your neighbors. Not your boss. Not the relatives you've finally managed to convince that you're the head of the family.
Did you actually live? Try the things you wanted to try? Ever stake anything on a decision of your own? Or did you just carefully tick every box someone else put on your life's checklist before you even got here?
A job. A loan. A car on finance, because apparently you're not enough of a success without one. A mortgage.
A family you started because it was time. A kid nobody was ready for. But your parents insisted.
At home, you don't talk anymore. You hand each other invoices. Who's more tired. Who owes whom what. Who fucked everything up again.
And you sit in your car in the garage for an extra fifteen minutes. Because it's the only place where nobody wants anything from you yet. But hey, you've got a proper life, just like everyone else.
Then the state needs cannon fodder. And it turns out your beautifully planned life can be canceled with a single piece of paper. Yesterday you were choosing a trim package. Today you're lying in a trench, waiting for a drone to hit you in the fucking face in 3, 2, 1...
And somewhere, your car payment and mortgage are still being debited. Meanwhile, your wife is working out how she'll buy a new iPhone with your death payout while your boss fucks her. Yeah, they've been having an affair for over a year, and you had no idea. Your boss arranged that draft notice for you, by the way.
I need money for a very simple reason. I want to be able to say: “No.”
No, I won't work here. No, I won't live here. No, I won't put up with being treated like this. No, you don't get to have my life just because I can't afford next month's bills.
That's what I want to buy. The freedom to walk away. The ability to choose. Time that belongs to me.
So when someone tells me “money can't buy happiness,” I want to ask:
How many fucking times did you hit your head on the tiles?
Try choosing where to live without money. Try leaving a job that's destroying you when you've only got enough in your account to last until Friday. Try helping someone you love when that help costs money you don't have. Then tell me how little money matters.
It doesn't guarantee a happy life. But a lack of it is fucking great at turning your life into a complete shitshow.
And against that backdrop, there are people who sign military contracts and go off to kill for a couple of million rubles. Sell their own lives. Not ten years of work. Not an apartment.
Their entire fucking remaining lives!
For an amount you can spend without even figuring out where it all went. An amount you can earn in a month or two! And for that money, they go and take someone else's life.
You have to be a scumbag to agree to the second part. And a complete fucking moron to think the first part is a good deal.
You wanted to make a living. Somehow, the contract had you agreeing to give up your life instead.
I don't want my life to consist of waiting. For Friday. For a vacation. For a bonus. For the loan to be paid off. For retirement. For the right moment.
Because there's one unpleasant thing about all of that. While you're waiting, your life is already happening. You're spending it. Every day. Every hour.
And I find it completely fucking insane how carefully people count their money and how casually they give away their time.
An hour here. An evening there. Three years at a job you've been meaning to leave forever. Five years living a life you've been meaning to change forever.
But you canceled that extra five-dollar subscription. Well done. Saved some money.
Now some clown is bound to show up and start talking about work-life balance. Buddy, I want to know where your actual life fits into that balance.
You spend all day doing something you hate. Then you spend the whole evening trying to recover. Over the weekend, you recover just enough to do it again on Monday. And this is supposed to go on for another thirty years.
At what exact point in that schedule were you planning to be free?
I don't need a cult of sleep deprivation. I'm not interested in bragging that I spent sixteen hours at my laptop and now my eye won't stop twitching. But I need something to show for the time I've spent.
If I'm working my fucking ass off, I want to know what I'm building. What I'll have to show for it. Whether I'll have more options a year from now. Or whether I just sold another chunk of my life at a higher price, and now I can afford a more expensive cage.
Working for someone else is fine. Learning on someone else's dime is great. Getting paid for your skills is fucking brilliant.
But I don't want my well-being, until the day I die, to depend on whether some boss decides to renew my access to a paycheck.
I want my own business. My own income. The ability to lose one client, one project, one market, and keep living. Because I've got another hundred!
Yes, a business can swallow you whole too. You can start your own company and become its most fucking exhausted employee. That's why what interests me is the freedom I'll actually get out of it.
You can keep the word “entrepreneur.” Along with the business card.
You don't have to become a billionaire. But at least try to find out what you're capable of before you settle for good into a life you can barely stand.
Do the thing you've been putting off for years. Learn what you're missing. Start building a way out if you can't leave yet. And stop calling it stability when you're terrified of every month ahead.
You have some amount of time. You don't know how much. And what scares me personally is the prospect of one day realizing I could have tried all along. Could have taken a risk. Could have lived differently.
Things were just more or less convenient. COMFORTABLE! And I decided not to make a move just yet.