The traffic on I-95 was dead. My morning commute is usually rough. I was up early at 5 AM and rushed to work. I always wake up early because I have so much work to do every day that there are not enough hours in a day. I am forty years old, and I am the Director of Operations at one of the major finance companies. I’ve worked hard to get where I am, and I am working harder every day to make sure my job is done well and on time, and according to the plan. Even though I make a decent salary, I can hardly prioritize my personal life, like spending time with my family. I have been married for 15 years and have two kids, 4 and 8. I wish I could spend more time with them, but I am always busy at my job. I show up in the office before anybody else does and work long after everybody else leaves. When I come home, I work some more and then more on the weekends, holidays, and pretty much every fucking time. Often, I feel like if I stop, the job will never get done, the team will underperform, and the company will collapse, and there will be no tomorrow.
A few weeks ago, I was on the same I-95 staying in bumper-to-bumper traffic, getting more frustrated and annoyed with every minute. The radio played some random lame morning show. I decided to browse through the channels to see if there is anything better to listen to. There’s hardly anything good on the radio anymore. As I scanned through the channels, I stopped once I heard the soothing voice of an older man talking. He mentioned something about “the theory of a thousand balls,” which caught my attention, and I turned the volume up. I sat in my car listening to this older man talking while watching the dead highway. There was nowhere to go and nothing else to do.
“Ok,” said the old man on the radio. “I can bet that you are always very busy at work, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am, old man,” I replied to the radio.
“So, you are always busy, yesterday, today, and you will be busy tomorrow and so on and on … and supposedly you get paid a lot of money.” The older man grinned as he said that and continued his speech in a serious but kind voice. “They are buying your life with money. Just think about it. You are not spending your time with your family or your friends or significant others! I just refuse to believe that you all need to work that much to make a day-to-day living. You work to please yourself! But see, the thing is that you are just like a hamster in the wheel. The more money you make, the more money you will need, and the more money you will spend, and it is a never-ending cycle. Regardless of how much money you have, you will always want more, and you will work more for that purpose. Just stop there for a moment and think. Do you really need all these new things or more things that you already have? Do you need that new car or brand-new phone with all the bells and whistles or anything else that bad? And in order to have all those possessions, are you willing to miss the time of watching your kids grow up, the first dance performance by your daughter, the first baseball or soccer game by your son? Let me tell my story about how I’ve learned to figure out what is really important in life.”
