Ahhhh… the “Great Make Believe.”
We all succumb to it yet will never acknowledge it – shrouding our thoughts with cobwebbed delusions and subliminally blocking our judgement – invisible but pervasive like the very breaths we breathe.
What is this “Great Make Believe” you ask curiously, that has so clandestinely infiltrated the shifting seasons of our lives… your expectant mind shifting focus while your fingertips scurry like little spiders over the keyboard and scroll down the page?
Eager. Investigative. Agog.
Let me try to simplify things and do my best to explain it in layman’s terms…
There are two questions that begin every FIRE journey. The first is the most popular and the one that the entire community is founded upon:
Will I run out of money?
Every single FIRE blog will touch upon this theme. Mostly directly but even the most independent and unique FIRE blog will at least have to acknowledge it indirectly.
Because this is the mana. This is the panache. This is what the world wants you to focus on. How do you make that money and can it possibly last?
The second question is more nuanced. It gets sprinkled in now and then among the first like raindrops in a desert, but only in carefully guarded doses:
Will I run out of time?
To determine the more important question, all we have to do is ask them in sequence, and the truth is revealed. If I ask, if I run out of money, then will I run out of time? The answer is no. Regardless of my financial situation, time is independent, life goes on. But if I ask it in the opposite order, if I run out of time, then will I run out of money? Oh boy, yes. That definitely does fucking matter now. And we have come to the real meat of our problem as well. When we lose our time, the money side becomes irrelevant.
Because what do all the riches in the world mean if you don’t have the time to use and enjoy them?
Zilch, nada, zero.
Yet why do we always worry about the question of money over the question of time?
Maybe I’m not on par with the pulse of our community, which I do not doubt could entirely be the case. But it seems that money is the obsession and worrying about time is always the secondary thought. At least that is what I struggle with, even though I think I try to frame things with that time question at the forefront more often than not. It’s still a fucking little bitch to do. It really is.
However, if living life to the fullest is what really matters, why are we not so eager to jump? To leave our jobs… to try new things… to roll the dice…
If we put time first, shouldn’t we be leaping off the cliff into the deepest pool of exhilaration we can find to maximize what we have? Yet instead, we fearfully wiggle our toes in the sand, and wade into those lapping waters of curiosity with an unfounded and guarded trepidation. We act like we have all the time in the world, when the cold hard truth is that we don’t. We just don’t know.
Because really, what do we have to lose? And the answer is scary… everything.
We have everything to lose…
So, I ask you, are we deluded? Does any of this really make sense when we place time instead of money as our priority?
Hmmmmm… when I sit and think hard about it, no, it doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any sense at all. But we tell ourselves these daily little lies. We have to. We’ve become so lost and embedded in the system that to face the truth would crumble our identities. And trust me, the fragile egos that run the world, would not be able to take it.
I think that is the “Great Make Believe” – we trick ourselves to worry about the money equation when in reality we should be basing all our decisions off the time question. It all comes back to that simple query that most lifestyle design blogs depend upon to sneak dollar bills out of your wallet:
If you didn’t have to work, what would you be doing with your time? Where would you be? What people would you surround yourself with?
And what about corporate America – the “Greatest Make Believe” of them all. Because that’s what it is. A game – nothing more and nothing less… a game we’re all stuck playing that isn’t even real. We spend our days slaving away to stack small green pieces of paper that form numbers on a computer screen. And we treat this game as if it were life and death, but it’s not. It’s a choice. A conscious and physical choice that we select willingly. And if we do, we are guilty of pushing the money question to the front of our minds while leaving the time question to worry about later…
But, when?
When we have the time of course to worry about it? Hahaha… and isn’t that the greatest irony of all? Some far-off distant day when the stars align and freedom becomes a choice.
Funny how that works, eh?
I think I’ll leave you with some thoughts from the book Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harrai, that really changed my perspective and flipped some of my prior musings on their head.
He talks about that one of the significant differences that separates humans from other species is our imagination. We can have conversations through words about things that don’t exist, unlike other creatures.
He gives a great example that I hadn’t thought about before, in which he calls lawyers, accountants and businesspeople sorcerers, wielding and performing their profound magic that is corporations and laws. He argues that none of it exists at all except in our imaginations. We’ve created symbology to convey shared myths.
Poof! Magic!
Here we are… humans playing at world building, yet it’s all within our minds.
Kind of trippy to think about, right? All these things we take for granted are just figments of our imaginations projected in front of us. Yet we continuously treat these ideas like concrete objects….
Kind of like playing a game of make believe.
-Q-FI
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P.S. Well, we drifted down quite the road of life and meaning in this one. So, what do you think? Are we all just playing one big game of make believe? Or is this how things should be playing out? Enlighten me…
Nice one, sir. I distinctly recall my “Poof” moment being when I finished Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” and realizing, clearly, all we humans and our machinations are, indeed, operating deep within the “Great Make Believe”. If you then layer on the Harrai lawyer/accountant example, it gets us far closer to the core farce of things.
I agree on the time v. money argument. I can always make more money, but not more time. It reminds me of the adage, “People don’t think much about the importance of air until they’re not getting any.” For me, my new sub-thought (worry) is not just how much time I have, but how much quality time where I am physically able to many of the things I enjoy (and even things I don’t like house painting).
Yeah, Hawking will definitely take you down this reality rabbit hole as well. I probably went a little too deep, but my mind has been flighty as of late.
I like that air analogy, that’s a good one. And you’ve kind of stumbled into the next level of the game by already reaching FI yourself. You’ve removed one road block – your job – but as you know there will always be plenty more challenges waiting for us. I think figuring out that “quality time” will always be a tricky one as well. Just too many choices and options in this world! Haha.
If I knew I only had a little time left, I would quit work on Monday and hit the FIRE button. Your topic is a great way to think about FIRE, that isn’t covered enough, like you point out. I think it’s because the morbidity of pondering our time left on earth is easy to avoid. Nobody wants to think about death and the slow erosion of our physical and mental abilities. It is a giant make believe game we are playing, The Matrix, if you will. But FIRE is a way to hack the game, it’s a shortcut.
There’s times when I wish I started investing a little earlier or bought a house at the bottom of the market like many of my friends, so I could be further ahead in my FIRE march. But then, I remember why I was late to the game: I quit work twice to travel in my 20’s, once for a year. I’m so glad I did it then, rather than waiting, even though it set me back in my career and savings. Because I knew traveling young is something that could only be experienced, well, while you’re young. Some things can’t wait…
I have to pick up that Sapiens book one of these days. I just listened to an interview w/ Yuval on a podcast a few weeks ago. Great article!
Definitely pick up Sapiens bud.
Like you Noel, I do not live my life as if today was my last day. I wish I could, but it’s hard to frame that mortality question in the right way. I try to keep it in the back of my head, hence pushing FI, but I’m still guilty of losing out on today sometimes because I’m obsessing with looking too far down the road. Like everything in life, it’s all about balance.
And don’t sweat playing the “what if” game. We all do at some point. Sure it doesn’t help or change anything, but I feel everyone succumbs to it a little bit no matter whether they admit it or not. Plus you’re right, traveling while young and doing fun things that gain life experience at an early age can turn out to be priceless and well worth any FI delays. I’m all for living it up the most while you can.
The thing is working and maximizing the value of your time can be the same thing, they aren’t always alternate choices. I worked way past needing money because it was a favorite hobby that also left me lots of time to pursue my other favorite hobbies. I wouldn’t change a thing if I could go back. Now being retired is equally great, but not better really. Both were pretty awesome.
You are entirely correct Steveark – “working and maximizing the value of your time can be the same thing.” In the FIRE space you are probably more of a minority in this aspect, meaning someone who loved their job and wouldn’t have been doing anything different otherwise. But then again, who knows for America as a whole? My gut tells me that probably more people than not are unhappy with their jobs, but that’s just my feeling. I don’t have anything to back it up.
Regardless though, yeah, if you love your job then FI really becomes mostly irrelevant. What I think is very impressive about your situation Steveark, is that I tend to hear most CEO high achiever types love their job, but then struggle when they retire to find similar meaning. But in your case, as you mention and I’ve picked up in your past comments, you are just as happy in retirement as you were working, which is pretty cool and doesn’t seem that many type A’s are able to achieve. So I’m always glad to hear you’re doing well and your positivity is always appreciated.
People like to feel in control.
Money we can control. Mostly.
Time, not so much.
So the FIRE folk focus on the money, delivering themselves bite sized hits of satisfaction as their tracker spreadsheets paint the illusion of control over existences full of random “life happens” events.
I’ve long suspected one of the reasons so many FIRE blogs go dark after the first six months is because the bloggers quickly recognise that the money part is the easy one to solve. Get the basics in place. Establish good financial habits. Rinse, repeat, and wait. Hardly the stuff of an exciting page-turner!
Before long they have the twin epiphanies that money is an enabler not a goal, and (early) retirement is a milestone not a destination. Then they go off to address the time aspect, seeking out happiness and contentment via living a rich life full of rewarding relationships and fulfilling experiences… things that can (in most cases) be done in the now, without needing to wait until some arbitrary magic number in a spreadsheet has been reached.
Well said once again Indeedably. I think you hit the nail on the head and make a great point: people crave control. And as you further elaborate, money is controllable while time is not, which makes perfect sense. I’ve found in my own experience that people do not do well with uncertainty, and when faced with it, usually tend to just ignore it.
And I could not agree more, “money is an enabler not a goal, and (early) retirement is a milestone not a destination.” When I was laid off in 2016 and was stripped of my professional identity for a year, this really taught me how to become comfortable in my own skin and work on developing myself as a human being with strong relationships that would transcend any job or career. It’s also helped me keep in focus like you said, FI is not some destination or answer, it’s simply reaching another milestone. You might have one or more tools in your tool belt, but nothing internally changes. You are still the same old you. So how you are currently living your life is the best barometer for how you’ll continue to shape your life.
Hopefully people are not passing on the present for a future they won’t even like.
Also, interesting point about FIRE blogs going dark. I don’t think I’ve written long enough or even paid enough attention to pick up on that. But I can easily see that being the case. When I started, after only writing about FIRE a few months, that topic just got plain boring and I branched out into whatever was interesting to me at the time. Then again, I’m not trying to sell anything and could care less about page clicks or SEO, so I have the luxury to keep my topics broad – too bad I put FI in my blog name! Hahaha. Rookie mistake.
Great comments Indeedably and thanks for sharing!
Interesting questions you’ve presented! I left corporate America for health care and rarely look back. There were things I genuinely enjoyed about those days, but I often felt that most of what I did at work didn’t matter in the greater scheme of things. I think many corporate jobs make people feel that way. However, I’m not sure all lawyers fit into the description of sorcerers. Civilization requires laws, whether the Sapiens writer realizes it or not, otherwise we devolve into animalistic behavior (read Lord of the Flies or Heart of Darkness to see what “civilization” without laws or rules looks like. Even Jane Austen briefly touched upon it in Mansfield Park). Maybe the gift of imagination presents us with a new, different kind of responsibility that requires laws to rein us in and ensure that we all have some level of fairness or justice.
Anyway, I agree there’s this constant battle within our community between time and money. When do we have enough of either? Steveark presents an alternative view and one where I’ll likely find myself. He chose to work after reaching FI because he enjoyed his work and found value in it. I see myself doing the same eventually. Even if I won the lottery today and became FI, I wouldn’t quit my job. I’d gladly reduce my hours to regain some of my time, but I believe one of my gifts is in how I care for people. Not using that gift would be a waste of my time. It’s not something I realized right away, but it’s something I realize with each passing day at work. Yes, I want more time, but I am not always productive with my off-hours. Working forces me to contribute to the greater good and to be productive. It’s like it perpetuates a natural harmony and I like that. But my situation is not yours or anyone else’s.
And, while I see and have felt corporate roles are part of the Great Make Believe, I also see how they’re not. Big Pharma is massively corporate, yet how many lifesaving drugs do they create? How anxiously are we awaiting our COVID-19 vaccine? What happens when they cease making antibiotics? In some sense, the Great Make Believe is an extension of our imaginations and our capabilities as sentient, thinking, creative human beings. None of it would have come to fruition had it not been for our human capabilities. Money is a driving force behind much of what we do, but what things wouldn’t we have if it weren’t for money? People have to build shelter no matter what, but look what the combination of time, money, and imagination have created.
Really thought-provoking post! There’s so much to explore and consider here. Nice job!
I love it! It seems you like getting into the weeds while I’m still staring up at the trees… hahaha. Great stuff.
I think you’re taking Yuval’s point one step too far. He’s not arguing anything about the need or justification for laws. All he’s saying is that laws aren’t real things, they are human constructs. Meaning, a law written down is literally ink on a page. There is no such thing as a law, it is not a concrete physical thing. It’s we humans that interpret those words and create a shared meaning/myth in our minds/imagination with each other. When explained that way, a law looks similar to magic.
I believe I’ve said this to you before on your blog, but if you enjoy your job, then in my mind you are in the ideal situation. And I couldn’t be happier for you Katie and even envy you to an extent. In regards to FI, you are in a position of immense strength when your job provides both meaning and happiness.
As per your corporate roles comments, I think you’re one step ahead of me again, which is great. I don’t have answers and need to think more in depth about this. But I think the main point I was trying to get at, and this is probably too naïve and idealistic, is that I’d like to believe there is a better system than capitalism and the pursuit of money for us. Is there a way to create a world in which work is optional and the necessary needs such as food, water, shelter, healthcare and big pharma still exist? I think humans are smart enough to do it, I’m just not sure we can ever agree and compromise enough to make it a reality.
But that’s what dreams are for, right? Hahahaha. Plus, I only like to ask the questions. Coming up with the answers is a whole other thing.
As always, thanks for the intuitive and deep thinking Katie. Much appreciated.
Aw, lovely responses! Thank you for clarifying Yuval’s argument. I haven’t read his work, so I appreciate your explanation. I love that you write such thoughtful posts because they force me to think, and I enjoy that. Keep it up!
Money and time are always the main questions when it come to building wealth and to retiring. Everyone always worries about running out of money or if they have enough time to build wealth.