Are We Going for Glitter, or For Gold?
We spend the best years of our lives chasing things that don't last. If we follow the script our culture writes for us, we spend our young adulthood acquiring an education – not for the sake of being wise and well-rounded, but to gain the credentials necessary to land a good-paying job. It doesn't seem to matter how much debt we take on to do this, as long as the resulting job brings enough money and prestige. We spend the next few decades making as much money as possible, and spending even more. If we're typical Americans, we have thousands and thousands of possessions stuffing a house three times the size of our grandparents'. And no matter how much money we make, we have a huge home loan, one or two big auto loans, and thousands of dollars in credit card debt. It's not enough. We still have a long list of things we want to buy, places we want to go, and experiences we want to have. No matter how much we shop or travel or do, we want more. At some point we ret