One question I get a lot is whether I am sorry I didn't make a lot of money, as do some BigLaw lawyers. Perhaps the reason is that I don't measure wealth in the same way. Stress, large firm management problems, long hours that stretch into nights and weekends, in exchange for a huge bank account that supports all sorts of expensive things, do not, in my view, equal the freedom of one day during springtime, when I can get up out of my office chair at noon, and spend the afternoon doing nothing. Add that up to hundreds and thousands of afternoons, and freedom becomes a measure of wealth. Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius got it. I thank them for their wisdom.
"What the Stoic does is not increase their expectations and demands commensurate with their success or status. Because if you do, you will always feel poor, as Seneca has said, and you will always be unhappy. True poverty, he said, is not having too little, it is the need for more, more, more. True
wealth then, is being divinely content with what you have."
Are we truly content with what we have? Or, are we always pushing, striving, wanting, and needing more? Has anything you have spent your life pursuing ever made you truly happy? Or, is it when you relax and become content with who you are and what you have already that you become happy? Your call.