Onepod Podcasts

Subu

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Half Life Show, I'm Subu as usual here with Vikram. Okay, Vikram, I want to start by lodging a grievance.

Vikram

Against me?

Subu

No, no, Against my kid!

Vikram

What did he do now then?

Subu

That little fellow, he recently turned three, right? I can't get my eyes off him even for a single second. Now, people said that as these kids grow up, it'll get easier, but it's only seems to be getting harder for me. We were at the farmers market last weekend. And he has a lot of opinions. So once we get to this farmers market, you have all these stalls selling vegetables and fruits, and you have the stalls selling food and all these baked goods and stuff like that. So when we get to the farmer's market, the first thing he wants us to do is go to the bakery, and he has to choose a pastry of, of his liking. So we do that. And then what this guy did was he just ate it clean with his face full of cream. And then he walks up to the popcorn stand, and he pulls down his pants. And decides that it's a perfect place to go take a pee, and I was actually a good 10 feet away from him, I had to run over there and go and pick him up before he could start taking a leak the pop corn stand, and then take him into a coffee shop. And then obviously, these places have a rule that the restroom is only for customers. So I had to buy that coffee because my son wanted to take a leak, it was all a complete mess. And then I bring him out. Okay, we settled down we go and decide to get some lunch, we are sitting at this restaurant. And anytime he sees a glass of water, he has to put something into it. So then he takes the salt shaker from our table and starts walking around all the other tables. And I have to keep walking behind him because if I if I don't, then he'll start putting salt into other people's water. And all this really exhausted me that I decided, You know what, I just want to sit down and have my lunch. So I do that. And then in one second this guy disappears. And I see two tables across this. This couple who are probably having a nice afternoon date. Oh, no, no, no, no, I hear this thing coming from our two tables across I go and see my son is unscrewing the umbrella that they're sitting under and almost fell on them. And then I had to go and apologize. And then we just asked for a few boxes. We packed our food I had to get out of there.

Vikram

Oh my god, you got to keep him under a close leash. You know people actually put leashes on their kids. I don't suggest you do that. Just a figure of speech. Don't actually get a leash.

Subu

Yeah, man. Um, so all of these outings I of course, I really enjoyed. It's fun watching him do his antics. But any of these outings, they get very exhausting. Exhausting is like a good workout. I lose like 1000 calories every time I take him out somewhere.

Vikram

So yesterday, my older one comes to me. And he's very excited. So I'm like, What's up? What's up? Tell me something like Yeah. He says tomorrow, my friend in school. He's going to give me a Mosasaurus tooth. Mosasaurus, obviously kind of dinosaur. They obviously know the names of all the dinosaurs. I don't know how. I'm going to get a Mosasaurus tooth. Like, Oh, really? Where did he find it? Your friend? Like, oh, he went digging for it. He dug like five to seven feet and he's going to get the tooth and is going to give it to me. Like, Oh, really? Is it a real dinosaur tooth? Yeah, it totally is a real tooth. Okay, how do you know he's like? Yes. Because he told me it's real. Real dinosaur tooth. Yeah. It's amazing. And speaking of teeth, right? The older one has his teeth start to fall off. Because he's like over six years old. His teeth are wiggling here and there. So obviously the younger one is feeling very left out now because his are not wiggling. So one fine morning. He comes to me. It's like my teeth are wiggling. Look, my teeth are wiggling. I'm like which thought is wiggling. And he's like, Oh, I don't know. Then he looks at his older brother. Which tooth is wiggling for me? But its not wiggling ... so they don't have a concept of time. That's what I'm trying to say.

Subu

Yeah, he what he basically wants to join his older brother's tribe and in his tribe, you got to be losing teeth to join that tribe.

Vikram

Exactly. Wants to be included.

Subu

Okay, so for this week's episode, I've been pondering this idea, which is, we humans behave in a certain way with money, right? And we accumulate it, we let it dictate our self worth we flaunt it, we get greedy, we get selfish, we fight over it. And we do all these things with money. We all know that time is our one true resource. So my question is that these behaviors that we have with money, should we instead be behaving the time like that. So that's the preface of our topic. So what do you think about this?

Vikram

I don't know where I read this, or is something you told me. But time is the only resource you cannot replenish in any way possible. You take money, you put it into a bank account, there is the magic of compounding. So you know, money put in a bank account can grow. But time left alone by itself only depletes. So it is, in essence, a much more valuable resource considering that supply is always going out. And there's always demand for it. But somehow, we don't seem to prioritize time over money in our life.

Subu

So now, making money is one of our main concerns in life, right, we really work hard earning money. And we spend a ton of our energy trying to earn this money. But we don't seem to, like you said, we don't seem to be spending, once you have made enough money, we don't seem to be spending as much energy trying to earn time in a way. So there's this analogy I came across, right? If you think of life, as a cross country road trip from San Francisco to New York, then if you don't have enough gas in your tank, which is equal to not having enough money, then you will never stop worrying about it. But once you have enough gas in your tank, then you should spend your time enjoying the sights and joint landscapes, you'll probably be driving through beautiful national parks just soaking in the moment. That's what you should do once you have enough gas in your tank. But if you continue to spend your energies earning money, that is equal to stopping at every single gas station along the way from San Francisco to New York, instead of enjoying the journey. Tonight analogy, we sort of take this for granted, we all it doesn't matter where you are in the social strata. If you have beef setup setup, society is in such a way that we feel that money is the main reward, that that's what we're all working towards kind of thing. And we don't feel like saving time doesn't feel like a reward. Why do you think that is the way society is set up? At least since the beginning of the Industrial Age, pre industrial age, I think that my understanding is that society was built such that your safety net was your tribe, right. And so if you had a child, then the whole village would help you raise the child, the unit that work together was the village. One person being poor meant that the whole village is poor. And there's something really wrong, they had a bad famine, and there isn't enough food to go around and everyone struggling. So post industrial era came the age of the governments where everyone's sort of working for themselves, a family has to take care of themselves. And the borders of village and society and tribes sort of dissolved in a way and where you would build a home and people are like you're jealous of your neighbor, if he's making more money, this whole thing of selfishness sort of came about and things like that. So you're always worrying about yourself. And with the dawn of the Industrial Age, the safety net of your tribe went away. And you had to build your own safety net. And we know this firsthand, because as children of the 80s and the 90s. In India, which was a very tough place to grow up, no one really had a safety net, all our all that our parents could think of is, hey, I have been there is forget about savings. I want to make enough money so that this month, I can buy my groceries, and this month I can send my children to school. And that's how everyone was living in a way all of us as children, we were raised with this idea that look, you have got to take care of yourself. There is no you don't have any safety net. So if you don't, and your only the only way for you to build your safety net is to make enough money. And the more money that you have, the bigger safety net you have. And I think that that narrative is so ingrained in us that the concept of hate time is a valuable resource completely vaporized. It didn't exist, because the narrative that our parents grew up with, is that what you're talking about time if you worry about anything else other than making money, you probably won't live more than a year, forget about time you won't have a life.

Vikram

I have a theory. Okay, go for it. What do you think? My theory is? That money is the only thing that gives you something material. In terms of reward. If you earn more money, you can have a bigger house, a bigger car, you can travel, which is something that people look forward to a lot and they travel extensively, go to fantastic destinations. So it seems like these are all like, chips you can collect along the way and put it in your little bag of life chips, and then show off to everybody like, look at all these things I have done like you're collecting Pokemon cards, but when you save time, you don't have anything to show for it other than time itself? That's correct.

Subu

Yeah, it looks like we are just bad realizing the worth of time, it seems like But whereas money is something that is tangible and exchanged for other goods, and to an extent, if even if the money is just sitting in your bank account, and just watching it accumulate, seems to be more tangible and a bigger sign of success, then the thought of hey, have I spent my time wisely? It doesn't seem like that is very

Vikram

tangible. Correct. So I came across this really nice quote from the Dalai Lama. He was asked, what surprised him most about humanity? And his answer was man, because he sacrifices his health, in order to make money, then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he's so anxious about the future, that he does not enjoy the present. The result being that he does not live in the present, or the future, he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies, having never really lived.

Subu

So beautiful. Whatever you just said, is a really good summary of what I'm going to say next. So I was thinking about, instead of making money, how do you make time how do you earn time. There are four ways I could think of. Number one is eating healthy. So because if you if you live on a diet, which primarily consists of processed foods and sugars, then you are essentially losing time. If you choose to eat healthy, then it is a good proxy for earning time because you are extending your health span and your longevity. So similarly, with eating healthy, it has been clinically proven that sleep is like a super drug, right? So the quality of sleep that you get directly affects your healthspan really prioritizing sleep, which we have spoken in a couple of past episodes, which seems to be my bane, in some ways, is another good proxy for earning time. And the last thing is, of course, exercise, which is again, it's clinically proven that it is extremely, extremely required. In the current world where most of us spend a lot of time sitting and eating, essentially. And the last thing is this concept called Ikigai. So it's a Japanese word, which loosely translates to "your reason for waking up every morning", or "your reason to be alive". Okay, there are these blue zones across the world where the number of centenarians, which is people who live up to 100 is much higher than the average. And Okinawa in Japan is one of these blue zones. And there were these studies done there. Regarding Why are these people so happy? And why do these people live so long? And one of the summaries of the study was this concept of Ikigai, where people there instead of seeking out money with the thought that one day they will be happy, they seek out this this thing called as ikigai saying that, hey, I want to seek out my purpose in life. So seeking out purpose in life and happiness is their primary currency rather than seeking out money. Now, I'm gonna send you, let me send you this picture. I'm going to send it to you over text open this up this this picture, which we'll put in the show notes is a it's a picture of what ikigai is and what this picture shows his ikigai sits in this intersection of four circles, okay? And the four circles are what do you love? What are you good at? What does the world need and what you can be paid for. So if you find the intersection of these four circles, which is did finding something you love something, finding something that you're good at? And finding and and hopefully what you're good at is also what the world needs and what you can be paid for. This is sort of the primary thing in life that they seek out. And if you, if you, if you are successful at finding your ikigai, your reason to be alive, they found that you're excited to wake up in the morning, you're, you have a different outlook on life, you are living life with more intent, like, you know, you're excited to wake up every morning. And then they're found that with ikigai, these things like cardiovascular markers, like things like stress, and heart attacks, and all of these other things are actually much better. And people who have found a good purpose to wake up every morning.

Vikram

I'm looking at this picture some more. And there is a lot more detail to this than I saw initially. It seems like there are other intersection regions, like, if you are good at something, and you do what you love, then that intersection is passion. And if you're doing what you love, and the world needs that, then the intersection is a mission. And between what you paid for and what the world needs, his vocation, or occupation, and what you're good at and what you can be paid for is profession. Right. Yeah, and actually, interestingly, empty zones where these things don't coincide. And that gives you feelings of uselessness, emptiness, uncertainty, things like that. It's a very beautiful, it's a beautiful diagram,

Subu

it's such as good summary, right? Like, for example, there's a general notion of a lot of people are unhappy with their day jobs. And I think that sort of falls into you're good at something, and you can be paid for it. Okay, and that becomes your profession. But unfortunately, you don't like so you wake up every morning, you're not excited about going to your nine to five job. And because that's your profession, that's what you can be paid for. But you don't really enjoy doing that all day. And there are also these other books on eating healthy, which say that one of the reasons why there is a rise in obesity among adults is that you are unhappy with the way your day goes. And at lunch or at dinner, you think of food as your treat, right, you go to work. And then you come back at the end of the day, and you're feeling very worn out, you just hated working at this place the whole day. And you just gorge on like a good burger and ice cream or something like that. And that gives you the required dopamine hit to make you feel better essentially, and to make you feel like rewarded.

Vikram

So these four ways to buy time is basically to eat healthy, to sleep, to exercise. And to find your Ikigai. The first three are obvious. But the fourth one is a really interesting idea. I actually also read a blog from a really nice website that I've been following recently called moretothat.com. And it's by a guy whose name is Lawrence Yu. He writes his articles. And he is an illustrator as well. So it's a lot of good pictures and all that in his blogs. But basically, he has this article called "Nothingness of Money". And as engineers, I think will appreciate this idea. So imagine a graph, where on the y axis, you have thoughts about money, and the x axis, you have time. Okay, so typically, everybody's life goes like this at birth, you have no thoughts about money. And it's kind of like slowly rising. And at some point, you start working on something and it becomes a steep, you know, you know, climb, and you think about money all the time. And it stays like that day, you're almost about to die, or you're on your deathbed and then you stop thinking about money and then that's that. So that is the typical way of looking at it. But he analyzes this curve and says like things can be different really. Because look at it this way you are from birth you didn't think about money and then now you're hit your work life and you're thinking about money all the time. Then what happens is that suddenly let's say something happens and that person dies like accidents so many health issues, whatever happens and then it's just zero. No, you hit a brick wall is no point in there. The whole point to life is gone. But okay, I understand you can argue that's a bit of an extreme view. People tell you, you have to live like every day is your last but okay, let's get a little bit more practical than that. So there's another camp, which is the financial independence and retire early camp. Okay. So their idea is to do with retirement. So the whole concept is to front load your thoughts about money so that you get it over with, and hopefully you hit this position in which you don't need any more money, and then your steep cliff immediately falls off. And it becomes, you know, no thoughts about money for the rest of your life, you'll live happily. So that's the ideal situation. Normally, though, it doesn't happen that way, there are a couple of reasons why. One, to get to a point where you have so much money for that you don't have to think about it for the rest of your life. You have to think about money a lot in the beginning, when you're front loading it, you have to work very hard, you have to invest properly, you'll probably check your portfolio 10 times a day, you have to save every nickel and Penny not spend anything to get to that front loading point. And now the problem usually happens is that now you have thoughts about money has far overshot what you would have normally done so because of your financial independence goal. And now what happens is that you cannot abandon the habits you have generated for 10-15 years of your life, you're not suddenly going to start spending the money, you're not suddenly draining portfolio, you have become a new person in the 15-20 years you took to front load your portfolio, hoping that you will now live a very happy and relaxed, no thoughts about money life, but that doesn't happen, your habits remain. So now you may arguably be worse off. Because now your thoughts about money are stuck at a very high level and never come down till death. Because that's how we have become because of your financial independence,

Subu

you may feel that you're financially independent at the age of 40. But, but from 25 to 40, you've been thinking about money so much that from 40 until the time you die, you're still checking your bank balance every day,

Vikram

things can't change the account habits, you have become a new person from when you were 25. to when you were 40. Yeah, so that is the problem with that approach. So there is a general balance, I think one can find where you sit back and think about what's going to be written on your epitaph. It's kind of dark. But nobody's going to say that this blog article says, and nobody's going to say that, so and so beat the s&p 500 by 10% Each year, it's kind of silly when you think about that. So whatever the the argument you can use to bring yourself back to reality is test to reduce your thoughts about money after some time, there is no problem with having thoughts about money all the time when you're starting off your career, for example. But then as you progress, and as you think you're getting enough to sustain your lifestyle, start toning it down a bit, think less about money. And so you can reach a happy medium that you can live with to the end of your life. And then finally, when you're on your deathbed, and you slide to zero, you don't have that regret that you would have had otherwise. Yeah, I will. We will have this article in the show notes. Of course. It's a very nice one. Yeah, yeah.

Subu

And I want to reiterate what you said, right? Neither of us are saying that thoughts of money, making money are bad. Uh, neither of us are saying that you need to think about money, at least earlier on in your life. Because if you don't have the required amount of gas in the tank, then you mean you're, it's your sustenance, that's your you it's your livelihood. Right, you will keep worrying about it. So all that good. I guess what we're really talking about is that the early part of your life, our livelihood, and making money that we are never able to get over that even later in life when we feel like we are living a comfortable life.

Vikram

Yeah, it's definitely coming around. In my mind, these days, at least, I'm learning as I'm getting older, the value of time. And there is an extreme view that I've seen some people talk about where they say, How much is your time worth to you. So let's say I make I don't know $30 An hour. So if you have to do something that costs you $30 Don't spend your time doing that instead, get someone to do that for you. I find that view a little bit too generous in my opinion. Because if I do outsource something that I regularly do to someone else, it's not like I'm going to spend that one hour making those $30 I'm not okay. It's just an excuse in my mind that I am using to not do something and get someone else to do it. That being said, I also am beginning to realize from my changing my own mindset that has been so ingrained to me like that it really is okay to to get some things out of your plate. My example in my mind right now is basically getting some help around the house. Like with some cleaning, getting somebody to maybe trim the garden once in a while, I know you can do everything on by yourself, if you lay down the math of it all, you will be like, okay, look, I can go buy these tools from like a store, I can do all this work myself, in the long run, I will save money by 1000s of dollars every year. But then what I just realized is that there is a cost of not only time being spent into it, there is energy that is being spent into it, then you have to recover from the lost energy. And during this entire time, you have your family, your kids are at home, your kids are young, you know, they want to play with you. But you're always saying, Oh, I have to do this, I have to do that. I can't do this right now. I don't have the time, how about we do this tomorrow. And then what happens is, they're all grown up. And then you have lost your opportunity to do all those things you could have done with your children when they were young. Yeah, so that is a trade off I have recently learned to make. And I think it's working out really well, for us, because I really do have energy and time to spend with the family get a spring cleaning once a year, at the very least, it's going to be in the United States, a few $100. So in a year, you can always justify it in the number of Starbucks coffees you have, which is what every financial article ever tells you. But yeah, it's which is again, something that I find very strange, but let's not get into that. But I think it can be justified at any scale, you can spend anywhere from a few $100 to 1000s of dollars for any service. But getting something that you can reclaim your time and energy back is actually quite valuable.

Subu

The Starbucks thing that he spoke about, right for a few years now, there's a movement going in the other direction as well, books earlier used to say, Hey, you don't need that cup of coffee from Starbucks every morning, save it, and it adds up to $150 a month or whatever. But now, in the last four or five years, there are a lot of younger entrepreneurs and younger financial advisors who say that, okay, that cup of Starbucks, if that gets you up in the morning and gets you all excited to start your day, then it is well spent. Don't worry about that $3 or $4 spent on Starbucks, go drink it every day if you have to, if that's what gets you through the day. So it's Yeah, yeah.

Vikram

And another thing is that some people have asked me like how I do all the things that I do in the sense that I am productive at work. I do spend time with the family like we do this podcast together, I do play music, I do record music. So all these things, how do you find time for it? So I think the the things that I have realized, that got me to doing some of these things, and that have helped along the way, I'm just putting it out there so that maybe if somebody else is in our shoes, they may find something like this useful. A lot of it starts from habit creation. Because when you look at your day, you spend so many hours doing your job. But then if you can dedicate the same hour of every day to doing the same thing that is extremely valuable in terms of getting your time back to yourself. Because there is always time that slips through the cracks. For example, when I wake up in the morning, and I am making my coffee, I see the dishes and dishwashers still there. And I just take them and put them away right by the time my kettle boils. So that's where I'm saying so that is not a job for me anymore. Now, incremental work is something I've discovered recently, whenever the laundry fills up to like, even like a medium level of load, I just run it. The dishwasher runs even half loads if they have to. Because the price of these things piling up is enormous. When I wake up on a Saturday morning and I see the entire kitchen is wrecked. And I see the laundry bags overflowing. Normally, I see my weekend is disappearing in front of my eyes.

Subu

So demotivating.

Vikram

Yeah. So habit forming in a daily fashion is very helpful in that regard. As soon as the kids finish eating, and they are doing their nighttime chores of brushing and all that. I fold whatever laundry that's lying around, or I fold at least half of it. Because again, incrementally, you don't have to finish what you started, you can start and you can stop. And eventually you will finish it. So that's the way I have been getting by these days.

Subu

So what he's saying is that having discipline in the way you conduct your daily life is another way to earn time.

Vikram

That's a really nice way of putting it. Yes, I think we should add that as a number five to the list. After Ikigai, yeah, it is basically discipline can get you a lot of time back. Yes. That's good.

Subu

Okay, so I want to go now we've been speaking about making time versus making money right now. I want to go to the next behavior we have with money, which is saving money, right? This is another another activity that we spent a lot of energy and thought towards. Now in this country in us, we are famous for having a very low average savings rate. Okay, so traditionally, the savings rate in this country has been less than 10%. More like six or 7%, which is like abysmally low. Okay. Now, because of that, right, because that number is in the face. There is a lot of advice, there been a lot of books, and there is generally a healthy narrative around how people should save money and build up a nest egg, there's a lot of information around that. And you see this playing on TV and the news channels quite often that, hey, you should be saving more money. But I think there isn't a similar weight placed on saving time. Okay, and saving time essentially means being careful with how we spend our time and be being careful with what we spend it on. Now, for example, this time and attention in is, is a is become a currency these days on social media apps, right. So all of these social media companies and all these news channels, they want us to spend our time and attention because that is the currency that they're trying to earn. Okay. But if we, if you're selfish with our time, if you just behave selfishly with our time, then hopefully, we won't succumb to this when you open up Twitter or Instagram. So being selfish thinking of time, in a selfish way, I'm hoping that angle will help us get over the dopamine hit, which is like a very big reward. Right?

Vikram

I think there is an uprising trend in the mentality that people do want to save time, but it is actually framed in a different context. And that is actually in the context of productivity gurus.

Subu

Correct. It is now called productivity porn, right? Because you have people like this Gary Vee, a whole segment of YouTube telling you how you can be productive at time. But the the lens through which they see productivity is that hey, have you gotten through all of your emails is your Inbox Zero, how to segment the eight hours you have in a day to keep every single minute useful. But the problem is like I think us had this Vikram in from from the book 4000 weeks by Oliver Berkman, where the guy says that, Look, man, we only have 4000 weeks to live. Okay, don't worry about making your Inbox Zero. Nobody's gonna care about that. So the now the idea of productivity itself is good. I think these young YouTubers are trying to say, hey, instead of just sitting and waiting a time playing video games, look, you can be productive and do all of these things. You can start a business, you can hustle, you can go out and sell this, you can do that, this and all that. But that idea generally is good. But I think we have taken that a little too far. To such an extent that people are so stressed. At one point, I used to be one of those guys, okay? I used to be a guy who used to worry about my productivity so much. That damn, it used to stress the living hell out of me. At one point, when my anxiety got really bad, I decided, look, I don't care about my productivity. I'm okay with waiting a little bit of time. So you can take things a little too far. Even if you try to use your if you keep thinking about trying to use your time wisely.

Vikram

If you sit down and do nothing, it is not a waste of time. I think that is something we are never told. It's never in common, like YouTubers not never tell you this, at least that whatever I have seen. It's just that there is a certain happiness and joy that comes from just sitting down and looking around you and going for a stroll outside. And it's a good half an hour spent better than you can do any productivity thing.

Subu

Yeah, I mean, like with everything else, there is this, it seems like there is a happy medium just like with money. If you are Uncle Scrooge who aggressively saves money. Then if you behave like that with time, it means that you're not spending any time with friends, you are focusing too much on being productive and sitting at your desk all day doing productive things. And then you're spending time with friends and family and you end up living a poor life and come off as an asshole. There is the sci fi movie called "In Time", which I've watched this movie three or four times. I really like it a lot, but it's not very popular. It's become one of those cult movies. Okay, do you want to know what it is?

Vikram

Yeah.

Subu

I'll try not to give away too much. Or try not to give away spoilers, but

Vikram

I haven't seen a movie.

Subu

So yeah, so in time, so the movie is called in time. Right featuring Justin Timberlake. It's a future where humans are generally engineered to stop aging. Okay, so now that's a problem, right? Because no one dies. So what has happened is, when you turn 25 years of age, a one year countdown timer on your forearm start so until 25, you're fine. And then you have one year to live, once you turn 25. And when you work, you're paid in time. So you go, and if you're a day laborer, you go and work in some place. And then at the end of the day, they add time to your clock, which is playing on your forearm all the time. Okay, what happens here is that the the whole social strata, is divided based on how much time a person has. So the rich have hundreds of years on their clock, and the poor have less than a day. And they are literally living day to day.

Vikram

That's perfect, great. Concept. Is a great quote.

Subu

Of course, like in our whole discussion, time is the limited resource but it is it is fun to think of this, this this good SciFi movie, you can potentially earn unlimited time.

Vikram

Let me ask you a question that puts this whole movie into one simple question. If at this moment right now, there was like a magic spell that you could swap bodies with Warren Buffett, would you do it? Because you have to remember, he's over 90. But he has way more money than you can ever probably make in your lifetime. And mine and ours combined. But would you make that trade?

Subu

Yeah, no, no, you wouldn't, right.

Vikram

So now, you wouldn't. So now you tell me what you really think is important. The money or the time on?

Subu

Hitting it where it hurts, Vikram?

Vikram

This reminds me of a really nice poem by Shel Silverstein, of whom we are big fans of obviously. Yeah. But it's called a clock man. You want me to read it to you?

Subu

Yes, sir.

Vikram

So this is the clock man, by Shel Silverstein from the book everything on it? How much will you pay for an extra day? The clock man asked the child not one penny, the answer came for my days, or as many as smiles? How much will you pay for an extra day? He asked when the child was grown? Maybe $1? Or maybe less? For I've plenty of days of my own? How much will you pay for an extra day? He asked when the time came to die. All of the pearls in the seas and all of the stars in the sky!

Subu

Since we're talking about money and selfishness and greed, can I indulge in a lesson from the Mahabharata? Of course. So in the Mahabharata, right, you will hear this word dharma being thrown around quite often, you know, and what is this Dharma right? You hear it all the time in the Mahabharata. Every time any character in the Mahabharata has to make a decision anytime they posed with a tough question. And they have to make a choice. The way they make the choice is, okay, is my decision according to dharma, that is how everyone makes their decisions. So what is dharma? Now what the Vedas says, at one point, the only law that existed in the land is the law of the jungle, where there's a pecking order, the mighty rule, and the mighty established territories, and all the animals have no choice, but they have to subscribe to this law of jungle. Okay, that's the only law. But at some point, we humans woke up and we gained consciousness. And from that point, the law of jungle became a choice for us. Okay, as conscious beings, we have the capability to create a world we have a we have the capability to create a society where everyone feels safe. And where the mighty instead of oppressing the weak, the mighty can care for the weak. And resources can be made available for everyone to thrive. So this is what Dharma means. Okay, so Dharma is basically living life consciously and making sure you're not oppressing anyone, and where you make resources available for everyone. Okay, and withholding resources and exploiting the weak is called a Adharma. Okay, and this is the reason why in the Mahabharata, every decision is made based on Dharma. But the end of the Mahabharata right it is considered the start of Kali Yuga. And Kali Yuga refers to a time where Dharma is lost, where humans lack the spirit of generosity and life has become all about taking and hoarding. Okay, so what the way that I say is that at some point, the Kali Yuga is going to start, at which point humans are going to lack the spirit of generosity and they It's completely based on taking and holding. And what it says that the primary cause of any strife, internal or external to oneself is this problem of losing Dharma.

Vikram

Oh, nice.

Subu

Very intense, right?

Vikram

Yeah.

Subu

I think the interesting thing for me is that these philosophies which were written 1000s of years ago, are very relevant right now.

Vikram

So it is still okay, if we can hoard time, don't hoard too much money, hoard enough money just enough and hoard time for the rest of it, because that is going to make you wealthier than you can ever imagine.

Subu

So on that note, I think we can call this one. Thanks for listening to another episode of the halflife show. We hope you enjoyed it. All the references and all the books and other stuff that we spoke about. We'll have it in the show notes. And also do check us out on Instagram. Our handle is @halflife.show. And slide into our DMs and send us messages. Tell us what you liked about it. And if there's something that you would like to hear about in the future, let us know. We probably talk about it. Thank you

10: 5 Ways to Create Time