Quote of the Day

There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely - or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in it's hypocrisy demands.


- Brander Matthews

When Does It End?

Posted on September 22nd, 2007 by The King.
Categories: Everything and Anything!!!.

We work all our lives, kindergarten, elementary school, Middle school, high school, undergrad, Grad and then to our job. We work for atleast 60+ years just to reach retirement? Is that what life really means? This kind of ties into my earlier post, but doesn’t it seem all fruitless to truly achieve that age where you’ve achieved everything so late in life? As a 16 year old I see so much ahead of me and I see myself asking the question, “Is it really worth it?” So much of work for those few years of ease. And most people don’t even have ease at that age either, they work. So life is pretty much work with a bit of fun? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Fun with a bit of work? When did that ratio change? Or has it been always that way? Is it time we changed it?

Read this story as if it were a part of my post:

An American investment banker was walking by the pier of a coastal Mexican village when a fisherman docked his small boat nearby and tossed several large yellow fin tuna onto the dock.
The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked, “How long does it take to catch them?”
The Mexican replied: “Not very long — maybe a couple of hours, senor.”
The American then asked why the fisherman didn’t stay out longer and catch more fish.
The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs and was happy with that.
The American then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my friends. I have a full and busy life which I enjoy very much.”
The American rolled his eys and said, “I’m a Harvard MBA and could help you. Here’s what you should do: Spend more time fishing. You get more money, and with that, you buy a bigger boat. Then you can catch more fish, and buy an even bigger boat. If you work hard, then soon you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor. If that works out, then you open your own cannery. At that point you would control the product, the processing and the distribution. And, you could leave this little town and move to Mexico City, or LA and or even New York City. From there you could run the whole thing by phone, Fedex and the Internet.
The Mexican fisherman thinks this over for a minute and then asks, “Interesting. How long will this all take?”
The American thought for a little bit, took out his calculator and punched in some numbers, and then announced “I think you do this in only 15-20 years.”
“But what then?”
The American laughed and said, “Here’s the beauty of the whole thing. When the time is right you announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You could make millions!”
The Mexican thought this over for a little longer, staring out to sea and thinking about what millions would buy. He asked, “Okay. Millions.. then what?”
The American said, “This is the best part — you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your friends.”

Story from Lord On Business

I don’t know whether the story is Lord on Business’ or not because I’ve read it somewhere else. But since I found it on their site when I was looking for it, I linked back to their blog.

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7 comments.

Lord Brar

Comment on September 22nd, 2007.

Hi King — The story is a popular one doing rounds on email. No one can claim to own it. =) However, thanks a LOT for the link. Appreciate it.

Also, All the best in life. There is no better time to be 16 than now. DO well in life.

Lord Brar’s last blog post..5 Tips For Hiring Freelance Programmers — Learnt the HARD Way.

Gurdit

Comment on September 22nd, 2007.

Interesting post. I wish I had an answer to that… sadly I don’t, even though I’ve been thinking about it so much over the past few years/months/whatever.

Gurdit’s last blog post..Holiday Report and Back to College Yet Again.

Rohan Prabhu

Comment on September 22nd, 2007.

i have been giving these sort of advices a LOT to people.. but it’s just the way you think. Not everybody thinks that having a siesta with ur wife and playing with ur children is all that you need to be happy in life. And that is where the ratio changes. You work for 60 years, but in parallel, you have fun. The fisherman can have all the siesta he wants, but I doubt if he will ever own an iPod. And this might very well seem to be a nice little write-up, but then this is the plain simple fact. There are free things in life, and there are things that cost. Actually, everything costs. If I have to look from a different point of view, I think that the fisherman is lazy and a monotonous life, doesn’t own an iPod, will never have an alienware and will never know the fun of playing Counter-Strike, just to mention a few. Next thing.. it’s animal nature to content oneself with numbers, be it a huge territory or huge chunks of gold. That investment banker might be working all day long and may not even listen to the iPod he does own, or play counter-strike on an alienware he could own, but he has a standard of life, which is supported by his life. Life in the city isn’t easy, but you don’t deal with many things like worrying about water, electricity and millions of other things that are taken care of. These things we don’t notice, because we are used to it. The real problem will come, when the standard of life he has set starts to decline, if he decides to become a fisherman or something. But he won’t, because a system always tries to resist a change that is done to it’s stable state [http://tinyurl.com/yq3ppe].

Secondly, there is no real fisherman like the one you mentioned. The fisherman is bored with his wife and irritated with his kids and wants to own a bigger boat, but can’t because he is drunk in some corner because he is bored. This is real life.

Competition is increasing. You can’t have huge amounts of fun. Because the number of people aiming for a higer level of fun is increasing with every passing day. You have to work more for every unit of fun you want.

Life will never be static. You won’t like it. Fun is to be done out of the ordinary. When i bought an iPod, it was fun. today, it is routine. Your house, would be fun for a homeless person, but for you, it is routine. That house is supported by your parents’ job and you have to support ur house with ur job later. It’s all about a change in the state you want to achieve. And it isn’t 15 years you have to wait for the effect to take place. Because in nature, all processes are differentiable, meaning, all processes are gradual. You are progressively moving towards a better standard of life.

Put it in words of math, everything can be explained. Literature sucks and makes you a whiner.

P.S: What does siesta mean?

Shabaz [purepain]

Comment on September 22nd, 2007.

Life is what you make it. People study for all their lives to work for things they have always wanted. For years and years they study to get to a certain point. Everyone has a standard of what they will become how they want to live. Some people are fine with living with their small family eating siesta just living a nice life. While some will be the investment broker who studies,and then works for years and years to get to a point where they can be happy. Whether it is getting to a family, and eating siesta or getting rich so they can provide for the family so their children dont have to work so hard and are set on the right path to begin with.

The King

Comment on September 22nd, 2007.

Siesta I believe means nap in the afternoon.

Is it because we’re brought up this way in todays society wanting all those excess materials that we grow to want them? In the end it would be suffice to just live, fish for your own food and spend the rest of the time with family.

Aspen

Comment on September 24th, 2007.

Having done something similar in moving to a cabin in the mountains, I will tell you this story is full of it. The fisherman works hard for his haul just as a farmer works hard for his produce. He has to get where the fish are biting when they are biting and fishing tuna is no small chore. Unless I am mistaken they are deep sea fish. In other words, you won’t find them in the shallows near shore.

But no matter where you are, you must make more than just enough for your family as there are the obligations of taxes and whatnot. The only people I know of that do pretty much what is done by the fisherman in this story are the people on the dole paid for by people like the investment banker.

Additionally, I believe this story is passed around as an example of how the fisherman is already doing what he wants and that the banker’s process only gets him back there. What I think is missed is really that each looks at the situation from what excites him and makes him happy.

Aspen’s last blog post..All’s Right with the World

Andy Bailey

Comment on September 27th, 2007.

it’s a great story! I’ve heard a similar version, I currently love my job, I really enjoy it and it never feels like work if you’re having fun!

btw..commentluv plugin has been updated here

Andy Bailey’s last blog post..Stumbleupon traffic surge Caught on video..

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