Time is all we have

 

When I was growing up, capitalism was just making a breakthrough in my country, consequently our elders were still telling the centuries old mantra that: Money can't buy you happiness. As time went by I was observing the complete opposite. To have a motorcycle you need money, to have a nice house you need money, to have a nice car you need money... so Money => Goods => Happiness. Additionally I would hear my father saying: Money are not everything in the world, but solve all the problems. Apparently this turned out to be true in most cases, except in ONE!

Self value. That is the one that money can't buy. Money won't make you an expert at anything, only time and effort can. Needless to say, you can enroll in the best schools and commission the best mentors in the world, but that will not magically make you good at anything, it only gives you false feeling of accomplishment and bloated vanity. That's how far money will go, only make you a member of an expensive country club, nothing more.

Now, surely you can't rank self value by yourself! Not entirely true. Even though personal expertise is something to be observed and externally recognized, it still can be objectively measured by one self. But how?

Have you seen someone doing something (rock climbing per say) and it looks effortless? That is it! That is something money can't buy. Self value, expertise, being a pro! When you realize you are doing something effortless yourself, you have become a pro.

This applies for any area of life, anyone who makes something to seem effortless, you should always assume that a lot of effort has already been put into it! Not because they had the best mentors in the world, but because they put their blood, sweat and tears in it. Their time (which is finite) was invested heavily in it. There is a saying in the programming community: If you haven't banged your head of the monitor, you haven't programmed in your life, you have only seen tutorials online!

And it looks easy when experts do it, doesn't it? Well, put some effort into it, just do it, save your money for a motorcycle instead.