Sam argues that chasing money wastes your life, but pursuing what you'd do for free leads to mastery and reward. He pushes back against the expectations that steer people away from creative work and toward safer, more lucrative paths.
Chapters
What do you desire? What makes you itch? What sort of a situation would you like? So I always ask the question, what would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life? Well, it's so amazing as a result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say, well, we'd like to be painters, we'd like to be poets, we'd like to be writers, but as everybody knows, you can't earn any money that way. Or another person says, well, I'd like to live an out of doors life and ride horses. I said, you want to teach in a riding school? Let's go through with it. What do you want to do? When we finally got down to something which the individual says he really wants to do, I will say to him, you do that and forget the money. Because if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living. That is to go on doing things you don't like doing, which is stupid. Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way. And after all, if you do really like what you're doing, it doesn't matter what it is, can eventually turn it. You could eventually become a master of it. The only way to become a master of something, be really with it. And then you'll be able to get a good fee for whatever it is. So don't, don't worry too much. That's everybody's. Somebody's interested in everything and anything you can be interested in, you'll find others. But it's absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don't like in order to go on spending things you don't like doing things you don't like. And to teach your children to follow in the same track. See, what we're doing is we're bringing up children and educating them to live the same sort of lives we live in order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same things. It never gets there. And so therefore it's so important to consider this question. What do I desire? Sam.
