In a nutshell, all wells eventually run dry.
In a cracked shell, not all thirsts are quenched.
A rather bleak opening, I'll grant you.
Perhaps even a tad dramatic for a Wednesday evening.
But before you start looking for the nearest oasis, let's admit that this isn't exactly groundbreaking news, is it?
All of us heard the wisdom and seen the evidence.
Your neighbor who worked at the same company for thirty years, confident in his pension plan, now drives for rideshare apps at 63.
Yet with a surprisingly consistent lack of foresight, "evidence seers" continue to proceed as if their particular well is somehow exempt from the laws of depletion.
Whether we're talking of a literal well here, such as a personal tangible resource, the truth is every known source has its limits.
I think non-literal wells, so to speak, don't come with clear warning signs before they start to run low or just outright become dry.
Kindness doesn't deplete when shared.
Of course, it's a very fine line between recognizing which wells are truly finite and which ones don't follow the same physics.
Inverted Mechanisms
The paradox is that we love to treat our renewable resources (creativity, relationships, learning capacity) as if they're scarce, while simultaneously acting as if our genuinely finite resources (time, money, energy) are inexhaustible.
I must say being a human comes with this peculiar talent for misreading the fundamental operating manual of existence.
The game theory I like to play is imagining which "wells" in our lives are perceived abundance versus those which are actual infinite.
The illusion works both ways.
Create artificial scarcity around infinite resources ("I'm not creative enough," "I don't have enough love to give").
And manufacture false abundance around finite ones ("I'll sleep when I'm dead," "There's always more money to be made").
The arbitrage opportunity here is staggering.
Because if you can correctly identify which category each resource falls into, you can essentially trade your perceived limitations for actual abundance.
Watch how we've culturally inverted some of the wisdom of previous generations.
For the most part, our grandparents hoarded money (finite) but shared stories, recipes, and time freely (infinite).
Modern people hoard their authentic selves on social media and throw money at every convenience and subscription service, even those they barely use.
Race To The Bottom
There's also 'the last drop gambit,' where everyone secretly hopes everyone else's well will dry up first.
I think it's a deeply ingrained human tendency to discount long-term consequences in favor of immediate gratification and believe in our own unique exception.
From an individual perspective, I'm more leaning into the camp that treats this as an optimization problem and not necessarily a zero-sum competition.
The obvious reason is there's no winning strategy in hoping others miscalculate their resources. Hope itself is not a viable long-term strategy for resource management.
Some of our deepest thirsts were never meant to be satisfied by drawing from finite sources in the first place.
Instead of searching for wells that won't run dry, become the kind of person who knows how to dig new ones.
This is much more simpler in the grand scheme of things but the path to achieving that is far from simple in practice.
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