So i was recently attending a lecture about starting your own company, and it got me thinking. The lecture was being given by a successful entrepreneur, and wound up being absolutely, 100% uninspiring. The guy had created his wealth based on a corny magazine for men. One of those magazines that writes about cars, tech and girls, arguing about which beer makes you drunk for the least amount of money. The type of magazine that doesn’t exactly inspire a deeper philosophical conversation, but hits a wide enough audience to make it’s founder rich. But this post isn’t about the existence of “guy magazines”, and whether they serve a purpose, this post is about passion.
Because the guy clearly seemed to have a sense of passion for his work. Except that he wasn’t passionate about making the best magazine ever created, he was simply passionate about making money. Making a magazine was simply a means of creating wealth. Now, there is nothing wrong with making money, we all need them in order to survive and exchange goods. Our society is completely dependant on money, and would collapse without it.
My issue doesn’t lie with the creation of wealth, but when money becomes the end rather than the means. The reason most of us have a job is to create stability. It allows us to buy food, culture, and comfort. This stability and security allows us to pursue what we love, whether this is painting, travelling, charity work, cooking, or whatever makes us happy. Thus money can be a means towards happiness, at least i believe it can serve as a helping hand. But when you equate money directly to success, and when this becomes a goal in itself, it can be hard to ever become truly satisfied. Because one can always buy a bigger house, a more expensive boat, or a flashier car. We don’t have any natural saturation point for money, like we do with food. As we can always use more money, we can never become happy if all we want to do is to create monetary wealth.
I am probably overthinking this way too much, but the lecture kinda saddened me. The guy didn’t set out to change the world, he simply wanted to come up with an idea that could make him as much money as possible. And all of the ideas he was met with was valued on whether they could make money. It doesn’t matter if you make amazing art, brilliant food, are feeding the poor, or have found a cure for cancer. If pet rocks makes him more money, that is the better idea. This way of looking at the world truly saddens me, as it kills passion. The lecture was a part of a course about starting a business. The goal of the course seems to be about creating a business idea with the best potential for creating money, and i have a tough time finding a passion for this.
I have no issue going into a project with a great idea, that i am passionate about, and finding a way for it to make money. But reversing the process, and finding some idea that can make money, is utterly boring to me. I would rather live a life where i am poor as shit, but passionate about what i do, than live life as a rich guy who has no other interest than money.
Now, i am by no means saying that rich people cannot be passionate about other stuff than money, because this would be absolutely false. I am simply stating that this one dude only saw money, and it got me down.
Anyhow, just felt like sharing my thoughts on the subjects, hope you’re all doing great.