08/07/2023
“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…
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… To structure your existence with an objective of monetary gain is to spend a lifetime chasing an abstraction.
… And after all, if you do really like what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter what it is, you can eventually turn it — you could eventually become a master of it. It’s the only way to become a master of something, to be really with it. And then you’ll be able to get a good fee for whatever it is. So don’t worry too much…”
Now money is a fundamental fact of our current constructed reality, even Alan Watts understood that. Barter, exchange, value, currency and what have you – there is absolutely no feasible way around it.
So leave your pipe dreams and utopian visions at the door, just entertain the question at face value for now. It’s probing for something much deeper than some cheap ideological economic fix.
An inspirational and profound speech from the late philosopher Alan Watts.Original Audio sourced from: “Alan Watts - Do You Do It, Or Does It Do You?” Produ...
