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Hey friends, This is a note to remind you of something infinitely precious, fleeting, and in your current possession. That something is time. At sixteen years old, my life was forever altered by the near loss of it. A mosquito bite, viral meningoencephalitis, seizures, coma, brain damage, a long recovery — in short, a near-death experience — put a spotlight on my previous and utter obliviousness to the tremendous value of time for us living beings. We have time! We don’t know how much. But that, my friends, is the gift of gifts, and as you read these words, the gift of gifts is in your possession. Since coming so close to running out of time, I’ve come to see time as the most valuable resource anyone living could have. Perhaps you’d say that love or one hundred million dollars would be even better, but I’d counter that you can’t have any of those things without time (plus, you can use time to pursue them if you wish). Time is the invisible canvas upon which the universe paints and we live, the essential ingredient to living that we all forget is in limited supply in this life. As we can’t really get more time (other than a chance at another decade or two through healthy living) and we spent our time at a constant rate, the way I see it, the question for a being with limited time is: what is the best way to spend it? Spending time well is a values thing. Whatever matters most to you, you should spend most of your time doing. Some things I currently value most and aim to spend my time on include: creativity, travel, family, friends, long runs, climbing mountains, sunsets, books, music, dancing, experiments in community, altered states of consciousness, celebration, the sense of wonder, and developing a more expansive and spiritual approach to living. You probably have a sweet long list of things you value (that you’d most like to spend time doing) too? However, looking around, hardly anyone spends most of their time on what they most value. Why is that? Well, first and foremost, we have to survive in order to live. We need food, water, and shelter, and in our society, we generally have to make money to get those things. This is where things get slippery because everyone else is trying to make money as well. Just about everyone, everywhere, by a million different means, is trying their best to encourage you to give your money to them. So we all end up spending our time acquiring money and then our money on the millions of means of spending it constantly dangled before us: a bigger house, nicer car, cooler clothes, newer gadgets, the latest toys, exotic restaurants, bars, sporting events, concerts, and 353 million items on Amazon that can be purchased with a single click. The world is beckoning and angling, using social proof and every other psychological trick in the book to separate you from your money, the thing you’re always trading time (your most valuable resource) for. The result is a society full of people spending their time making and spending money. This is obviously great for our economy (which is measured by GDP, the amount of money spent) but what about spending time doing things that actually matter to us, that fascinate us, that make us feel alive? I look around and see a world of people sidetracked with the making and spending of money that rarely have the chance or the clarity among this cultural confusion to get around to discovering their values and interests. What I wish to offer tonight is a simple idea and antidote: if you don’t spend the money, they can’t tell you what to do. To live “below your means” means to have the freedom to spend your time in deeply meaningful and interesting ways. In my opinion, the truest form of wealth. There is also creative freedom that comes from learning to see opportunity in the world beyond the advertised options. There is no money to be made in things free and cheap, so nobody spends the money to advertise them. You will never see an offer to watch the sunset from your roof on a billboard, books that have outlasted copyright protection on the shelves of airport bookstores, or simple whole foods (the best things we can eat) featured in YouTube ads like Athletic Greens, Burger King, or Sprite. In what I aim to be a beautiful hunk of time well spent, I’m jetting off to Ecuador this Friday to spend December in a little town on the Pacific learning to surf, taking yoga classes, digital nomading, working on a new writing project, and engaging in a solo adventure in the unknown. Thanks to travel credit card bonuses the flights cost just $70 roundtrip and my own little A-frame cabin at a hostel on the beach (breakfast included) is $450 for the month — full-send living on the other side of the globe for way less than the cost of life at home, whoot! In the words of Ed Buryn, life ain’t about spending money, but spending “time lavishly in order to create the life values that make the fire worth the candle. Dig?” With love and stoke, Ethan
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