Greetings~ Do me a favor; turn on some music right now. I’m listening to smooth jazz, but that’s just because I’m in a mellow mood right now. You can listen to any type you’d like…
(I’ll wait…)
Very good, I’d usually ask you to close your eyes… but that wouldn’t help the whole reading thing very well, so just imagine your eyes closed and read on…
The people singing the song right now are yours. The instruments in the song, even the titles are all in your possession. Congratulations. You are the wealthiest person in the world, and you hold millions of peoples’ lives in the balance. Your secretaries and subordinates scurry around your offices. You tug multimillion-dollar CEOs at your slightest whim, like puppets on a string. They’re dancing pathetically. See them in their blue suits and ties dancing like cartoons in a puppy chow commercial. All yours. Wining and dining, they’d like nothing more than to take you out to dinner on them in the small hope you will smile fondly on their minor existence… instead of buying out their business and crushing them like fat cockroaches under your million dollar, custom fashioned shoe.
But where do you go from here? You have already far surpassed many businessman’s wildest dreams. Do you realize you have to increase your total wealth by $37 billion in order to be 1% richer? Is that really your next goal? Are you bored from this type of power yet? Fine, you just got that 1%, now what? Are you on a treadmill or a mission… is your goal in life to make as much money as humanly possible before you die? Or… did you want to actually get somewhere? Was your entire dream just to get your name posted somewhere? Did you want some sort of “High Score” hall of fame like you won an arcade video game? Bravo, 40 years and you got it. 40 years of 90-hour weeks with countless failed attempts at families along the way. Friends you’ve betrayed or ignored have since leapt from the tracks from the speeding wrought iron train that is your life. I hope it was worth it. Was it? Is it?
What’s happening now? Your eyes shake violently around like a poorly filmed movie until suddenly they fixate on the ceiling and your back thuds as it hits the floor. Two bullet holes smoke from your chest, and the redness retreats to the arms at your sides… and to the floor below. For once, not wondering who’s to blame for your murder, whether it was an angry employee, a corrupt body guard, or even a spy of some government, you think back on your life itself. Where have you come from, how in 40 years, did you ever let it ever get to this?
What should you have really done with your life? You’re looking 40 years back now, when you were just a young one and standing at the store of life. Looking like a little kid at a candy shop, your eyes are big with wonder and excitement. You hold 40 years in your hand like cash. The aisles of options reach past any type of ceiling to the sky above. Gazing up with those little, blue, eyes of innocence… what do you choose?
The choice of your past happened to be that item on the low shelf to your right bursting with green. You sacrificed 40 years for a huuuge package of green, that thing some people crave for comes to you with abundance, but it’s a cold package, and while you’re rich with one thing, your heart starves for another. You’re lonely. How were you to know what the feeling would be like? There was a time when your parents cared very well for you and your friends were once plentiful. Well, now you’re back… back to the very beginning. Do you choose a different plan?