We’ll All Be Dead Tomorrow…

How would you live differently if you knew you only had a few months, weeks, days or hours to live? Would you not do things differently?

“I would sell everything and go on an adventure,” says one person.

“I would give all I had away,” from another.

Not one person talks about how much money they would save. No one mentions building anything for the future. In fact, in such discussions, the future is eclipsed by the present. “Now” trumps “then”.

So why not? Why shouldn’t we make the future yield to the ever important present?

Why should we set money aside? Plan? Shouldn’t we all just eat, drink, be merry? I mean, after all, we’ll all be dead tomorrow. Or at most a few tomorrows after that.

I wonder if the former CEO of the nation of Egypt felt this pressure. A few thousand years ago this guy named Joseph was leading this, the most powerful nation in the known world. History records that for his first seven years he focused most of his efforts on building for the future.

Stop.

I’m sure there must’ve been a lot of people who disagreed with him. The “opposing party” probably had tons of immediate needs that could have been solved with an immediate injection of funds (or in his day, grain). Others knew their lives could be lived more abundantly if this hard-nosed leader would just open the storehouse doors. Towards the end of the seven years, the pressure to sacrifice the future for the present must have been intense.

Joseph did not cave. Instead he held on, almost single-handedly preventing a famine that would have certainly wiped out masses of people.

Life is a marathon, not a short-sighted sprint. Consider following the advice found in the wisdom literature of King Solomon: “The wise man saves for the future, but the foolish man spends whatever he gets.”

Living in the moment is important. But so is contributing to the future. The current recession is hitting us hard, both as individuals and as a nation, mostly because we failed to plan for it.

What plans are you putting in place to prepare for the next one?

For reference, see The 3 Circles