I was listening to an episode of the Freakonomics podcast series “The Secret Life of a CEO” and I found this segment with David Rubeinsten, the billionaire co-founder of the private equity fund Carlyle Group, timely:
RUBENSTEIN: “My biggest concern is I’m now 68 years old, and actuarial tables being what they are, it’s unlikely that I’ll live another 68 years, and maybe not even another 38 years. So I wish I had all the resources I have, the access, the willingness to get to do the kind of things I can do, and the ability to the kind of things I do when I was 37. I would give away all the money I have today, every penny, if I could be five years younger.”
DUBNER: “Just five years, really, that’s quite an arbitrage.”
RUBENSTEIN: “Life is so pleasurable. Even if you’re not wealthy. You know, money doesn’t necessarily make you happy. Some of the saddest people I know are the wealthiest people I know. And some of the poorest people I know are some of the happiest people I know. You know, Thomas Jefferson said, “Life is about the pursuit of happiness.” But he didn’t tell us how to actually get happiness. And it’s the most elusive thing in life, is personal happiness. Very few people achieve it. I think I’m personally happy. But you know, I think I was happy before I was wealthy, so you know, I don’t know that the wealth has made me happier.”
The line that struck me the most was this:
“I would give away all the money I have today, every penny, if I could be five years younger.”
Rubenstein is worth $2.8bn according to Forbes. To say that he would give it all away just to be five years younger is perhaps an exaggeration but it nonetheless stresses a point all too easily forgotten when we’re young and ambitiously racing ahead in pursuit of some better life further down the road. The point is this:
No amount of money will ever buy you back lost time. And time is especially lost when we postpone our happiness today and agonise about a wishful future–“I’ll be happy when I get this or that”–not realising that the opportunity we have to be mindful and appreciative of where we are now, today, at this very moment, is already sufficient for a good life.
Rubenstein was happy before his billionaire status but he would still gladly swap it for being five years younger. How about you? Are you able to find happiness prior to your golden years? Will you be in a position where you wish you could swap it all to go back? Or, will you have savoured your early years enough to not wish you could turn the clock back so much?