What Would You Do If You Did Not Have to Work?

As a part of a continuous process of “digging into” my core, I often used to ask myself and others the following question “What would you do if you did not have to work”?

The question itself is perplexing and ambiguous, even before I’m approaching the answer. What does “work” mean? Go to work every day, i.e. office? Working from home? Is volunteering considered to be “work”?

Having defined these, we are heading to the next step.

For the sake of this discussion here, let’s say “work” means “make a living”, and most probably means waking up, dressing up, going by car or even worse – public transportation, to a shadowy office, cabin, room, hall – whatever. Even if it is spacious and modern, it is still an office where our hypothetical hero spends 1/3 of his/her life.

Having asked quite many people, among whom where my close friends, acquaintances and strangers, I got different answers, which is no wonder. Prevalent were “I would still go to work” or “I can’t imagine myself staying at home”.

Other popular answers were “take a world trip”, “having the time of my life” – but hey, I never took these seriously: the intent of this question was to point at a life goal, and “having the time of my life” sounds more like a first week/month/year euphoria, before the hero realized he/she is REALLY free. And then what?

The answer is not obvious as it may seem at the beginning. General statements like “I would live my life as I always wanted” are not satisfactory. I am looking for a concrete scheme, plan or at least a vague sketch, of what my life is going to look like after it is filled with unlimited, free time.

The question of money arises naturally, and here I prefer to stick to a more plausible and common version of “permanent cash flow”, meaning, our hero is neither Rothschild nor a homeless dude. Use your imagination to make up a scenario of how this cash flow was created – this is not the major point here.

The moment you answer this question, truly, with no self-deception, with no stereotyped thinking but using your own. unbiased, original thought – wow, you’re a lucky person, having nearly defined the goal of your life. Why nearly? Well, because things change, and your views might too. Life goals are case sensitive. Life goals are liquid.

Just not to sound too preachy, I will try to pour it out here, without trying to polish and brush my thoughts. First comes out first.

So, if I did not have to work (including work from home – just any kind of thing people do for money) – I would do exactly what I do now – plus using all the extra time – learn and study, get another degree, evolve mentally and physically. Open a school of chess for kids, maybe.

I finish this post with the word “maybe” and it is not a coincidence. It correlates with what I had said in one of the previous paragraphs – everything is “maybe” and the only solid truth is being in a perpetual process for optimizing and realizing your own “maybes”.