“What should I be paying attention to?” That is a tough question for most people to answer, which is made obvious by their observable behavior. One proof for that assertion is how people spend their money. These days it is so easy to get credit and then spend to the limit of that credit that people, for a short-term advantage of some sort, will put themselves into debt for the rest of their lives. Going into voluntary debt puts them into a permanent state of voluntary slavery where if they fail to make their payments on the debt they are punished; thus they are forced to work or suffer. They are slaves.
Ben Franklin’s saying, “Happy, Healthy, Wise, and Wealthy” states the qualities of a prudent life succinctly, and someone who squanders money isn’t likely to fulfill that last idea and ever be wealthy. My definition of wealthy is having enough to cover all of your needs plus enough slack so there is little risk of having to dip into borrowing against personal property. I don’t think it’s a “need” to appear to be richer than one is in fact. It certainly isn’t necessary to purchase a new car on payments so you can live up to your pretended status. A wise person would buy an old car and earn enough to get the new car a little later for cash. Plus they would have ten percent slack set aside for unexpected car-related problems.
This basic lifestyle strategy, illustrated above for money, also applies to the ideas behind being happy, healthy and wise. People who are endangering their body voluntarily doing risky things are jeopardizing their whole future prospect of achieving those four basics. When a person is injured, which is a certainty when they pursue risky behavior long enough, … certainty is part of the definition of risky … then their health is ruined, that affects their happiness when they can’t even pursue normal activities, and their wealth is ruined too because they have medical expenses, and their ability to earn money is compromised too which further ruins their wealth.
What about wisdom? Is being injured doing some risky action a promoter of wisdom? Perhaps you do need some life experience to learn what not to do, but with even a little bit of experience you can learn just as well from observing other people’s behavior and learn from their mistakes and successes. Maybe you don’t learn at such a deep level, or maybe you do. We often hear of people getting up after surviving desperate injuries and going right back into the same old action. Is that wisdom? Or is it wisdom to avoid those kinds of behaviors?
For a good life the essential goals are to value happy, healthy, wise and wealthy actions.
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