June 7, 2021 - Priorities

A New York magazine talked about these young and bright Masters-of-the-Universe types, men and woman fresh from America’s most elite business schools (Harvard MBAs and the like) who go right from the classroom to high paying jobs on Wall Street.

What did it say about them?

It said that if they are not outright miserable, they were über-empty inside. In other words, making it to the top, and right away, too, wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be.

Imagine that!

“Twenty years from now,” one of these young Turks mused, even painfully, “is anyone going to care about the extra percentage point in stock profit that I made last month?”

Really, who is going to care? Or even know? And, in the scheme of things, what does it really matter—even if it were a whole two extra percentage points?

Sure, there are things in life that we need to do, daily things that, in and of themselves, in the big picture, can seem trivial, meaningless, even if they matter now. After all, taking out the garbage might not exactly be epochal, but it, still, needs to be done.

But what about where our priorities really lay?

“For where your treasure is,” said Jesus, “there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:2). In other words, might there be some need for changes, for adjustments, for a shifting of your priorities? Might there be some aspect of your life that, however much it consumes you now, does so at the expense of what is much more valuable, and enduring?

Maybe, maybe not? But no matter where we are in our life, it’s certainly worth thinking about, just as that Wall Street wunderkind, sitting (supposedly) at the top of the world, wondered about what he was doing there and, ultimately, what difference did it really make?