“A man does a thing for two reasons: the one that sounds good, and the real reason.” – J. P. Morgan

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual” by Arnold Kunst

We think we've really done it [“He who dies with the most toys wins.”] when we've gotten a hernia reaching for the baubles our culture holds as the choicest fruit on the tree of "life" - up there, just beyond our reach. But more pertinent is the fact that on our deathbed very few of us are going to say, "If only I had spent more time at the office."

Put it this way: Assuming you’re a young person there are parts of your anatomy that you are proud of because they glow pink and firm now, but in a few brief years those parts will become, shall we say, less firm. Your ear lobes, jowls, tummy will just hang there, like a dog biscuit that's been soaking apathetically for three days in a puddle of milk. Your thighs will end up lookiong like congealed cottage cheese; when you lift your arm off the table, the part in the middle is going to leave last. It's called aging, and there's no escape from it. Between now and then you are going to exchange your youth for something, or some series of things, that you will have valued between now and then. You want to be sure that what you get is worth the inevitable price you're going to pay anyway.