I have often wondered why intelligent people, capable of complex reasoning and long-term planning, so readily accept a peculiar bargain: to give away the better part of their waking lives now, in exchange for a promise of living later.

It is presented as prudence. As maturity. As the price of adulthood.

And yet, when examined quietly—without motivational slogans or corporate language—it begins to look like an inherited superstition rather than a reasoned choice.

We tell ourselves we will live once things settle. After the promotion. After the loan is closed. After the children grow up. After the market improves. After the body cooperates again. The calendar, obligingly, moves forward. Life, less so.

The Strange Arithmetic of Modern Work

There is a kind of arithmetic we are taught early: more hours equal more virtue. Longer endurance signals seriousness. Exhaustion becomes evidence of worth.

But arithmetic, like any human invention, can be wrong.

I have met people with impressive titles who have almost no say over their own mornings. I have also met people with modest incomes who decide when to work, when to stop, and where to be. The former often appear powerful; the latter quietly are.

It raises an unsettling question: what, exactly, are we measuring when we call someone successful?

Money is counted easily. Time is not. Freedom almost never is.

Time as the Only Honest Currency

Time is the only currency that cannot be replenished, borrowed, or renegotiated. We behave as though it were abundant, while treating money—infinitely more renewable—as sacred.

This inversion leads to odd behaviors. We spend years doing work that leaves us depleted, so that we might someday afford the freedom we were too busy to practice. It is like hoarding books while never learning to read.

What is most striking is not that people work hard, but that they do so without asking whether their work leaves room for being human: for thinking, for resting, for boredom, for wonder.

Mobility of Mind and Body

There is much talk today of mobility, usually reduced to travel or remote work. But mobility, in its truest sense, is the ability to change one’s position—externally or internally—without catastrophe.

A life designed entirely around a single role, location, or identity becomes brittle. When disruption comes, as it inevitably does, such lives fracture easily.

Flexibility, then, is not indulgence. It is resilience.

A life with options is not an escape from responsibility; it is a hedge against despair.

The Subtle Violence of “Someday”

“Someday” is a gentle word, but it conceals a quiet violence. It reassures us while stealing from us at the same time.

Someday we will rest.
Someday we will read.
Someday we will be present.
Someday we will live deliberately.

Someday, conveniently, never arrives.

What is rarely acknowledged is that living later requires a form of faith—not spiritual faith, but faith in uninterrupted continuity. Faith that health, opportunity, and relationships will remain on hold while we attend to our obligations.

History, medicine, and personal experience suggest otherwise.

Designing Life as an Ethical Act

To design one’s life is often dismissed as self-absorbed. But consider the alternative: a life run entirely on default settings, inherited anxieties, and unexamined expectations.

A person who is perpetually depleted has little left to give—to patients, to family, to society, or to themselves.

Designing a life with freedom now is not about excess or escape. It is about proportion. About ensuring that work serves life, rather than consuming it. About refusing to sacrifice the present entirely to an imagined future.

A Modest Conclusion

I do not argue against effort, ambition, or discipline. These remain essential virtues. I argue only against their misapplication.

The goal of life is not to endure until permission is granted to enjoy it.

The goal, if one may be stated at all, is to live with enough time, mobility, and efficiency that one can remain awake to one’s own existence.

Anything less may be impressive.
It is rarely wise.

About the Author

Dr. Srinivas Rajkumar T, MD (AIIMS), DNB, MBA (BITS Pilani)
Consultant Psychiatrist & Neurofeedback Specialist
Mind & Memory Clinic, Apollo Clinic Velachery (Opp. Phoenix Mall)

Dr. Srinivas Rajkumar T works at the intersection of psychiatry, neuroscience, and lifestyle design, with a clinical emphasis on burnout, attention disorders, anxiety, and modern work-related distress. His approach focuses on careful diagnosis, ethical medication use, de-prescribing where appropriate, and helping individuals build lives that are psychologically sustainable—not merely successful.

✉ srinivasaiims@gmail.com
📞 +91-8595155808