#40 | The Yacht Owner and the Garbage Truck Driver
Story One: The Garbage Truck Driver
I’m behind the wheel of my truck, mid-shift, and the heat is pressing down on me like a wet blanket. The smell in here is rough, garbage, old fish, everything a hot afternoon can do to trash. But I’ve got my ice cream, and I’m licking it slow, savoring every bit before it melts. Honestly, I’m happy. The sun’s out, the radio’s playing something good, and in a few hours I’m off. I keep thinking about seeing my family tonight, maybe taking the kids fishing this weekend, or just walking through the park with them. Right now, in this moment, stink and heat and all, I feel like a rich man.
Story Two: The Yacht Owner
I’m standing on the deck of my yacht. The water’s calm, the sun’s setting just right, everything around me says I’ve made it. But inside, there’s this hollow feeling I can’t shake. My marriage is falling apart quietly, the way things do when nobody’s really talking anymore. There’s old pain from my childhood I’ve never once looked at, just buried it under more work, more money, more things to manage. Everyone who sees me thinks I have it all. And I keep performing that for them, because if I stopped, I’m not sure what would be left.
There’s an old quote, sometimes framed as Socrates, contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty. And there’s a short story that goes with it. Socrates once dined with a king, feasting at his table. The very next night, he slept on a pillow of straw. A student asked him how he could move between such extremes so easily. Socrates said,
“If I lost everything I have, it would change nothing in my joy”.
So here are a few things worth sitting with.
First, where do you actually sit with your possessions right now, are you closer to the truck or closer to the yacht?
Second, and this is the real question, where do you sit with your joy, separate from what you own or what anyone thinks of you?
And finally, looking at both stories, can you see that the joy was never about the ice cream or the yacht at all?