For the last century or so we, in the United States, have been conditioned to believe in something called “The Golden Years.” We are expected to scrimp, save, and put our dreams on hold for this final idyllic crescendo of our lives. A time in which we’ll proudly wear orthopedic shoes, take tour buses to Vegas, and blow huge sums of money on slots while we incinerate what’s left of our brain cells with a never ending deluge of cheap booze.
After being in the crypto space now for a couple of years my eyes have been opened and it all seems so ridiculously unbelievable. Unfortunately, this big lie has become one of the United States' main exports. I’m ashamed to admit that I bought into this lie in a huge way when I was working my corporate job. For well over a decade I pounded that Kool Aid hard, working overtime, living an extremely spartan life while sweating every single dollar I spent.
Back then, my top priority was saving as much as I could to insure we could live comfortably in our old age. I squirreled away twelve percent of my income into a 401k. In retrospect, that “investment in my future” made me very little and the expenses and fees which were steadily skimmed off the top probably paid for lavish sweet sixteen parties for several Wall Street bankers' kids. This was well before I learned the world, as I knew it, was completely rigged.
When I think back to how naive I was it would be easy to get angry at all of the time I lost. However, my spiritual practice has shown me repeatedly that things happen in their own time, exactly when they’re meant to. Thanks to that, I feel little regret. Like billions of others I was duped by the puppet masters who’ve engineered a society in which 98% of the population slaves away for the top 2% to live a life of almost unimaginable luxury.
A little over eight months ago I was reborn and walked away from that corporate job forever. I’ve learned that in this world you must take nothing for granted and at the same time question everything. Don’t ever differ your dreams for anyone else’s. You must become a true friend and advocate to yourself and others.
Today, I’m working on a project that I’m totally believe in and am consumed with (HardFork) with a team of people I love, admire, and respect. Now, each day, I’m working diligently and getting closer towards my own ultimate goals.
I saw a Tweet by someone I follow on Twitter the other day that summed up the definition of my vision of ultimate goal so completely and concisely it was though it was plucked from my own brain.
He wrote….
Freedom
What a beautiful word. It’s a concept I thought I understood before but I didn’t until recently. My entire life philosophy has shifted towards true freedom in these last few years. As a result of this I now feel an obligation to help educate others and show them there’s a new path...a much better way. After my own metamorphosis, despite the ups and downs of the crypto market, there hasn’t been a morning that my feet have hit the floor that I don’t feel grateful and energized.
Here is a poem I wrote years ago but now seems like a strange premonition...
I’m happy to say these are, indeed, the golden years and I hope I get to experience many more of them. Oh, and that .gif at the top is how I imagine I’ll be behaving at SteemFest 25, where I'll likely be referred to as that crazy old coot who helped to write HardFork. Maybe I'll climb to a rep rating of 76 by then. ; )
Never forget each moment is golden.
Thanks for reading!
Eric Vance Walton
(Gif sourced from Giphy.com)
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