Gen Z Guide to FI

TW: potential mental health triggers

A few months ago, I was talking with one of my best friends about how I became more and more aware of my existence. We’ll call it an existential crisis. I didn’t have any life threatening moments or brushes with death. I just realized that shit, I’m gonna die one day. ‘What is the point of anything in life?’ Then, she started telling me about how she had spiraled herself into depression when she began to have similar thoughts years ago.

Weeks later, I watched a show ‘Shogun’ (which is a really great show on Hulu) which was set centuries ago in Japan. In this show, many of the characters are ready to kill themselves for the slightest bit of honor or if they feel disrespected. Not that they are suicidal per say, just that they believe that ‘we live and we die’ and there isn’t that much to it. I think watching this show at the time I was having an existential crisis made me see life differently.

Just because a cat has a short lifespan doesn’t stop it from living it’s best life. So, what’s stopping me? I think too many of us don’t realize that ‘we live and we die’ and overthink every decision we make. I think the greatest gift is to live. The greatest honor is to die and be remembered by people whose souls you’ve touched. I was raised Catholic and I believe there is a God. All religions feel the same to me because we all end up dead going to the same place(s) so I’m not nearly as devoutly religious as I once was. I want to believe there is a hell for the truly despicable evil people in history but there’s so much of Christian logic that I can’t get behind. I guess I’m hoping to find a religion that isn’t as restrictive as Christianity but that’s a story for another day.

I’m the only one who knows my full life story. Every moment in between my life and death. SO, I MUST LIVE TO MAKE MYSELF PROUD. Of course, in the process of living, I hope to continue forming loving bonds and doing good in the world.

I started writing this as a response to prompt from my business school on ‘what is your worldview and workview?’

I’m not sure if my answer is what they were looking for in terms of the worldview LOL. Any the workview part of the prompt asks ‘why do you work?’. I think the answer is obviously MONEY baby.

I didn’t need 200 words to sum that up. I’m dead serious. If I have learned anything from my last 3 months of unemployment, it is that work did not give my life meaning. It was a means to an end. Everyone needs money to live. I want to live for as long as I can and enjoy the gift of life that I’ve been given. So working hard is part of the grind.

Of course, I uprooted my life for 2 years to go back to school so I can improve my prospects of finding a job/career that excites me, instead of one where I have to stare at the clock and watch life pass me by. But make no mistake, I work for money and not much else (maybe health insurance too).

School starts Monday. Wish me luck.

XOXO Gen Z Fire Baby