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Clever investments

In real life, we tend to think in economics. We think of saving: saving money, saving time, saving effort. We want to invest where something flows back to us.

I can see that this way of thinking makes sense in many areas.
Where resources are limited saving makes sense. We show that we are responsible human beings when we try to save electricity, don’t waste plastic and when we fix a broken tap.

Human nature prefers short term saving over long term saving. This muddles up everything, because short term saving often means wasting long term.

 

Here is an example: We like signs like Sale!, Extra cheep!, Super discount!
So we buy this super super cheep pair of shoes. We walk around in these shoes and find out after 10 minutes they don’t fit. They look sooo cute, the price was sooo fantastic – but they are uncomfortable.

What comes next is: we stop wearing them, because our toes hurt when we even think of walking around in them. We stop using and we start hoarding them.
After 5 years we wore them twice for three hours. The cheep short term price turned out to be high in the long run. We actually wasted our money with this “bargain”.

What about this approach: we invest some time and money and we buy a really expensive pair. A solid pair of shoes, made in Austria. It fits perfectly and we wear it for many years on every single day – until they fall apart.
At the end, the second pair turned out to be a really good idea and – cheep. A worthwhile investment that totally payed off.

This interesting principle also works in our social world.
I remember a teacher telling me: “There are students, where you can “save calories”. Just let these lessons pass by, some students are not worth the effort.”

And I thought in his wisdom this teacher might be right. So when I started teaching, I looked for those students, that are not worth the effort, where I would just let the lesson pass by and save calories.

Here is what I found out:
In every lesson, I share my time with a real human being. And EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM is worth my FULL effort. Saving effort did not feel right.

Why? Because in the long run, I would ruin my life. There is no happiness to be found where we save our heartblood and withhold friendliness, love and support.

 

What do you think? Is it a wise practice to save calories in social settings?
Or do we hurt ourselves longterm when we try to save our humanity for later?

Much love
Anselma

 

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