You don’t want a yacht. You dont want a big house. You dont want a super car, a $40,000 watch, or shoes you worry about getting dirty. You want free will.
You want to wake up naturally on a Tuesday and you want to go to bed when you’re done having fun. You want to say yes to everything that excites you without having to request time off. You want to go to the gym at noon, in absolutely no hurry. You want to spend 18 hours a day doing what you love. You want to be exactly where you desire being, always. You want to spend as much time with the people you care about as possible.
You’re saying you wanna be rich? In what?
Going to put my father on blast here. Love you pops.
Saturday morning, 14 mile run under my belt, belly full, espressos from the La Marzocco are flowing.
Im nestled in on the couch, prepped (just in the knick of time) to watch the 2026 Monaco Grand Prix Qualifying Session.
If you know anything about Formula 1, in Monaco, quali is pretty much the race. Still a magical weekend.
Broadcast kicks off, theme song has me hip thrusting like Vector from Despicable Me. Camera drones pan zoom over Monaco with the same glorious shot we get every year.
Port Hercules is packed gunwale to gunwale, hundreds of hulls lined up bow to stern like teeth in a comb, white decks stacked three and four high with people who paid a fortune to stand still.
Threading through it all is twenty cars doing 170mph with about a foot of runoff on either side.
Mmmmmmm. Growl for me. Life is good.
I love Formula 1. Always will.
HOWEVER.
With its rise to fame, the broadcasts have become less about racing, and more about, well, everything else.
We used to get battles for P13/P14, nowadays, we get shots of some celebrity, or one of the drivers significant others massive new rock on their finger.
Wow! George is engaged!
In Monaco, this is of course accentuated. The land of the wealthy and attractive.
For roughly 2 hours, F1 TV direction does a world class job greed farming rich people across the globe.
There is no choice but to imagine what eggs and orange juice might be like overlooking the Mediterranean Sea at next years Grand Prix.
We invite you to come watch!
Anyway, enough about the sport.
Somewhere in the middle of the lull that is a formula one race, my father spins his iPad around like im getting an ice cream and hes asking for a tip.
“Charles LeClerc’s new yacht, 102 Feet. $15 million. Badass.”
My brain spartan kicks itself with a controversial thought.
Honestly, I dont really want a yacht. Then Id have to clean that shit.
Youre living someone elses dream, sorry
We live in a world where adopting someone else’s dream is default. The natural order of things. Easy. Effortless.
It’s making you miserable.
A game created by game makers you’ve never met, forcing you left, into the flaming spike pit, or right, into the roses, depending on which form of social media you decide to bang your head against for the day.
You get packaged up in a little box built by your parents wanting you to be a lawyer, social media telling you you need the latest taper fade haircut, rich people left and right wearing moonshoes you end up buying because you cant think for yourself.
Shipped off to some figurative foreign land you never wanted to be in all because you never changed the shipping label planted on your forehead.
Big 4 audit because society labels that good. Investment banking because slaving away 65 hours a week gets appointed high knighthood.
Cut your long hair. Wear the suit. Be in the office 5 days a week.
Acceptance. Inheritance. Thats all this is.
High school, then college, then job, then family, then retire, then die.
Stay in the box or get deemed a weirdo for going against the grain your whole life.
Be rich and be jacked and buy the nicest things in the world. If you dont youre a loser. Unsuccessful. Boring. All part of the process.
This is the good life!
Lmao.
SAYS WHO.
Every little kid on earth, pre-social media, pre establishment (school), pre-sentience, has a wildly audacious plan.
President. Astronaut. Paleontologist. Athlete.
Little lords and ladies wanting to be movie stars and race car drivers and cowboys and awesome shit.
But somewhere in there they get that doomer bug. Dream termites (Karens) invade their brain and chew the plan apart like its a voluptuous redwood.
Not possible. Visionless. Too risky.
“How will you pay the bills, honey?”
“Why would you want to be president, the whole world hates you.”
“Astronauts get paid next to nothing.”
No kid has ever grown up wanting to be a Credit Analyst, give me a break.
Our predecessors tell us money wont make us happy the same way they tell us smoking is bad for us. We ignore it until it we get a shitty diagnosis.
“No no I swear! It will be different for me!” Lol.
What a sad life it would be, to get to 65, look back at the kingdom youve built, and find it ugly.
To realize you spent your one shot at this thing traveling somewhere you didnt want to go.
More THINGS. More STUFF. More NONSENSE you dont want because thats what living the dream is right?
This is who you are. This is what you wanted. This is the foundation you built your house on.
And you fucking hate it.
Skimming the top of the life claw game, letting the little crane drop into the metaphorical plushy pit thinking thats your only option.
God forbid you just dont play.
Full blown identity crisis. Noone knows who they are.
Remy and Alfredo in the kitchen whipping up ratatouille like everyone is Anton Ego. Noone knew what that shit was until the movie came out!
Thats social media. Identity dispenser. Drop in your quarter and see what you get.
Someone you know gets a tattoo and the next time you see them they have 30.
A friend gets into running and the next year theyre ripping ultramarathons.
Trend hopping. Blending into the social contagion. Stealing identities never tapping into their own soul.
Of course everyone is sad and unfulfilled.
Without taking any time to consider what it is you truly want, the world will simply tell you.
It has always been this way, but it used to just be your parents and a few other adults. Now its 7.7 billion people on the internet who are way smarter, way better looking, way more confident, than you are.
Wearing hand me downs from people we dont know, clothes we dont even like. Ron Weasley ball gown robes type shit.
You walk around assuming what makes a stranger on the internet happy will make you happy too, not realizing the stranger wasnt happy either.
Copying off the kid whos bombing the test.
Without the courage to ask yourself what it is you truly want (and listen to it) this is your reality.
The algorithm will decide what you see.
Your parents will tell you what looks safe.
The internet will tell you what success is.
You will sit there and call the results your life.
Materiality, land, a career with a good title, all actually fine. Worthy pursuits.
But at what cost?
What are you trading it for?
Often times its the things that actually make this life worth living.
The early morning walks on the beach.
The slow afternoon reading a book.
Deep restful sleep.
Time with loved ones.
The basics.
Agency.
Free will.
Happiness.
Vitality.
How to fix!
The answer is not a better feed, or working harder, or luck, or a great mentor.
Its getting acquainted with the only person who can do anything about it.
Yourself bozo.
You are Luke Skywalker and Obi-wan at the same time.
You need time to process your emotions, dream, and reflect. Alone time. Deep boredom.
If you cant read between the lines that means getting off the fucking phone you troll. OFFLINE.
Go analog. Be alone.
PROCESSING TIME. DOWNLOAD THE THOUGHTS. OFFLOAD THE BAGGAGE.
All while changing your inputs.
Stop letting an algorithm tell you what to watch and listen to.
Instead, let your interests decide. Your real interests. Let the chained dog that is your child like curiosity loose. Its freaking foaming at the mouth.
Create lists. Books. Movies. Shows. Documentaries. If you want to use social media set a timer and get on with the intent of learning or viewing something specific.
Im tired of this bullshit, “I find my dinner recipes on there.” Yeah that, for 30 seconds, served with 25 minutes of other nonsense youll forget tomorrow.
I remember as a kid going to Blockbuster and needing to be so thoughtful about which game I was taking home because I wasnt going back for a while.
With GameStop and physical copies of games, I had a specific game in mind going to the store. Weeks thinking about it, being excited, reading reviews, walking in, buying it (or trying to, so long as the employee didnt try to white knight my mother, gatekeeping 8 year old me from buying gears of war), leaving, spending weeks with it.
Only thing thats really like this now are physical books. Walk in with a book or topic in mind, walk out.
Long walks with nothing in your ears.
Car rides with no music.
A physical book and a scratchpad.
A notebook and a pen and nowhere to be.
All things that seem so boring. They are. Terrifyingly so. But thats the point. No one is ever bored anymore.
Which is exactly why no one does anything interesting. Carbon copies of each other.
“What do you do for work”
“What do you do for work”
“What do you do for work”
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Start digging
The answers you seek are standing tall and proud, flush for harvest. Deep within the caverns of your own mind. A field of gold.
All you need to do is dig them out.
The best way to do this is to journal regularly.
This is how you view yourself objectively. Most people are shit at this.
But think about how easy it is to view others that way. Its so easy to see what others want, what lights them up, what stresses them out. The bad boyfriend, the work, the laziness, the addictions. You see it all instantly, because you view them from the third person.
We as humans think were great at hiding how we feel. We are not. Only to ourselves.
When you journal, you get that kind of clarity on yourself.
It forces you to slow down, view your situation objectively, and set a good sail towards your unique One Piece.
It’s how you undress your mind and get intimate with it. Oh yeah.
What is you want out of this life?
Just ask yourself. Not the Greg Jennings, Marshawn Lynch hold my diiiiiii version. The Tuesday version.
You’ll be amazed how quickly your brain starts finding answers when you write it down. There is simply nowhere to hide.
I wrote a full essay on journaling. Completely changed my life and I think it will change yours too. Read it HERE
What you actually want out of life
Just a test. Tried baiting you. Almost worked.
Don’t listen to me, thats the whole point! See how bad you want an answer from someone else?
However, heres what I think:
For most of us, the things we actually want aren’t expensive.
At least for me, my dream day doesn’t involve a big house or a yacht.
Its all basically free.
Wake up with the sun. Exercise. Move. Coffee. Eat well. Look at nature. Be in nature. Work on something fun. Write for a bit. More coffee. Read. See family. Talk to my girlfriend. Play sports. Maybe some video game if Im feeling wild. Coffee. Thats it. Thats the whole day.
The same 5-6 things I do now that I’m forced to pack into a 2-3 hour window before and after work, because I have to work for 11 hours in the middle of it all.
All I really want, all most people really want, is the ability to do those 5-6 things without rushing. In longer stints. Without the stress.
That would be it. That would be a good life. A simple life. A rich life.
Im not saying a Porsche isnt awesome, or that world travel isnt desirable. They are.
I do actually want the yacht.
But why? How? For what price?
Charles Leclerc is literally living his childhood dream doing exactly what he wants to do every single day.
He would sell the yacht in a heartbeat if it meant he couldnt drive a formula 1 car. Because it was (probably) never about the yacht.
The yacht was a byproduct. A nice to have on top of realizing his dream. The yacht was never the dream.
The man bet on himself and went for it and was a beast. And hes probably quite happy (albeit being hardstuck P4 every race with a smooth brain low IQ team who only ever fucks him over).
Anyway, the happiest people I know are not the richest, although some of them are. The happiest people I know are the ones who bet on themselves and live loud, unbothered lives. People gravitate toward them because theyre fun to be around, not dead behind the eyes.
Everyone else is on an assembly line getting served canned green beans and spam with a hair on it.
Spending years, their entire life, eating food they dont want, acting like they’re stuck.
But theres not even a line. Theres no menu. It’s not a prison. Or school.
You can literally just step out and nothing will happen.
People might point and scream and shout and kick and cry.
But nothing will happen. Just keep walking. Go get in your car and drive to get food from somewhere you want.
Whenever you want.
Because it might not even be the yacht you want.
It might just be free will. Something as simple as a daily coffee with your partner.
As always, thanks for reading. Catch ya next time. Peace.
-Dante
Great article. I don't care about getting rich, I just want to have a free time to wake up on my own terms, to read books, train hard, be in nature and spend time with my loved ones. But I haven't yet found a way to achieve this, so I'm stuck grinding work and training. I barely have time for myself and loved ones.