The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

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The one thing many billionaires want but cannot have

Your problem-scanning machine spends its day looking for worries. It’s helpful when you’re in serious trouble but stressful when you’re not. On top of that, we’re living in a Culture of More versus a Culture of Enough. Everywhere we look, we are reminded of what else we need. You can move to a shack in the woods to get away from it all! But we’d miss you too much there. Please don’t do that.

Bottom line: It’s tough playing defense against those wars—so where do you start?

First, you need to remember the one thing most billionaires want but cannot have.

Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller are two of the most famous authors of the twentieth century, writers of classics that have sold millions, including Slaughterhouse-Five and Catch-22. They were friends, and there’s an old story Kurt Vonnegut wrote in The New Yorker after Joseph Heller passed away:

True story, Word of Honor:

Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer

now dead,

and I were at a party given by a billionaire

on Shelter Island.

I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel

to know that our host only yesterday

may have made more money

than your novel ‘Catch-22’

has earned in its entire history?”

And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”

And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”

And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

Not bad! Rest in peace!