.Being rich is full of horrible, unbearable contradictions. At least that's the takeaway from this Quora thread in which a user complains of being torn apart by his crippling $20 million net worth. In a post titled "Wealth: Is getting rich worth it?," Anon User despairingly calls his money "a burden." He claims to have worked at a massively successful tech start-up, amassing a multimillion dollar fortune before retiring in his mid-30's. A close reading of this holy grail of first world problems reveals that insane amounts of money don't put people on easy street. No sir. Lest you doubt a one percenter, allow Anon User to enumerate the paradoxes:
- The lust for money remains, but the will to work for money vanishes:
I can do anything I feel like but I end up doing mostly nothing and spend the days browsing internet and write as Anon User on Quora. Plus, the fact that I can just pay to get out of most of the situations makes me lazy and un-resourceful.
- A huge bank account only makes you realize how much huger your bank account could be:
I have a lot of money but I crave for more. I want to be a centi-millionaire now. But in the mean time, I don't feel like working.
- Entitlement is a privilege. Entitlement is a burden:
I feel I deserve the BEST of everything because I paid $1000 a night for a hotel suite, $500 for a Michelin 3 star meal and $1000 for a bottle of wine. I grow really angry if I don't feel I am treated like a royalty.
- By fulfilling your dreams, you effectively crush your dreams:
I feel my life/career has peaked. I don't know what I am supposed to do. What's the purpose? I can go do some charity work but they are not intellectually stimulating and most non-profits are run by a bunch of bozos anyway.
- You hate what money does to you, but you can't give your money away:
I think I will be a better individual if I didn't make the money, stayed in a corporate job and just be a normal person. But it's impossible to give up the money.
In retrospect, Anon User wishes that he'd never made all this precious, precious money in the first place. "Being wealthy is probably not worth it," he writes. "But once you get there, you want to stay there forever."
Something's fishy about this whole thread. No, not the fact that it's completely unverifiable thanks to the anonymity it's written behind. It's the sneaking suspicion that we've heard this "my awesome life really bums me out" rap before. Drake, is that you? The similarities between Anon User's complaints and Drake's it's-tough-at-the-top act are uncanny. Quoth the rapper on the subject of money: "to me theres nothing realer / just enough will solve ya problems, too much will kill ya." He even has a song called "Must Hate Money." Which all seems eerily similar to Anon User's tone here. The scant biographical details Anon User provides (mid-30s, former tech start-up worker) don't match Drake's CV, but they could easily be red herrings. I mean, this guy is totally Drake, right?