Somebody asked a room full of fathers a version of the question you've been asked, more politely, at work. Was it worth it. The trade you made.
One answer got five hundred votes, and it wasn't long. If I need money, I can make it later, he wrote. I can't make my children five again.
Read the shape of that sentence, not just the words. He's not against the job. He's not quitting anything on the page. He's pricing two things side by side that you've been treating like they're in the same currency, and they aren't. One of them restocks. You can always go get more of it, next quarter, next year, next job. The other one has a number attached and the number only goes one direction.
You already know this. Everybody says some version of it at a funeral. The difference is he said it on a Tuesday, about a Wednesday, before anything forced him to.
You have a five right now. Maybe it's five years old. Maybe it's a version of your marriage, a version of your own body, a Saturday you keep almost getting to. Something in your life that isn't earning interest while you wait, it's just aging out from under you, on a clock you didn't set and can't renegotiate.
The money will still be there to chase on Thursday. Whatever the other thing is might not be.
The one thing:
Name the thing in your life right now that is aging, not waiting.
Then say what you'd have to stop making, this week, to actually spend an hour on it.
Josh
P.S. I finished my 30-day Ash Journal run on July 30. In public, one page a day, no edits, all thirty.
Five minutes. One prompt. One line of ash. The first seven days are free: truevitalyou.com/journal
P.P.S. Know a guy who'd tell you he's fine? Forward him this one.