You can't take it with you

So I was at Dave & Buster's recently, yesterday in fact, with some friends of mine I hadn't seen in awhile. After chowing down on some savory dinner, we got down to the important part: the games.

If you haven't been to Dave & Buster's before, it's somewhat difficult to describe, except to say that it's kind of like a Chuck E Cheese except it's not weird for adults to play too.  The objective in many of the games is to amass tickets, and you can exchange tickets for prizes when you're finished. The more valuable the prize, the more tickets it costs; for example an Xbox game could be 10,000 tickets while a D&B branded mug might cost 400 tickets. In my nerdiness, I tried to figure out the approximate dollar value of a ticket and the expected return for each game I played but that's neither here nor there.

As I perused the store after winning exactly 1111 tickets, including a 500-ticket jackpot I hit on my final play (see photo), I realized I wouldn't have a use for most of the stuff I could redeem my tickets for anyway.  And I didn't plan on coming back - at least not for a very long time - so I couldn't really take my tickets with me.

At that point it occurred to me that this is very much like how money is in the world; in my world, at least, I should say.  As I focused on gaining as many tickets as I could, I surely missed out on some bonding opportunities with these friends I don't see too often. And when I left the arcade, it's not like I could take the tickets with me in any meaningful way.

In the same way I imagine pursing a career as my first priority, and marginalizing my family and friends, would ultimately leave me unfulfilled.  Sure, I may end up with a lot of cold, hard cash, or "tickets," and maybe a slick car and a big house, or "prizes," but if I spend all my time in the proverbial arcade of life chasing after things that will ultimately have no value to me when I die, what good is it?

If, however, I had focused my time getting to know my friends better instead of piling up stacks of tickets, maybe I'd have made a bigger impact on their lives instead of walking out with some silly trinkets.

So perhaps if I spend more time developing relationships and making a positive impact in peoples' lives than worrying about my job and finances, I'd not only feel fulfilled but actually make a difference.

Those tickets ultimately end up in a shredder, and the trinkets in the trash.

I couldn't take them with me, and I won't be able to take the "real" ones with me either.

Neither will you.