What does it mean to live an affluent life?

Money probably came to mind. There is nothing particularly wrong with that. Having enough money matters. It gives us choices, removes some worries and, if we are fortunate, allows us to do things we might otherwise never experience.

But life has an inconvenient habit of refusing to be quite that simple.

You can have plenty of money and very little time. You can have success and poor health. You can be surrounded by people and still feel lonely. You can have almost everything you once thought you wanted and discover, rather surprisingly, that something is still missing.

And then there are those who seem to have very little by conventional measures and yet somehow appear completely content.

Perhaps an affluent life has less to do with what we accumulate and more to do with how we experience the life we have.

Our relationships matter. So does our health. How we feel about ourselves matters. The people we love matter. Having something to look forward to matters. And as we grow older, things that once seemed terribly important can become remarkably unimportant, while things we barely noticed suddenly matter a great deal.

None of us gets all of this right.

I certainly haven’t.

I’ve made money and lost it. I’ve been right and very wrong. I’ve made good decisions and some spectacularly bad ones. I’ve known happiness, disappointment, success, failure, love, frustration and probably most of the things that happen when you have been around for a while.

I don’t believe that qualifies me to tell anyone else how to live.

It does, however, leave me with quite a lot to talk about.

That’s what these conversations are.

They aren’t lessons. There is no programme to follow and no promise that ten simple steps will transform your life by Tuesday.

They are simply thoughts about the things that make up a life — money, health, happiness, relationships, feelings, choices, getting older, getting things wrong, occasionally getting them right, and perhaps learning something along the way.

You may agree with me.

You may think I’m completely wrong.

Either is fine.

Sometimes the most interesting conversations begin when two people see the same thing differently.

So have a wander.

There isn’t really a right place to start.

And if something gets you thinking, talk to Eric.
He’s here if you’d like to continue the conversation.