Yesterday, I was standing in front of the mirror. I told myself many of what I am writing up below. So, here I am, providing unsolicited life advice. Here it goes.
By the time we cross sixty, we have already spent a lifetime sacrificing, building, worrying, protecting. We have hustled through the prime of our health so that the future could be secure. We saved for children’s education, for weddings, for emergencies, for a retirement that once felt decades away. And now that retirement is here, instead of the freedom we once dreamed of, many of us choose fear. We clutch our bank balances like a fragile shield against the unknown, denying ourselves even the simplest joys.
But we forget something fundamental: children do not measure our love by the wealth we lock away for them. They will stand tall on their own, and the greatest gift we can leave them is not the burden of our unspent legacy, but the memory that we lived well, laughed freely, and taught them the meaning of living without regret. Hoarding for them at the cost of your own comfort is not sacrifice—it is self-neglect disguised as love.
Look back at the years behind you—every rushed morning, every postponed desire, every illness endured without complaint. You did not endure all that to live with the lights dimmed in your own home, counting every rupee as if spending is a crime. You saved so that these years—your years—would be kinder. You earned the right to loosen your shoulders, to sit in a comfortable chair, to travel while your legs still support you, to eat well while you can still taste, and to wake up without worrying about tomorrow’s pennies.
Living cautiously is wise; living joylessly is waste. It is not about reckless spending, but about responsible enjoyment. There is a middle path between extravagance and austerity. Somewhere in that space lies a life where the AC can stay on during a bad summer night, where a taxi is not a guilt-inducing luxury, where a small holiday is not viewed as financial sin. Ask yourself honestly: if not now, then when? Wealth is meant to serve you—not the other way around.
The irony is that guilt becomes our invisible jailer in old age. We feel embarrassed to treat ourselves well. We fear that if we let joy in, disaster will follow. Yet disaster rarely announces itself, and no amount of hoarding can fully shield us from life’s uncertainties. The real tragedy is when money remains unspent and dreams remain unlived, simply because fear kept winning.
In the end, none of us can take anything with us. The savings we count today will one day be someone else’s account entry, untouched by the life we could have lived. And history has always been clear—even those who amassed the greatest fortunes eventually found themselves equal to every common soul beneath the earth. As Thomas Gray reminds us in Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard:
“The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
Before that path ends—live.
