Jon Glatfelter
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RICHER THAN MIDAS

10/11/2013

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If you have an iPhone than you are richer than Midas - the king who could turn anything he touched into gold. You're also richer than 99% of everyone who has ever existed.

THE ARTS

{ * } You can listen to millions of hours of songs whenever you want, wherever you want. The Royal Court of Salzburg had Mozart, but you have him too — as well as Bach, Beethoven, The Beatles, Billy Joel…

{ * } You can watch millions of hours of theater and film for pennies. Even the House of Medici, patrons of the Italian Renaissance, would be jealous — and they had Michelangelo himself.

{ * } You can read millions of pages of literature, from Homer to J.K. Rowling, and choose to increase the font size at your will. The Library of Alexandria was destroyed by fire, but your library is eternally safe via Cloud technology. 

THE SCIENCES

{ * } You can learn from Aristotle, Newton, and Rockefeller despite the time and space separating you from them. Alexander the Great conquered the known world before he was 25, but even he couldn’t bring his teacher’s Lyceum with him across Asia Minor.

{ * }
You can engineer a bridge to hundreds of millions of potential customers. At its peak, the Roman Empire for all of its bridges had but only two million citizens travelling them.

HEALTH & COMFORTS

{ * } You can purchase Egyptian cotton, oriental silks, and French wine without leaving your bed. The Silk Road stretched from the Mediterranean to Persia to China, but it took months to traverse and was infested with robbers.

{ * } You can taste hundreds of flavors and medicate yourself for most discomforts and illnesses. Until one-hundred years ago, coffee was a luxury and until 50 years ago, ibuprofen was non-existent.

{ * } You can meet millions of (single) like-minded people from any corner of the earth. Moctezuma, an Aztec ruler, had over 4,000 concubines, but he was notorious for frowning in anger (in part because he never actually found that special someone).

SO, HERE IS THE QUESTION...

What are you doing with all of your wealth?

Are you like Midas, surrounded by your wealth but starving for fulfillment? Or are you taking advantage of your power by investing in your life? It's easier than ever before to reshape the world - and yourself - into gold. We have so many opportunities to update, enrich, and recharge our Life OS X. At times they may feel invisible, but they're there waiting for you to take them.

It's been two years since Steve Jobs passed away, but his vision of crafting your own life is worth revisiting every day:
Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you, and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.
So, let's do it.
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I've been reading a book a week for 15+ years. On here, I share my favorites, fiction and nonfiction alike, as well as interviews with authors, artists, and entrepreneurs I admire. If you'd like to join a family of 5,000+ creatives, subscribe for the Reading List, a monthly email round-up for plenty of leads on your next read.