Remember Tazos?
The ones we got free with Lays and Cheetos in 1998ish? Which had Cartoon network characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck etc? In my school, we used to collect and show it off during lunch breaks. We used to exchange with friends. My parents rarely bought me Lays, but I still managed to collect 8 in around 1 year. I had friends in my circle who collected 15-20 on avg. Highest in my class had around 50. They used rubber bands to store and carry it. One guy in our locality had more than a 100.
Then suddenly after a year, tazos went put of fashion and WWE cards became the norm. Then came Pokémon cards, then video games and currently in 2025, GenZs boast of body count.
The pay packages we are chasing today will eventually go in the same fate as those tazos. I ain't saying money won't be important in future. But as we grow, there will be other metrics that will rank at priority higher which we will flex about our circles. Maybe it will be our cholesterol levels or abs or VO2max or our children's grades.
I thought Tazos were eternal value and aimed to collect 200 in next 10y. We suffer from the same fallacy to think that our incomes will be the highlight of our life even after 10y. And if the priorities of our circle aren't changing with time, we perhaps need to change our circles!