As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to see money differently.
Making money is sometimes like a comprehensive ability test.
It tests not only professional skills, but also judgment, communication skills, execution ability, learning ability, resource integration ability, as well as courage, character and luck.
When I was young, I had a very simple dream.
I wanted to become a scientist like Marie Curie.
Back then, the future I imagined was filled with knowledge, exploration, curiosity, and the desire to do something useful.
But there was one thing I rarely thought about:
How much money would I make?
Money simply didn’t seem like an important measure of whether a person was successful.
At least, not back then.
But as life moves forward, money becomes increasingly difficult to ignore.
It is not just about what we can buy.
It affects our ability to survive, make choices, feel secure, take care of our families, and create options for ourselves.
More importantly, it can reveal whether what we know and what we can do actually translates into value in the real world.
I Didn’t Used to Think Much About Money
The education many of us grew up with tended to follow a familiar path:
- Study hard.
- Gain knowledge.
- Find a job.
- Work hard.
- Contribute to society.
- Take care of your family.
- Build a decent life.
Is there anything wrong with those values?
Not at all.
Looking back, I no longer think it is fair to say that our parents' generation got it wrong.
They were simply passing down what they had learned from the world they lived in.
Every generation has its own challenges, and every era creates its own answers.
And as we grew up, we gradually entered a very different reality.
Then I Realized That Money Isn't Just Money
What really changed the way I thought about money was encountering different ideas about wealth and value creation.
I read Naval’s thoughts on wealth, leverage, and creating value. I also read Rich Dad Poor Dad.
For the first time, I began to see something differently:
Money is a tool.
It is one of the ways the real world exchanges value.
We can say that we have knowledge, experience, skills, or that we work hard.
But these things can still be difficult to measure.
The real world eventually asks:
- What can you actually do?
- What problems can you solve?
- Does anyone need what you can do?
- Can your abilities create something that people genuinely value?
When that value enters the marketplace and people are willing to exchange something for it, money enters the picture.
Money cannot represent the full value of a person. But it can provide meaningful feedback about certain real-world abilities.
Why Does Making Money Feel Like a Test of Ability?
When I first encountered the idea that making money reflects a person's overall ability, I thought it sounded too absolute.
How could someone's value possibly be measured by money?
But over time, I began to see why the idea has some truth in today's world.
Consistently earning an income rarely depends on just one skill.
It can require judgment, communication, expertise, execution, learning ability, problem-solving, resourcefulness, risk tolerance, and an understanding of markets and human behavior.
But there is something even more important:
You have to turn those abilities into something other people are willing to exchange value for.
There is actually a fairly clear chain:
What you have → What you can do → What problems you can solve → Who needs it → What value you create → Whether that value can be exchanged → Whether it can ultimately generate income.
Making money is no longer just an outcome.
It becomes a form of feedback.
It tells you:
Have your abilities actually entered the process of value exchange?
Why Do We Need to Measure What We Do?
Because vague ideas are difficult to use as feedback.
That is why we rely on measurable indicators.
- Learning can be reflected through grades, exams, or completed work.
- Physical performance can be measured through speed, strength, endurance, and other metrics.
- Businesses can look at revenue, profit, customers, and growth.
- Professional ability can be reflected through the efficiency with which problems are solved, customer feedback, and actual results.
And in a market economy, income and wealth are among the most direct and measurable forms of feedback.
Effort is the process. Metrics are the feedback. Results are the answer.
That doesn't mean everything in life should be measured by money.
It means we need some way to understand whether what we are doing is actually producing results.
Otherwise, it is easy to remain trapped in the belief:
“I think I’m valuable.”
Knowledge has value.
Skills have value.
But eventually, knowledge and skills have to find their place in the real world.
Are they actually helping us create value, or are they simply things we know?
That is a very practical question.
I’ve Started to Experience This Myself
Take my own experience with building a website and writing a blog.
At first, I thought it would be fairly simple.
Write articles. Publish consistently. Eventually, traffic should follow.
Reality gave me feedback pretty quickly.
Google did not index my content in the way I expected.
I could certainly keep writing.
But simply continuing to publish wasn't going to solve the problem.
I had to start learning:
- How does SEO actually work?
- Why does a search engine index one article but not another?
- How should content be structured?
- What do readers actually need?
- How should a website establish a clear topic and identity?
- And ultimately, how can a content website create real value?
I gradually realized that something as simple as “writing a blog” actually involves many completely different abilities.
Without that real-world feedback, I might never have had a reason to learn any of them.
That is one of the most valuable things about business and making money:
Reality exposes the things you don't even realize you don't know.
Real Ability Is Built Through Reality
A lot of knowledge remains just information in our heads until we actually use it.
Once you start doing something, problems appear one after another.
And every problem you solve gives you another piece of real ability.
That is why someone who has studied something for ten years may not necessarily be more capable than someone who has spent one year actually doing it.
This is not because learning doesn't matter.
It is because knowledge that has been tested by reality becomes something very different.
- Someone can understand countless business theories without ever having sold anything.
- They can read dozens of investing books without experiencing a major market downturn.
- They can study writing techniques without consistently facing real readers.
- They can learn everything about entrepreneurship without ever experiencing the pressure of having a product that nobody wants to buy.
Once you actually do these things, your understanding changes.
Reality tells you:
- Which theories actually work.
- Which ones simply sound good.
- Which methods work for other people but not for you.
Experience turns knowledge into judgment.
Making Money Is Not the Goal. It Is a Reality Check.
When someone is willing to pay for your product, service, knowledge, or skills, it tells you at least one thing:
Some form of value you provide has been recognized by the market.
Of course, the market is not always fair.
Luck, timing, resources, family background, industry cycles, and countless other factors can influence income.
So making money cannot precisely measure a person's overall value.
But it can be a very useful mirror.
It can show you:
- Where your abilities are strong.
- Where your weaknesses are.
- What people actually need.
- Whether your direction has a market.
And ultimately—
whether you can turn your abilities into something of value to others.
Maybe We Aren’t Smarter Than Our Parents. Maybe Our Era Is Different.
I used to wonder:
Why didn't our parents' generation seem to have the same strong focus on making money that we have today?
Now I think the question itself may be wrong.
They didn't necessarily misunderstand money.
They simply lived in a different era.
Every era determines, to some extent, what people need to solve and what they learn to value.
Our parents' generation may have placed greater emphasis on stability, employment, family, responsibility, and contributing to society.
Today, we face a growing list of financial and personal decisions:
- Income.
- Assets.
- Career choices.
- Retirement.
- Healthcare.
- Education.
- Housing.
- Risk.
- And an increasingly complicated set of choices about how we want to live.
So we have to understand money more seriously than previous generations did.
- That doesn't mean rejecting the past.
- And it doesn't mean the education we received was wrong.
I increasingly believe something much simpler:
Perhaps we aren't much smarter than our parents. Perhaps our era simply created a different version of us.
Our parents gave us the answers that made sense in their time.
We carried those answers into our own era.
And then we discovered:
Some answers still work. Others need to be reconsidered.
That is growth.
Our Understanding of Money May Only Be a Stage of Human Thinking
When a person is still struggling to meet basic needs, money obviously matters.
And in a highly developed market economy, where individuals are increasingly responsible for their own financial security and life risks, economic ability naturally becomes an important personal capability.
But what happens if the way we produce things changes dramatically?
What if AI and robots eventually take over a large share of production, allowing society to provide an abundance of goods and services at extremely low cost?
Imagine a future like the one Elon Musk has described, where human beings no longer have to worry about basic economic survival.
How would people in that world look back at us?
Perhaps they would find some of our current thinking strange.
- Why did people need to make a certain amount of money to prove their ability?
- Why did income become such an important measure of whether someone was successful?
- Why did so many people spend so much of their lives pursuing more money?
Perhaps our current way of thinking about value would eventually seem outdated.
The tools we use to measure value are shaped by the reality we live in.
When reality changes, our measures of value may change too.
- In the past, people may have been expected to demonstrate their social value through stable employment.
- Today, we increasingly demonstrate our ability to create value through the marketplace.
- In the future, perhaps making money itself will no longer be the most important measure.
People may start asking different questions:
- What is creativity?
- What is curiosity?
- What makes human connection meaningful?
- What is it that a person genuinely wants to do?
When survival is no longer our greatest concern,
what will we use to define ourselves?
Our Era Doesn't Tell Us What Will Always Be True
Looking back, I understand more clearly why money has become so important to me today.
- It isn't because we suddenly care more about money.
- And it isn't because everything we were taught in the past was wrong.
It is because:
Our era has created new needs, new standards, and new rules for navigating reality.
What we are experiencing is a form of education delivered by the world itself.
Money is simply one of its most important tools.
It shows us whether our abilities have entered the marketplace, whether value has been exchanged, and whether things that once seemed vague can actually be measured and tested.
But money is not the only measure.
And it may not always be the most important one.
Money is more than money.
It is one of the ways our era helps us understand value, ability, and reality.
And the way we understand it may continue to change.
That is why I now prefer to look at money with a little more perspective:
Don't bow to money. But don't pretend to be above it either.
Use your intelligence, abilities, and knowledge to create value.
Earn what you can honestly earn.
And leave yourself enough space to ask a bigger question:
If one day money is no longer the most important tool for measuring a person's ability, what will we use to prove that our lives matter?
Perhaps that is the question the future will really ask us to answer.
The past is not the answer. The present is not the answer either.
We are simply trying, in our own time, to find an answer that belongs to us.