…we choose to live like monks anyway (having taken...

“…we choose to live like monks anyway (having taken no such vow of contemplation) rooting ourselves to a home or a career and using the future as a kind of phony ritual that justifies the present. In this way, we end up spending (as Thoreau put it) “the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.”