You Built the Life. Now Can You Enjoy It?

For ambitious Black women, building a good life can become such a consuming project that enjoying it gets postponed indefinitely.

By Sha Falcon

A few weeks ago, I started thinking about the moments when I feel most satisfied with my life. I expected money to figure prominently in the answer. It did, but not quite in the way I imagined.

I thought about being near water. Long conversations with people I love. Really good food. Writing when I have enough time to let an idea develop instead of forcing it into the thirty minutes available. Beautiful spaces. Traveling. Being able to decide I want to do something and having enough money, time, and autonomy to actually do it.

What struck me was how ordinary much of it sounded. None of these experiences would make a particularly impressive answer to the question, “What have you accomplished?” That may be exactly why they matter.

Achievement has occupied a significant place in my life. I am ambitious, and I like that about myself. (Shoutout to all the Capricorns) There are things I intend to build and levels of wealth I intend to experience. I don't subscribe to the idea that wanting more means I am insufficiently grateful for what I already have. But lately I've become suspicious of a version of ambition that keeps moving the point at which we're finally allowed to enjoy ourselves.

There is always another milestone available. Another revenue goal. Another credential. Another project that would make taking a few days off feel more reasonable.

If we aren't careful, “later” becomes less of a scheduling decision and more of a way of life.

The Problem With Being Good at Delayed Gratification

Delayed gratification is usually discussed as a virtue, and it often is. The ability to sacrifice something today for something more valuable tomorrow is foundational to building wealth. It is how investments grow, businesses get built, and long-term plans become real.

But a useful skill can become an unquestioned habit.

You can become so accustomed to preparing for the future that the present begins to feel like little more than a staging area for it.

I think this deserves particular attention among Black women because sacrifice has such a complicated place in our cultural inheritance. Many of us grew up watching women make something out of very little. They went without so their children didn't have to. They worked jobs they didn't love because somebody needed insurance. They stretched meals, postponed dreams, and made decisions based on what the family needed rather than what they personally desired.

I have tremendous reverence for those women, and...I do not believe reverence requires imitation.

There should be some point at which the sacrifices made by the women before us produce a different quality of life after them. Otherwise, struggle becomes an heirloom we keep polishing and passing down. That is not the inheritance I want!

I want us to inherit the resourcefulness without believing we must continually manufacture circumstances that require it. And I want pleasure to stop feeling like something we need to defend.

There is an interesting discomfort that can surface when a woman who has spent much of her life being useful begins making choices simply because she likes them. Pleasure doesn't provide the same moral reassurance as productivity. There is nothing to point to afterward and say, “See? This was necessary.”

Sometimes you spent the money because the nicer room has the view you wanted.

Sometimes you took Friday off because you wanted a three-day weekend.

Sometimes the answer to “Why?” is simply “Because I wanted to.”

I'm increasingly more comfortable with that being enough.

A Return on the Life You've Built

I am not interested in romanticizing pleasure at the expense of financial intelligence.

I want Black women investing, owning businesses, buying assets, and thinking seriously about what our money can make possible ten, twenty, and fifty years from now.

I also think there should be evidence of our wealth in the quality of our present lives.

Not evidence for other people. I don't mean labels, cars, or anything purchased primarily to communicate success. I mean evidence you can feel.

A few months ago, I began paying closer attention to what I was actually buying when I paid for convenience. The obvious answer was a service. The more accurate answer was often time. That changed the calculation.

A direct flight and a cheaper flight with a miserable layover are not merely two prices for transportation. One may also cost several hours of my life and leave me exhausted when I arrive. Hiring someone to do something I dislike isn't necessarily an extravagance if it gives me Saturday morning back.

Once time enters the accounting, the cheapest option isn't always the least expensive.

The same principle applies beyond money. A promotion that substantially increases your income while consuming every evening has a cost that doesn't appear on the offer letter. A beautiful home requiring a commute you despise isn't simply a real estate decision. Every choice purchases one experience partly by spending another.

This is why I have started thinking of enjoyment as part of the return on investment.

If I work hard, make wise decisions, and build wealth, I expect some portion of that effort to eventually improve the experience of being alive.

I want the better seat sometimes. I want enough margin to linger over dinner. I want to visit somewhere beautiful without turning the trip into content unless I genuinely feel like sharing it. I want to spend money making certain parts of my life easier and feel no obligation to pretend that difficulty would have made me more virtuous.

None of this requires irresponsible spending. It requires deciding that your present life belongs somewhere in your financial plan.

The Life I'm Building Has to Include Me

There is something else underneath all of this that I'm still examining.

Ambitious people become very practiced at relating to ourselves in the future tense.

Who am I becoming?

What's next?

Where do I want to be in five years?

Those are useful questions. I ask them often. But the woman who exists today cannot spend her entire life working on behalf of a future woman who keeps moving farther away. At some point, she has to receive something.

This has become part of my definition of abundance.

I don't only want the ability to afford beautiful experiences. I want enough presence to notice them. I don't want to sit at a table I've prayed to reach while mentally living at the next one. I don't want to finally create freedom and then fill every available hour because an empty calendar makes me nervous. Most of all, I don't want to look back on an objectively successful life and realize I experienced most of it as a series of assignments.

There will always be another thing I want. I hope there is. Desire makes life interesting, and ambition is not something I'm trying to cure myself of. I'm simply refusing to make enjoyment contingent upon completion.

The work will not be finished. The business will not reach some magical point where there is nothing left to improve. There will always be another financial milestone worth pursuing, another place worth visiting, and another idea capable of becoming something real. So the life has to happen alongside it.

For me, that means treating pleasure less like a prize and more like part of the design.

I worked for this life. I intend to be here for it.