Money Madness
When we lived in a nineteen-room house overlooking a large suburban lake, I vividly remember sitting in our kitchen with my mother one day crying about money. Some event or incident had precipitated my tears, and I remember feeling ashamed and embarrassed because our family lived in this huge, monstrous house, and all my friends live in little, cheaply built split levels. I screamed, “I hate money!” Shocked by my outburst, but sensitive, my mother looked at me and said that money in and of itself wasn’t bad. In fact, she said, it could open a lot of doors. At the time, I didn’t know what she meant; I only knew that having more money than other people made me feel bad. Our house was noticed by everyone in our neighborhood. There was a boat tour on the lake, and the tour guide always pointed at our house when they went by. I always wondered what they were saying as they pointed up to our house. Sometimes I waved, but mostly I just stared and wondered what the big deal was.
Before we lived in the “castle” we lived in a small 10 room house on 10 wooded acres. At that time, I was faced with the opposite end of the spectrum. Lots of my neighbors had very little money. I remember being shocked because some kids I played with were going to have soup for dinner. I thought, they must really be poor.
Our money situation in my childhood was a roller coaster. We went from no money to some money to no money to lots of money, tinged always with the fear that we’d run out of money. My mother was inconsistent with money. She would say yes when I asked her for money 3 - 4 times in a row, and then suddenly out of the blue, if I asked her for money she would freak out, and get really angry that I was even asking. Kind of a rubber band reflex, I could stretch out only so far before I would get snapped back. A haze of fear was always under the surface, I think, because my dad worked for himself. There was no regular paycheck, like the other dads. It was all dependent on how much work he was bringing in.
My childhood was not about feeling safe. There seemed to be no way my parents could make us feel safe. They were too afraid themselves. My father focused on his work to deal with his fear. My mother focused on him. We were left to deal with the fallout of their fear ourselves.
This fear has followed me into adulthood, sticking to me like a grimy film, cloudy my decisions and my plans. I never feel quite safe. Always on alert, always hyper vigilant, always prepared is my motto. Relaxing is a luxury I can’t afford most of the time. I might miss something, and then I would be blamed for letting down my guard for failing to anticipate a problem.
Money is supposed to be fluid. It flows in and flows out in a steady stream. It doesn’t have hard sharp edges that can cut, but I often treat it that way. I handle it with care, as if it will bite me. I see it as a wild, unruly animal that I’ve been unsuccessful taming. If only, I think, I can get it under control, it will do as I wish. This tight-fisted approach, blocks the flow, and causes it to dam up. Just as you can’t hold onto sand too tightly or it will slip through your fingers, the same is true for money. It is only passing through. It’s not staying or moving in. It’s a guest, a tourist who is taking in the sights, and then moving on. We are nothing more than a host. We can invite it in, feed it, and offer it our attention, but we cannot grab it or cling to it or lock it away. It needs fresh air. It is not meant to be hoarded. That is done from fear. Instead, we need to respect its need for freedom and let it breath.
Money, by itself, is lifeless and dead. We bring it to live, give it meaning and energy. We transfer it from place to place, sending it into the world to travel and circulate. If we don’t touch it or move it, it remains invisible and without power, except perhaps to comfort the owner with a false sense of security. Or worse the fear of someday losing it.
Money has the power of making us react to it. It can also hold us hostage, if we give it that power. Our relationship to our money reflects our relationship to the world. It is simply a metaphor for how safe we feel. On a survival level, money can bring us to our knees. This brings most of us into an unnatural attachment to it. We become dependent on it for our security, and this blocks us from truly experiencing life. We are too focused on protecting ourselves that we miss out on the spontaneous gifts around us.
Money cuts across a lot of boundaries. I’ve been studying it for a long time. There are layers of meaning within our relationship with it. There are those who overspend, those who under spend, those who gamble, those who debt, those who chase after it, those who are satisfied with very little, and those who simply work hard, pay their bills, save, invest and give the remainder away. A major motivation for crime and violence is money; a major source of arguments among married couples is money; a major factor in career choice is money. What happened to following one’s passion, marrying for love, and settling our differences? What happened to learning for learning’s sake, following our convictions because we believe in something, getting involved because we are passionate about something?
Having has replaced being as our primary value. We mistakenly believe once we have “enough” that then we’ll take time to be. This presupposes that there is such thing as security. Alan watts wrote about the wisdom of insecurity. Being uncertain and taking risks allow us to learn more quickly and on a deeper level. Always playing it safe results in a limited range of experiences. What is the point to life if not to expand our range of experiences, stretch our imagination, and touch the lives of a wide variety of people? A rich life is not a safe life. A rich life is one that is lived on the razor’s edge, a life full of amazing stories and opportunities, which cannot be found in the comfort of our well-furnished living rooms.
