Choose life.
Choose a job.
Choose a career.
Choose a family.
Choose a fucking big television.
Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and
electrical tin openers.
Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance.
Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments.
Choose a starter home.
Choose your friends.
Choose leisure wear and matching luggage.
Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics.
Choose D.I.Y. and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning.
Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit- crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth.
Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself.
Choose your future.
Choose life.
-Trainspotting
The best thing about finding a good relationship with money - earning, spending and investing in sync with our Values - is that you no longer clog up your precious time worrying about it, or even thinking about it. At the end of the day, there’s more important stuff. Much more.
Being good with money is very different to having a lot of money. Millions of people make tonnes of money every year and remain a prisoner to the lifestyle they contrive. To be forever chasing the next consumer trophy - a better car, a bigger home - is a terrible waste of life energy. Those millions of people, despite their vast wealth, often stay chained to the machine - a puppet in the economic framework - through to the end of the road. And the pressure it builds is frightening.
In the US, suicide rates among those aged 40 to 64 have nearly doubled since we entered this millennium. Job losses and bankruptcy have played a big part, being evident in 40% of those cases. And the vast majority were white middle class men. The so-called American dream - the fat-cheque job, 2.4 kids and ski holidays twice a year - cooks up intolerable emotional stress.
Money can be an enabler. And a very powerful one at that. But only if you are in control of it and are not being controlled by it. Being good with money liberates us from the shackles of an oppressive life and paves the way to an expressive one. It gives us the freedom to explore, have fun and do brilliant things. We can enjoy each and every day, being at peace with ourselves and living the moment, with the confidence of knowing our future will bring us many wonderful experiences.
“The money that we possess is the instrument of liberty, that which we lack and strive to obtain is the instrument of slavery.” - Jean Jacques Rousseau
Through this short book we have lifted the lid on several weighty topics. We’ve looked at the history of money and the evolution of the wage economy. We’ve considered the employment landscape and the utility of humankind. We’ve glimpsed the worlds of psychology and capitalism in one breath. We have opened up all these things and taken a good whiff. But that is not to say we know any of them greatly. Remember the Dunning-Kruger curve. A first taste of knowledge can breed over-exuberance. We think we have it sussed from one insight. We must first appreciate all that we don’t yet know before we can begin to truly understand anything.
Since we have only pricked the surface there are now vast depths you could tunnel down into all manner of subjects - how to be a success in business, the slow movement, communes, alternative trading markets.
Going through a financial transition, you realise you can apply similar methods to other areas of your life. Just as you’ve questioned where your money is best spent, you can question where you want to spend your time. Just as you’ve thought about investing for future life events, consider where you want to invest your energies and your emotions. Are you giving too much or too little of ‘you’ to your career, to a particular friend or family member, to a neighbour, to your community, to a local club? Perhaps you’re giving someone or something too much of your devotion and other important parts of your life have become a little neglected and unloved.
Now is an excellent opportunity to reassess. Replace ‘money’ with ‘self’ and track where you under-spend and over-spend, out of alignment with your Values.
‘I should’ is different to ‘I want to’ but no less valid. You may feel a duty to give your time to a particular person or thing for reasons buried deep within you.
Imagine the feelings you’d have if you were to lose an important aspect of your life - your physical health, your home, your independence, or a loved one. The things we most treasure and would struggle to live without are the same things that deserve most of our time and attention.
Use habit formation techniques to change your routines if you feel you should. If you want to reconnect with a friend you haven’t seen for ages, you might arrange to meet up on the first Wednesday of every month after work, or start a class together.
The one thing you really can’t live without is you! To do anything in life, you must first make sure there’s enough of you - and a good, healthy, vibrant and happy you - to go round. So give due care to yourself first. Take time out from the craziness of the world when you need to and re-tune to your own rhythms. If you’re feeling mentally or physically under-nourished, commit to a fitness programme or join a meditation class. Develop your mind by learning a new skill; write a book, or mould some clay, just for the hell of it.
We can’t help but adapt to our environment. If we live and work in a hectic space then our minds take on those atmospheric characteristics and we feel the need to buzz about like a mad squirrel. We end up just doing stuff, all the time, which compresses us even more. When you’re so life-full, when you’re fixated on that to-do list that covers just the next few hours, there’s no opportunity to lie back and gaze dreamily at the horizon.
Several studies show that life-happiness dips in our middle years. We typically enjoy high satisfaction in our twenties, endure our toughest times in our forties and fifties and start appreciating the world again as we come out the other side. This slump coincides with our busiest time, when we are working hard, raising a family and caring for older relatives.
These pressures are stripped away when we retire. We suddenly have an enormous lake of time and space in which to reflect. We may fill some of it with a new hobby, or travel. We may be so overwhelmed by it that we scuttle back to work. It’s no good if we’re only getting that thinking space when it’s foisted upon us in our sunset years, when our energies are more depleted and much of our story has already have been written. We need to find ways to create that reflection pool during the chaotic times.
Without it, there is a danger we may wind up thinking of all the things we didn’t do, instead of all the things we did. We may do things we don’t truly value, or derive much pleasure from. And there may be things we do simply because it’s a convenient and fabricated ambition.
Enter stage right: the bucket list, a consumer concept that fits the modern economic framework: ’Give people these single adventures and they’ll stay loyal to the cause’. It placates the rest of our entire existence. Walking the Great Wall of China is, I’m sure, a wonderful experience and I would love to do it one day, but if that’s the one thing that keeps you going all year through a job you hate, is it really worth it? The more you suffer in the job, the more you crave the future bucket-list experience and very quickly the two are one and the same thing. You feel you can’t do either without the other.
As we are all now so very aware, living in isolation - or in a lockdown - can give us a new appreciation for what’s real and what isn’t. Many of the things we think we want and need simply melt away in a minimalist state, which proves they don’t really exist. Decluttering your time and stripping down your daily activities to the bare bones is a revelationary experience.
Technology presents us with the biggest challenges to this. When we’re constantly switched on and plugged in, to live freely as ourselves is no easy thing. We tend to be as we want to be seen, at different times and to different audiences, which is simply exhausting. The more technology interrupts our natural flow, the more we may feel separation from our true source and from others. This leads to lack of empathy and further detachment.
It is a success in life to be truly you. Being authentic, of your spirit and soul, is the greatest achievement, to my mind. And money can help. Through money, or more precisely your relationship with money, you can genuinely be.
“Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.” - the 14th Dalai Lama
You are who you are but you’re always growing and versioning. We may look back to the person we were five, 10 or 20 years ago and shudder at some of the decisions we made and the things we did. But don’t ever regret them. They are you. They have carved your being. They helped you get where you are, and be the person you are, today.
Growth comes from within but only after we have opened our souls to external forces. As we tug at more threads of experience so they unravel before us and fall into our lap. It is then our responsibility to weave these experiences into our being as we strive to forever become a better version of our self.
As to the future, the great void of uncertainty should present us with nothing but excitement: what will come your way, through chance or by your own engineering? Rule out nothing. Be ‘shop open’ to all new possibilities. Explode your mind. Experiment. Take chances - to avoid risk is to be so safe that you’re just slowly dying. A racing driver feels most alive on the track because there is a prospect of death in their pursuit of perfection.
Don’t think you can’t. You can. The world is full of remarkable people who have done miraculous things. Don’t follow the path that the economic framework wants you to take - it makes life easier for them and harder for you. The traditional cycle of work-eat-sleep-repeat can be questioned. As can that of ‘work-work-work-retire’.
Between the ages of two and five it’s estimated that children ask around 40,000 questions. It’s in this zone that they start to become obsessed with asking ‘why’.
Why is the moon round?
Why do cats have fur?
Why is dirt dirty?
Why does salad taste like that?
Why do I need to brush my teeth?
Why is grandad wrinkly?Why do I have to go to nursery?
From this age we are grappling to comprehend the world - with rapid-fire inquisition. Through life our enquiring mind slows down, but it never really stops. We never totally get it.
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche found great meaning in the ‘why’ of life. He ordained that if a person has a ‘why’ to live - a purpose, a goal - they can deal with almost any ‘how’ - ie, suffering or tragedies. When life deals you a bad hand, having a why will strengthen your resolve and give you the meaning to productively handle it.
Philosophy has swirled around our feet like this for 26 centuries and counting. We may not be familiar with the organised schools - Taoism, platonism, stoicism, epicureanism, existentialism, nihilism and so on - but we act by their various teachings every day. We have our own view on what is good behaviour and what is bad, how we should treat others and how we expect to be treated in return. We have our own degrees of selfishness and selflessness. We have an unspoken tenet for how to get through life the best way we can.
Those who don’t uphold a formal religion may look for other solutions to the meaning of life. The idea that there isn’t one meaning and yet it’s still debated long into the night has even given rise to a branch of philosophy all of its own - absurdism. In addition to Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’, renowned thinkers have also built belief systems termed the ‘will to pleasure’ and the ‘will to meaning’ as possible foundations for our existence.
We don’t need these ‘-isms’, these ‘will to’s or any kind of label to tell us how to live but the content within these philosophies can help us through tough times and give us a direction of travel. When it’s hard to find that space and time to reflect, they can be helpful stabilisers, making sure we’re ok, that we’re of sound mind and body and living as we intend to deep-down.
“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty” - Socrates
“What labels me, negates me” - Kierkegaard
“Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides" - Lao Tzu
“To rank the effort above the prize may be called love” - Confucius
“The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else" - Aristotle
You may have your own phrases, mantras or perhaps even lyrics that you recall at poignant moments. (Personally, I keep in mind a series of seven short phrases: Be free, be me, be thankful, be present, be healthy, be kind, embrace suffering.)
You may have other sources of emotional support, like a favourite song, film, poem or book. When we don’t have time to wade in the reflection pool all these things can help nudge us back on the rails, or give us a comforting pat on the back when we most need it.
The brain is the most powerful, amazing thing we possess. We can train our minds to positively deal with any situation. We can, with the mind sufficiently geared by such devices, take the best from a bad experience and create a positive perspective on almost anything, even death and tragedy.
Another philosophical technique in this vicinity is to picture a dashboard with speedometer dials on it, one for each of the key components in your life - for example, your health, family, work, love, etc. Imagine a perfect dashboard that has all these dials revving along at a nice quick tempo, nothing slow and sluggish and nothing in the red. At regular intervals, you can have a quick mental check-in on your dashboard and consider which dials, if any, may be running too hot and need cooling down and which are subdued and need revving up.
Money can help us adjust these dials. If we need to focus more on our health or give more energy to a relationship, a little money can help us do that. And it’s confirmation you’re spending your money in the right areas of your life.
The most fundamental elements in the world, the things that help us survive and propagate the development of humankind, tend to have a two-way flow. Like the cosmic duality of yin and yang, we also have light and dark, hot and cold, positive and negative, masculine and feminine, giving and taking (including money).
Finding harmonious balance of the elements is a quest we should all savour. But over the last 100 years the world has become increasingly unbalanced. We have been targeting wealth accumulation over environmental wellbeing. Short-term-ism over sustainability. Individual desires over collective needs.
We should all, I believe, look more at what we have, not what we don’t have. And we should look more at what the world would love to get from us, not what we want or expect from the world.
We all have a unique brilliance to offer, whether that’s your abilities as a skilled, loving parent, a budding musician who has the power to create a piece of art that can delight the world, an innovative tech entrepreneur, a compassionate listener… Many, many, many people can benefit from our being and the way we personally choose to be.
The world has high hopes for us.
-The End-
Thank you so much for reading. It would be great if you could spare a moment to write a short review of Money and Being.