So What Is The Thing About Money?

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy. -George H. Lorimer, editor (1868-1937)

I was headed in a completely different thought direction when I saw this quote. It reminded me that we tend to have a feeling about the world, and then a very different feeling about money. Money means something different to all of us. Money, making it, spending it, saving it, defining it, engulfs a great portion of our daily lives.

My parents had different views of money. They were both teenagers during the depression, but one grew up on the streets of Boston, and the other grew up as a preacher’s kid. One’s family had had money and lost it, the other never had it. One couldn’t spend it, the other couldn’t keep it.

I was the baby of the family – and my siblings were much older when I was born, so I was a real baby in family terms! – so my folks had already established their money patterns by the time I came along. My family was pretty solid middle class, and the tendency to save balanced out the tendency to spend, so we were comfortable. Which means I was spoiled, in world view terms.

That spoiling left me pretty clueless about money, and the real lessons I got about money came from mistakes and ignorance, long before the lessons I got from my accounting education. Even recently I have allowed myself to be caught in the money conflict agreement, and I “should” know better!

Fact is, I DO know better. So do you! But our old, subconscious, unconscious habits kick in quite often until we face and replace them, and then they still sneak in and allow us to sabotage ourselves every once in a while.

The entire world tends to define itself in terms of “money.” And because it is a world wide view, it’s hard to avoid the traps and habits and perceptions of money. Most everyone you meet will have an emotional attachment, or repugnance, to money.

The most important things in Life are not things. Don’t know who said that, but it was a very Wise person, indeed. Ask a millionaire with cancer. Ask a billionaire who lost a child. Being a millionaire or billionaire is not the problem here, but it is also not the solution. The most important things in Life are not things.

Money is not the root of all evil. Money is not the key to happiness. Having lots of it, or none, is not either a prescription for bliss or a measure of success. However!

It is a sin to be poor! (sin: missing the mark, here, not ‘sin’ in the religious sense.)

Money is a means of exchange – a conversion of your talents and my talents and everyone else’s talents into a medium that can be used when and if we need it – not the talent itself.

Let’s remember – money is a good thing, and I want you to have lots of it, but it is not the substance. The substance is your talent. Your gift. What you were born to do. Focus on that, friends. You can get a lot of money for focusing on your talent, if lots of money is what you want. But the money is not the talent. Money is not the goal. Money is not the issue. Money is good, because it’s a symbol, but it’s not what’s Real.

Focus on your talent.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy. -George H. Lorimer, editor (1868-1937)