Catalyzing Healthy and Dissolving Unhealthy Relationships to Money
When he said
“Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving,”
Henry Ford was in concordance with Lao tzu, who said,
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for life.”
Healthy Money
Time is money. This finally must be understood: we should put as much value on time as we do money.
You can do anything you want.
This variety of examples is listed because it’s absolutely essential to understand good scenarios for money usage. Although some of these listed are quite strange and outlandish, they are ALL good relationships with money.
• If you want to purchase a diamond ring, you can learn how to go to Africa and search for blood diamonds, learn the craft of diamond cutting, and learning how to do the jewelry molding and metallurgy, and make a diamond ring. Or you can pay the price of the diamond ring.
• If you want to buy a computer, you can either buy a computer or go through the enormous amount of time put into learning about computers, learning about wire soldering, motherboard programming, and all the things necessary to know to construct a computer, and it will take you years and years to do that, or you can pay the price of the computer.
• You can purchase a coffee maker which expedites the tedious process of filtering water through a filter, or you can put the time into heating water, and manually pouring it through a strainer. Again, money isn’t essential; it just expedites processes.
• You can go to Kinko’s and to get documents printed for you quickly, or you can put time into learning how to do the layout, document formatting, paper collation, and page alignment, and do it yourself. Time only speeds up the printing; the outcome is the same.
• If you want to surf in Hawaii you can buy (use money) a surfboard there, or you can put time into arranging for your surfboard to be shipped. If you want to buy a surfboard, you can fork over the $400 dollars for one, or you can put the hours and hours and years of time necessary to learning how to make and shape a fiberglass surfboard from Styrofoam.
So you don’t have to pay for anything! You do not have to use money. I repeat. You do not have to use money. You just have to put time into edifying yourself how to craft things that you would otherwise buy; or perform services you would otherwise purchase. You are never financially imprisoned. This is incredibly illuminating because you don’t really need money. If you want to do things more quickly than doing it yourself, that’s only when you need money. Money doesn’t get you anything you couldn’t get on your own; it just speeds things up. This is a healthy relationship with money.
A negative, unhealthy relationship with money is a fear relationship with money. Where you accumulate it because you think it will get you closer to God or closer to happiness, and, really, neither of those are the case with money. Money is not related to any emotion; it is only related to time. Money is related to the concept of time, and time is a perception. It’s important to not have that perception be distorted.
Money is a utility. It is merely a utility. That’s the only thing it is! People equate joy and freedom and all these positive sensations with money and that’s not the case at all. Joy and freedom are equated with your relationship to Ultimate Reality, your relationship with Nature. That is joy and freedom; that is certainty; that is creativity.
Unhealthy Money
Negative relationship with money is hoarding it, thinking that will provide security. If you’re insecure without money, you’ll be secure with it, too.
Negative relationships with money revolve around thinking that money will alter your mood, emotions, or level of happiness in anyway. If you think money will alter any of those three stays, look out! You have an unhealthy relationship with money!
I used to always have a compulsion to spend! I felt that that was “giving and loving”; if I spent and purchased something. However, you can go into a grocery story and not buy things. You can go peruse bookstores and not purchase anything. You can go peruse malls and not spend a penny. In fact try that. Do that! That’s exercise #1 for starting a healthy relationship with money.
Exercises to Catalyze Healthy and Dissolve Unhealthy Relationships to Money
Disclaimer: These are not pranks. I am not proposing economic mayhem nor financial anarchy at all. When its capacity is not mutilated, money offers a delightful time-saving mechanism. These exercises merely catalyze an eye-opening financial profundity, illustrating money’s sentient utility and its absence from emotional reactions.
Exercise #1:
Pennyless Shopping.
Feel the joy and satisfaction of entering a store(s) and knowing – absolutely knowing – that you will leave that store with exactly you had on your person upon entering – nothing more, nothing less. No items acquired, no money spent. There’s a certain freedom -- a celebrated joy operating from a vehement source of conclusive happiness – from not spending a penny in a shopping situation.
Purpose: Experience the celebrated joy operating from a vehement source of conclusive happiness from choosing not to buy something, doubt free.
Exercise #2:
Financial Transaction Retraction
Only try this a few times – once is probably best – and never in the same store twice. But bring an inexpensive, low-cost item up to the counter. It could be a pack of gum, or one golf ball, or a single can of soda, or one pencil. Wait until the transaction is completed and the receipt has already begun to print. Then, immediately, with as much sincerity, sympathy, and simplicity as possible say, “You know what, I’m terribly sorry for potentially causing any inconvenience, but I’ve decided not to purchase item name”.
See what happens. Was it possible to cancel the transaction? Was there a big brew-hawhaw? Did it simply occur without problems? Was there any eye-rolling?
Purpose: Whatever the item is, it must be only a few dollars and small in size. Why small and inexpensive? Because it makes the idea of retracting the purchase so much more ridiculous! If the item is small and inexpensive, the actual reason, the logic behind the canceling the purchase won’t be misconstrued. The choice for the financial transaction retraction must not be misconstrued for budgeting or physical accommodation reasons. With a something small and inexpensive, it would be implausible for the consumer to retract the purchase because of the item…
1. Not fitting a tight and/or limited budget;
2. Being incongruent with physical accommodations ( i.e. they don’t have the space for it).
This is a very bizarre, new, and exciting concept. It eliminates your attachment to money, and enunciates it only as a transactional device. If buying and selling is a factory, money would be the rollers and conveyor belts of the assembly line, nothing more. It is certainly not something to believe is equated to happiness. However, finding what is, is more important than anything.
Conclusion: When I envision the ideal, utopian world, it is without currency, green-slips of paper money, but with compassionate currency. The more you give, the more you receive is the mantra. Everyone does some component of life because that’s what they love doing. This would produce the best corn and tomatoes and vegetables and produce because farmers would be farming because they love agriculture. The entertainment venue would be the best because performers would be doing it because they love acting. Same thing for building construction – only the Frank Lloyd Wrights, people who love architecture – would be architects. All software will be incredibly efficient because the programmers love programming and would be doing so with their time, anyway. No one will ever feel “trapped” in a job, because their profession aligns them, makes them happier, is the best thing they can do for their and others level of happiness, love, awareness, etc. . Call this highly idealistic, spiritualized anti-capitalism with “wealth” only referring to state of mind, implausible. The best thing you can think of to do with your time is your profession! In time, we’ll all see how possible this supposed sea change is, and make the right move.
John Kooz -- “If you define necessity perfectly and possess nothing less, no depravity; explore nothing more, no burdens.”
Relevant alternate links: www.adbusters.org.
