I despise money. It ties my head in knots when I even think about the stuff. Despite that, I had a conversation with some non-writer friends this week that made me realize just how grateful I am for the stuff.
The premise of the conversation was that, as a society, we use money to evaluate a person’s worth. Being a relatively new and unknown author, not only don’t I make a lot of money, but the temporal and causal disconnect between the act of writing and receiving money is huge. And so, when I look at my writing, I have to find other measures of value for the endeavor to feel worthwhile. One person in the conversation agreed that money isn’t an accurate reflection of value, while the other suggested I look into various paying part-time positions so that I would feel worthwhile. For her, money was a reflection of value. And as it turns out, all of us were right.
Money is what we use to obtain those things that are necessary for life and comfort. Money procures housing, heat, clean water, electricity, internet, electronic communication tools, food, etc. – the necessities of modern life. Money is very important to us for that reason. If you are doing an activity that neither directly provides for your family nor is paying money with which to support your family, then what good are you? As long as your family is in need of money for the necessities, money DOES reflect the value of your activity.
But what about when you aren’t in need of money for the necessities? I live a modest life and am by no means rich. A house burglar would find nothing to fence but a couple of aging computers. But we have enough to provide for our necessities for the foreseeable future. When we reached that point, money became meaningless to me. I couldn’t stand the thought of working harder and harder at a job I didn’t enjoy in order to keep making more and more money that I could get by without. And so I left my illustrious career as a health care lawyer in order to write full-time – to pursue value that was not measured in money.
Some say that I earned this opportunity because I worked hard and saved money, but I know it was chance as much as anything else. I am fortunate to pursue my passion rather than pursuing money, but it is only because of money that I am here. And so to that money – stuff providing the necessities – I am very grateful.
