We're thrown that more money brings more satisfaction
and makes things better. That's not always
true.
Just google the many accounts of folks who've won colossal prizes
in the lotteries, whose lives have been ruined as a result. Of
course there's also the disappointment if not outright hopelessness
and panic when there's less than what's needed. And
yet if you visit the most impoverished nations on
the planet,
you'll notice more
happy
faces
(many more in fact) than in most American
suburbs.
Somehow it
happened
(I'm not sure
how
it
happened
... I just know somehow it
happened)
that I got
who I am
tangled up with my checkbook balance, and with the bottom line of
my investments portfolio. That's bizarre when you consider the
implications:
human beings
experiencing a quality of life defined like
paint
by numbers??? Yet that's what
happened:
bigger numbers (profit) meant I was having a good day, and smaller
numbers (loss) meant I wasn't having a good day. No, that is not
really an accurate account of where this mis-correlation left me.
It is closer to the
truth
to say that bigger numbers meant I was a good person, and
smaller numbers meant I wasn't a good person. With
hindsight (and hindsight is always 20/20 vision),
that's an untenable position to be in. When I first noticed it, its
untenability was
clear.
Yet I didn't know what I could do about it or
how
to shift it. I only knew I seemed to be tied to the numbers in some
way.
Further exploring this, I
began
to notice how my ease of living is not always
correlated with the amount I'm earning - contrary to expectation.
For example I've been
contracted to deliver
week-long high-tech training seminars
for many of the
Fortune
1000 companies
at top drawer remuneration rates. I've also
driven winery
tours
around the
Napa Valley
in California, the
wine
country
where I live, for more modest wages. In retrospect my financial
life was more balanced and easier to manage during the latter
venture. It
began
to dawn on me no income amount, no matter how many trailing zeroes
it has, will be satisfying without a satisfying context for
it.
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