Let’s keep it a buck. We all want to have money, but we don’t want to work for it, or at least, not so hard for it. Most of us want money because it means we can have anything we desire without having to struggle to obtain it. We want to have fun adventures without having to do lots of boring, or difficult work before or afterwards. So many of us want this, yet such a small number of us achieve this status. An even smaller number of us achieve this without putting in so much work to eventually make it possible for them. Unfortunately for all of us, our reality is far from optimal for attaining or sustaining this desire for the majority of us.
The thing is, we do want to work, we just don’t want to do work that we find unfulfilling. We don’t want to do something we hate in order to survive, just to go on doing what we hate, and then teach our children to do the same. As people, all we really want is happiness. We want to live life in ways that engage us. We want to have pleasant experiences, and avoid boredom. We want to be intrigued, challenged, and rewarded. The problem is, unless you know, practice, and make money from your passion already, which very few of us do, you have to make money doing something, like it or not.
In our society, in order to live lavishly, we need lots of money; as much money as possible. The more money we have, the more easily we can afford to live life the way we want. Because of this, we believe we will live very happy lives if we have lots of money. An often cliché and underrated saying is that money doesn’t bring happiness. To be honest, this saying is certainly not always true in the short term, but it is true more often than not in the long term. Put simply, happiness from gaining money is temporary, and doesn’t renew itself. The ease of life and it’s increased quality that comes with obtaining money is what will bring you happiness temporarily. However, once you adapt to the new quality of your life, it will be your new normal. You will realize you’re not any more happy than you were without the money. If you desired money heavily as a means to solve your problems, you may find that you still have problems, they’re just different problems. Problems that you can’t solve with your money.
Truthfully, most people don’t care to have an excessive amount of money. Most of us would be satisfied having enough money to buy what we want without having to worry about if we can afford it. We also want the freedom to be able to do what we want, when we want, all the time without the fear of it ending, which is what money can do for you. Spending our time doing something we don’t like to do, to make money is not living a life of happiness.
Of course, in order to live the lives that we aspire to live, people have to work. Without people flipping burgers at restaurants, you wouldn’t be able to get your burger, fries, and shake combo. Without pilots and flight attendants, you would not have the flying experience available to us today. How would you get braces without dentists, or health check ups without doctors, or emergency services without EMTs, the list goes on.
Most people perform these jobs largely because they are paid to do so. They care about being paid money, because that means they can use that money to acquire goods and services from millions of people with minimal hassle, if any. They can pay their landlord for their permission to continue living in shelter with electricity, wi-fi, air conditioning, warm running water, and legal right to personal privacy. They do not have to figure out how to install wiring, or lay pipes, or hook up water heaters, or lay a foundation to build a home, nor do they have to worry about finding food, as the apartment they rent out is a 2 minute drive away from a supermarket where they can use their money to buy bread and pasta. Fresh meat and vegetables, as well as the utensils necessary for cooking these foods at anytime of the day. They don’t need to farm land, and livestock then wait to harvest it, and they don’t have to settle for their low quality productions, because there is an experienced, farmer, plumber, roofer, and engineer that can do the job far more efficiently. The trade off for having such immediate and seamless access to these products is you have to give people money for their contribution to you. These people are providing you with goods and services that you value. If you did not value them, you would not give your hard earned money to them, and if you simply took from them without giving them money, you basically treated them as a slave. One who does work for the benefit of another with no form of compensation.
With this in mind, you get paid for the value that you give to people. Working a traditional, boring but safe job, you are selling the value of your time to an employer. If you want to get paid more money, you have to give greater value to people. That is, if you want to make money consensually, of course. If you steal money from others, you are taking something valuable from another person without their consent, which is a crime. Large numbers of well organized, and well trained groups of men and women will work together to find, arrest, and prosecute you for that crime, if it is brought to their attention. These men and women get paid to do this, because many people nationwide see this service as highly valuable, and they demand it. However, there is also the chance that you are giving value to other individuals with their consent, but are still commiting a crime, such as selling drugs or food stamps. If you get caught, you can expect a similar resulting consequence. The most commonly sought after, and socially accepted path is legally offering something to the public, which is found to be valuable to them, and collect payment for it. This way, there is no legal basis for these groups of men and women to come after you.
If you can find what it is you want to offer to the public, monetize it, take the time and give the effort necessary to grow it into sustainable income, you will find lasting happiness in that grind. It has to be something you enjoy to find real determination in growing it. When it comes to playing video games, people will spend days trying to max out their characters. They will follow the rules to leveling up, they’ll test theories out, they’ll search on their phones for where to find the chests with the best loot, and how others killed this boss, and write down spells and abilities. Imagine if people did that same thing for themselves and their occupations.
In conclusion, we need money to survive as we do, unless we live off of the land, typically rurally. Doing something you hate simply for money, is demoralizing, and not often scalable. We should be mindful not to fall into the trap of chasing money as the ultimate need. After all, money is merely a method for barter. Money can’t hug you, money won’t laugh when you tell it a joke, it doesn’t depend on you, it doesn’t care about you, you can’t eat it when you’re hungry, and if someone takes money from you, it won’t try to escape their clutches, and come back to you. It won’t even miss you. It will belong to your mugger thenceforth until it is passed around again and again. The only reason anyone wants money, is so to get rid of it.
Hey, thanks for reading this far, you’re a beast. I know I love having money on me, as much as the next person. What about you? Are you all about chasing a bag? Or maybe you believe the best things in life are free? Comment down below and share your thoughts with the internet.
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