"What have you done for the first time lately?"
The new year and its vows to improve our lives are upon us, and Facebook is full of helpful lists posted by people linking to various blogs and news aggregation sites hoping to make their numbers jump with headlines like: 25 New Year’s Resolutions Every Person Should Actually Make For 2014.
Usually these lists are full of tough-ish love demands to rid yourself of people and things that drag you down, while trying the things you've been putting off because of embarrassment or uncertainty. (My favorite in the above: "If you hate your job, quit your job. Repeat after me: THE MONEY IS NOT WORTH IT." Great, I'll jump of the cliff and build the parachute on the way down. Oh, but wait: "Food and shelter are clutch though, so make sure you have another job lined up." So the money's not worth it ... unless you need the money for rent and stuff? Then I should keep the awful job?)
Lately, I've been looking at not just these lists, but all the various feel-better-about-yourself, do-the-deeply-meaningful-"right"-thing type advice on the internet and posters and bumper stickers and even music.
"Said no more counting dollars
We'll be counting stars"
As I rise every morning at 2 am to do a job I at least consider superior to the vast majority of possible professions (though I wouldn't mind a little more sleep), I begin to think at best with amusement and at worst with disgust on the many little anti-negativity self-challenges these people are offering.
I can't just dispose of people because I feel like they take me down, especially if they're taking me down because they have real, serious problems and could use my help. Sure, my life would be happier without taking on some of their burden (especially since there seem no real termination date on it), but what about them? And what if I feel some sense of obligation? "Sorry, Dad, thanks for all the years of sacrifice and care, but you're old and boring. Bye."
And what if that thing I think will give me true fulfillment is, well, stupid? Not embarrassing, like asking the prettiest girl in high school to the prom and getting shot down, but really, really misguided, like quitting my job and abandoning my family to go on a personal journey to awareness? (I'm looking at you, Eat, Pray, Love. Honestly, where did the money for that come from? Couldn't it have been put to better use? And why wasn't she completely begging-on-the-street broke at the end of that grand, world-circling tour?)
Which comes to the subject of money. I mean, we all would like to think we're above that, and I think no one will argue that there's a point when one can ask, "Isn't that enough?" (Though we might, and will, argue over exactly where that point falls.) But these pursue-your-dreams sentiments are the path to bankruptcy and ruin. I know. I did it. And I'm here to tell you: Nothing sucks the joy out of everything in life quite like having to worry about money.
"Money can't buy you happiness, but it's more comfortable to cry in a Mercedes than on a bicycle"
But in the end, I guess, my chatter on this -- dreary and workaday, full of envy and greed though it is -- has no more value than theirs. I think of one of my very favorite quotes in recent years:
"We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true."
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