The Challege of Desperation
The BeginningI read Ramit Sethi's I Will Teach You to Be Rich blog as a resource for entrepreneurial thinking. Today he posted an excerpt from another blog about his "rich person thinking". Personally, I think she mean that to mean so much more than just rich person thinking such as spoiled brat, lucky, unaware and some other things most people think when they think about rich people.
Despite all that, I still wanted to see what she had to say. So I clicked on over to the original blog post.
What really caught my eye were the sentences before Ramit's excerpt.
"...I've had to pay out-of-pocket for random-ass surgeries, medical equipment, car wrecks, and funerals, to name a few. Rich people don't think like me because they don't know this desperation - and that's why they get richer."
The Middle
Now I'm fully aware of this desperation. I've broken my foot while working at a just above minimum wage job. My health insurance hadn't kicked in yet. I had mortgage payments I couldn't afford and debt that piled up from both ignorance and negligence. Woe was me.
All that time though, I've been privy to the financial gifts of my parent or others around me. It's not easy to admit. But it's been there for me. In the past, I've sucked with money. I've had no sense of its worth, where it comes from and what it was for other than to give me some things I wanted. It was nice to be able to buy a 27" TV, but that doesn't really mean anything to me.
I've never cared for money, well not the way my parents did. Money was first and foremost because it served the family. Fair enough. But it stole them from me. And I hated it. I hate corporate America for that basic reason. Hell, I hate my parents for that reason. But they did what they felt was right. But it was their relationship with money that created my hatred for it. (Oddly enough, I'm fucking awesome at spending money.)
Because of that, I always saw rich people as cheats. Some see them as people who don't work hard or were give that fate or something else. But I saw them as polluters, thieves and charlatans. There's plenty of evidence to back that up. There's a saying that behind every fortune there's a crime. Hell, I worked for Enron.
The End
Recently, my whole relationship with money has changed. For the better. If you've been following along, you've seen me post what I feel is different between wealthy and rich.
Now's a new twist. What does it mean to be prosperous. For me, its intimately tied with your purpose in life which transcends your need for survival, procreation or fulfilling your ego. Rather, it is and always has been a service to something far greater than you.
Prosperity is the acknowledgement of the greater community, of life affirming your mission. It validates your purpose by giving you the resources you need. And why wouldn't it. Life said yes to you. Years ago. It chose you. It gave you awareness. It gave you self-awareness. One of our most cherished, and all to often forgotten human characteristics. Why would life want you to have poverty? Poverty is man made. Happiness is our birthright. Holiness and wealth, true riches are our birthright.
The Challenge
By no means has my new found relationship with money coalesced into something tangible. And you can doubt me all you want. And that's fine. I accept your doubt. I just hope you pray I see past it anyways.
But the real challenge is not to be that polluter or cheater or charlatan. I have to be so much more to be the man I need to be. I need to fill my world with gifts of adoration. I don't know if I will do this, but that I must.
This much I do know. I know I will not carry on a tradition of scarcity. I will not carry on a tradition of just scraping by. I will not, I will not, I will not. That is not my legacy. I would rather die than give up.
posted by Mitesh @ 3:43 PM
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