Money is like candy. It’s sweet when you first taste it but spoiling when you consume too much. Craved by children, pregnant women, and the elderly alike, people seem to want a lot of it even though they know they don’t need it in excess.
The world we live in seems to rotate around money, feverishly spinning out of control and driving our economy full speed ahead towards the land of feast or famine.
Through advertisements, films, and television, our society has been pushed to hoard, consume, and repeat and for decades, have obliged accordingly, maxing out our credit cards and resources, including the precious natural ones.
But money doesn’t only affect us financially. Though corporate bailouts and house foreclosures primarily dominate the mainstream news, the western world has become morally bankrupt as well; an ailment that no stimulus check or bailout can cure.
Oftentimes, I send mass text messages asking my prized phone contacts strange questions, not to bewilder or shock them, but rather, to acquire a puzzle piece that I hope will eventually form a picture of them in my mind. So I was surprised by a number of responses I got to last week’s question, “What is your dream job?”
Though some of the answers were sincere and heartfelt, many of them seemed driven by a thirst for fame, money, or both. I received a lot of “well-known artist,” or “professional millionaire,” and of course, the ever-popular “famous actress.” And while its not so much the professions that made me question motives (well, besides the professional millionaire), the “well-known,” and “famous,” conveniently placed in front of them indeed did.
Simply put, people value the wrong stuff today. Things like family, nature, and sunsets have taken a backseat to flashy cars, impressive bank statements, and where Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen took their last crap (the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel). We fail to appreciate life’s simple pleasures and have become more and more interested in what we can store in our personal repertoire of uselessness. Things that you can’t take with you when you leave this earth. Things that we won’t remember 15 years down the road but mean everything in our “now” world.
Now this is not to say that we should all go through life penniless like Emile Hirsch in, “Into The Wild.” I’ll be the first to admit that having money in my wallet is nice, yet in the wrong hands, it corrupts minds.
We must make an effort to move away from the obsession that is money, its not everything and in the grand scheme of things, its nothing. Its something that the media dangles in our faces to hinder us from our full potential. It’s a silent God that many of us secretly worship in our most private corners. A green piece of cotton and linen that is as sweet as candy.