Money: Our Thin, Unraveling Blanket
Money comes and money goes. It is the cause of our pleasure. It is the cause of our pain.
Without it’s comfortable embrace, our bodies are left so vulnerable, so fragile… completely at the whims of the hostile environment that surrounds us.
We feel like money will protect us. It will keep us warm and safe, a blanket that provides security and contentment. It will be our shelter from the cruel, cold truth of time — the eventual destroyer of all material things.
We seek control, because in reality we have none. We dream of a time when we will never have to think of money again. We will flip the relationship, to one where we are in control and money is our servant.
Grasping for control is futile, but still we try.
Our illusion of control is maintained every time we experience an unexpected windfall or gift. We once again feel safe, because money is flowing in rather than out. We think we have mastered the material realm every time we make a professional step in our careers or are blessed with a profitable idea — we have bought ourselves more time, and padded our cushion of security. But that feeling is often short lived, and soon devolves back into our baseline anxiety.
The illusion of control is shattered when we experience unexpected misfortune. We realize how little is truly under our control. The pain of losing money is visceral. We feel our very lifeforce is under attack. Every bill or required payment that blindsides us begins to pull at our blanket, and unravel it thread by thread.
So, we clutch and cling to it even closer. We become more guarded and anxious. Our survival is never guaranteed, so we spend our lives operating from fear. We may even lash out at those we love, because when money — which represents our security is threatened, we feel threatened.
Most of our parents argued about money, as their parents did before them. We swore that we would never do the same in front of my children, but now we have fallen into the same pattern. Can we ever break the cycle and transcend the need for security and certainty?
We want our children to know there are more important things than money, but the human desire to survive is old, primitive, and hard-wired. How can we expect them to achieve a level of being that we ourselves could not?
Money comes and money goes. Control is overrated.
We can pretend like we have control, or we can try to let go. Maybe it’s time to surrender to how naked and vulnerable we really are. It’s time to trust that our lives will unfold exactly as they are meant to.
Money cannot protect us forever, nothing can. But maybe what we truly are, our true nature, is beyond the grasp of time, space and the very need for survival.
When you have lost it all, what remains? Who are you?
