You should be practical about
money. That necessarily means that you should not be obsessed with money, as most Americans are. Practicality
always exits when obsession joins the party.
And the venal duplicity of
commercialism that inevitably taints the atmosphere insures that nobody left
at the party is going to be too happy.
Buddhist thinkers and stoics share
a disdainful sense of perspective about wealth.
“The only wealth which you will
keep forever is the wealth you have given away,” said Marcus Aurelius who, as
Roman emperor, knew something about great wealth.
“The reason we have poverty is
that we have no imagination,” wrote the Zen thinker Alan Watts. “There are a
great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it’s only
money... they don’t know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.”
Terry Cannon:
ReplyDeleteI've heard the figure $70k per year as the point where working people in the USA can have all their basic needs met. Once your basic needs are met, including having enough savings to handle unexpected bills, you find yourself with the freedom to enjoy life without much worry. It is soul-crushing to labor long, hard hours and still not be able to meet your basic needs. "Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" was originally a joke and it still is.