...i need money...
...on finding value in representations of value...
“A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.”
-W.C. Fields-
Cross legged and half human on an itchy dog haired navy rug I intone my thinking note of hmmmmm.
I have been meditating on money for about a year now. Something about being absolutely dead broke can do that to a man. A confluence of decisions led me to this moment. A congruence of decisions. A confusing, deluding and not very amusing sequence of every moment of my life. I am totally totally broke and maybe slightly broken. I feel landlocked and lifeless. My mind seethes while entranced by the almighty dollar (and doge coin).
I want to love money. I want to have money. I want to find and share and partake in the financial possibility that I am worth money. Above all I want to truly understand what money means to me.
My mind hovered in a hole of transparency. Hmmmm I hmmmed. Money became a twisting planet made of pimples. I became a boy flying a homemade spaceship popping the zillion zits of planet cash. Into and out of the orb I flopped and popped. I became the color red. I became the color green. The deeper I went the more abstract I became. I was *unintelligible non-anything*. I was hmmmm. My eyes opened and then all I was was a guy on a rug staring slack jawed at air.
This doesn’t seem like a financially constructive use of my time.
Yet at its core money is abstraction. Money is paper. Money is metal. Money is beads and shells and livestock and grains. Tally sticks and bones and work. It is gifts and debt and barter and credit. It is gambling and sharing and making and storing. It is the future, the present and the past. It is my assistant. My captain of worry. It is the means of how I might make more meaning.
I feel obsessed. I feel absent. I feel frightened? Money can be scary. What I can or can’t do because of having it. What I can or can’t do because of not having it. What about my values is making me value a representation of value? I’m uncertain but searching.
Hmmmm.
I think about the cavemen (and cavewomen *grrrrowl*). Specifically the first caveman who picked up rocks and found value in them (his name was Erf). And the other caveman who found meat and valued it (his name was Orf). And yet another caveman who discovered caves and found value in them (his name was Urg).
Maybe money emerged because Urg said, "rock equals meat" then Orf said, "no, meat does not equal rock", and then Erf said "I think your cave is worth two rocks or six of beaver bones" and used that as a distraction before he bludgeoned and ate them both alongside his trusty cave tiger.
**Editors note: Cavemen don’t think or talk like this. Orf probably said “byeargh”, and Erf said “bleargh” and then Urg said “scleargh” and then the cave tiger ate them all while making a money sign with his paws.
“There are people who have money and people who are rich.”
-Coco Chanel-
This article is probably never going to make me money. It’s not that I think these words are valueless, but they don’t seem to be providing me with the same value that I see inside of them. These words rule. These words kick ass. The words bleargh. But bleargh isn’t making any man millions. Hmmmm I continue to hmmmm.
Hmmmm, my untuned frequency frequently distracted by absences and abstractions. I have to get over this shit.
My eyes closes, my nose crinkles rabbit style, and I chatter my teeth in a toothy breath of hmmmm. Money becomes a monster. It becomes a pulsating butt covered beast from dimension “I Don’t Know”.
Hmmmm.
Money becomes a shining god, the most beautiful creation I had ever seen. Light in all directions reflecting on itself with luminant new colors. The scent of heaven. The sound of love.
Hmmmm.
Money becomes a rock I can’t find on a sidewalk. A grain of ancient everything, imperceptible to almost everyone. It is mundane, unimportant and kind of unseeable. Money is just a little wee thing as much as it was nothing.
Weeeeee.
If nothing else, money is well named. I mean what if money was called doingus? Would we obsess with doingus the way we do with money? Maybe I am here to make doingus instead of money? I want to make doingus, spend doingus, and share all the doingus I can with the world. Maybe if I make enough doingus it can someday be worth a lot of money.
Jerry Maguire said show me the money.
I say SHOW ME THE DOINGUS!
Doingus might not give me dingus but it does give me joy. Just saying the word doingus makes my life light up. And in this moment of doingus, alive in bright shiny, money becomes more than an abstraction. It becomes communication. It becomes poetry. It becomes just another means of figuring out what I truly need.
I need life.
I value the here and now. And whether I am totally broke, or filled with overflowing pockets full of doingus, I think I am better served to focus on my values instead of my value.
Some say god is money. It is the great provider. Some say you are money. You are gold baby! I think where I’m landing on is that instead we are all doingus. Great beautiful doingus we are.
And that feels rich.
“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.”
-Jonathan Swift-
…thanks to
who paid me with his mind, time and feedback on this one…i owe you some doingus dude…
"These words rule. These words kick ass." That's doingus right there. Doingus is truth, value, and integrity all smashed into one, and your account is overflowing with it.
I appreciate you putting your two cents in, and in return I offer you a penny for your thoughts.
How's that for a good doingus exchange!