madermouse's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4/12/02 I�m troubled today. We are still scrambling from Thomas being out of work, which is part of my problem. Then our t.v. dies....so no exercise videos until we get a new one. I get to work today and my paycheck is $150 bucks less than it should be. When I call to inquire, I�m informed that I�m to double pay for Thomas�s health insurance which means this deduction will happen for the next 3 paychecks. I get upset momentarily, but recover, thinking �We�ll be okay. At least he has insurance.� While cleaning out my desk I find my tax return and realize I have to pay it by Monday....and I owe them. And tomorrow is THE day I�ve been awaiting for months... It�s the day the gym is offering no joining fees. So if I�m going to join and save that $200 bucks I have to come up with April and May�s gym fees. At times like this, its so easy to be bitter...and much more difficult to feel thankful and appreciative for what I do have. But I�m trying. Money. I can truly appreciate what a love/hate relationship feels like, because I have one with money. It is the ultimate paradox. It can make your life so difficult, and so easy all at the same time When you have enough, its never enough. When you don�t have enough, you think back to those times when you actually did have enough, but you weren�t thankful for it. You think you�d be thankful now - now that your husband/wife is without a job Money...its power is intoxicating. With that flash of green you have new experiences just waiting to be had. Pull out the wallet and taste food from distant lands, buy big grown-up toys you�ve always wanted, sleep on the comfort of a NASA designed mattress, hop a plane and feel the water lap onto your toes while you sit on a tropical beach on the other side of the world. Live in a mansion, learn the distinct differences between expensive wines, fly your private jet to see a sold-out concert in your box seats, drive a car that never breaks down. Hell, drive a car that you never have to wash or vacuum or even park! Drive a car that you�ve never had to ask �what�s the mileage� or that you�ve never even thought about changing the oil or had to pick mashed chewing gum out of the carpet. Make your biggest concern whether or not you should serve the foie gras or the truffled monkfish to the big wigs at the soiree next month Go shopping with the intent of buying a whole new wardrobe....with matching shoes.....and handbags....and hats. See your personal trainer 5 times a week so you can stay motivated to keep your shapely figure, and don�t forget to set your appointment for that boob lift. After all, you deserve to be perfect. All it takes is the dough and you�ve got it made, right? You can spend your energy on keeping yourself occupied and happy and contented and forget about ever worrying again. Or at least that�s the dream, anyway. For most of us, money is why we work. It�s the game you have to keep on playing even when you�re tired and you just want to curl up with your blanky and sleep. But still we get up every day to a job we put up with because we know we got bills, we got rent, we gotta have food on the table, we gotta have transportation so we can GET TO WORK. Ya, that�s what I�m talking about. Vicious Cycle. And while some of us are lucky enough to have an inheritance, hit the jackpot, or have married into wealth, most of us suckers are living check to check, scraping by. And whenever we get a little bit ahead, the Universe comes and snatches it back in the form of a car wreck, a vet bill, a broken arm, or a letter in the mail saying you made a mistake on your taxes and now you owe them instead of the other way around.
Then we get older, and we have bigger toys, (or not) maybe we buy a house and we have a mortgage on top of our car payment and phone bill and utilities, and food and credit card bills. Then something happens. We get sick real bad or we�re diagnosed with an incurable disease and we realize we must have insurance in order to be able to afford to get our medicine to make us well enough to work, to get our money. That�s about the time the dreams of being a professional artist, a musician, or writer go down the toilet. You have to take risks to be those things, and now you can�t afford to take a risk. A risk like that might put you on the street, might put you on welfare. A risk like that might cause your husband to be unable to take his meds for his incurable disease. A risk like that might cause someone to die. And so we work for money, its all we know how to do. Every day the same damn thing, day in and out. Sometimes it feels like a prison until you remember that you put yourself there. So you buck up and keep going because what else can you do? Give up? Run away and join a commune? (if those even exist anymore) Check out of life and shuffle from corner to corner in a pale green hospital gown in a mental ward? Can you just turn to your husband and/or kids when you�ve had enough and say, �Sorry, I don�t feel like doing this anymore. You�re on your own.� Not likely. So we work. We work and work and work and then we hit a place when we realized we�re older than we ever imagined, and we haven�t even planned for the future. We never thought we�d get this far, we never thought we�d make it long enough to have a future. But that day of reckoning comes when everything about life comes into focus and the clarity of what�s real becomes so bright and sharp you can�t ignore it. You come to understand that all this talk of God is really just a way for us to feel a part of something bigger, something more substantial than money and work and just scraping by. Because if we�re not a part of something, if we are just this rat in a race on a spinning wheel to nowhere..... Well, its unthinkable. Without getting too deep into religion, I�ll say this: For those of us who choose not to believe in a single God, we are forced to accept that the journey itself is that �something bigger� we�re all seeking. That its not only the journey, but who we are while we�re on the journey, and the person we are hoping to become when its all said and done. All these lessons - the loss of a loved one, the elation of a promotion, the thrill of falling in love, the loneliness in a crowded room , the long stagnant standstill when you�re desperately trying to change, the dirt poor times when we�re eating nothing but government peanut butter and saltines - it is all part of that �something bigger�. When you look at it this way, those with money aren�t really any luckier because their lessons are just different. In the end we all have worries, we all struggle, and we are all ultimately the same. I try to remember this as I face new challenges today regarding my finances, and know that everything will work out. It always does. 2:06 p.m. - 4/12/02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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