Short of genius a rich man cannot imagine poverty. Charles Peguy
Money is like oxygen. You need it to survive in the modern world but too much or too little will kill you. Too little oxygen (hypoxemia) causes headache, difficulty breathing and rapid heart rate. Isn’t that exactly how you feel when you wake up in a panic in the middle of the night realizing you can’t pay your bills? Too much oxygen (hyperemia) can wake you up early, feeling giddy and excited, euphoric and invincible, prone to outrageous Tweets and prone to hubris. It’s addictive and destroys your lungs and works your cells to death.
“Money isn’t everything” is easy for those to say who have enough. Those who have too little are more likely to side with my grandmother. “Money isn’t everything but it’s way ahead of whatever’s in second place.”
In my favorite commencement address, David Foster Wallace gave this advice to the graduating students at Kenyon College: “An outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship … is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive … If you worship money or things—if they are where you tap real meaning in life—then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth … Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you … Worship power—you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart—you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.”
It’s something we’ve heard at one time or another in one way or another throughout our lives. The difficulty is in finding that golden mean. William Blake famously said “you never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.” (The Proverbs of Hell) In an earlier blog post on this site (The Meaning Of Life) I gave one answer to finding the golden mean: make mistakes. It is through having the courage to act at the risk of making mistakes that we are able to create and learn. In my view, this is what Blake meant.
The golden mean lies in a gray space between too little and too much. Money is like that. It isn’t everything as even those who’ve made a life of earning it will tell you.
Think about it: it doesn’t make sense that your goal should be to make money, because money has no intrinsic value — its value comes from what you can buy with it, and you can’t buy everything. It is wiser to start with what you really want, your true goals, and then work hard on what it takes to achieve them. Money will be one of the things you need, but it’s not the only thing and certainly not the most important thing, once you go beyond the amount you need to get what you really want … In my case, I wanted meaningful work and meaningful relationships in equal measure, and I valued money less — as long as I had enough to provide for my basic needs. Ray Dalio, billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates
True success is measured by the positive impact you have on others, not just by your financial statements. Real wealth is not measured by what you accumulate but by what you give back to the world. In the world of business, the people who are most successful are those who are doing what they love. I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it. Warren Buffett, billionaire CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
A very wise artist friend of mine, Hilda Bertha, told me “You know you’re rich when you don’t have to run to the bank and deposit a check the minute you receive it.”
I made a personal decision over fifty years ago when I moved to Mendocino. I grew up in a small town and I’m a small town guy. I love the art and culture and excitement of the city but a simpler lifestyle suits me just fine. I couldn’t live in a cozy house, feed myself and my family and pursue my personal interests without money. So, yes, I worked most of my life in a number of jobs each of which I found interesting and most of the time enjoyable. My privileged life today is the result of a mix of good luck and work and a lot of mistakes along the way. The only people who say money isn’t important are people who don’t have financial stress. Being financially secure is pretty much a necessity to afford to pursue more important interests.
Global wealth and income inequality have increased in recent decades although extreme poverty has decreased. Still, we idolize the rich and demonize the poor based on false premises. We think the rich are happier, they aren’t. We think the rich deserve their wealth. To some extent that may be true but there is a lot of luck also involved. In any case, the inequality leads to a tension that can blow society apart as it does from time to time. For everyone’s good we would be wise to do what we can to moderate it.
Back in 1974, economics professor Richard Easterlin proposed that at a given point in time happiness increases with income but that over time happiness does not increase with income. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy is a proverb from the 17th century” that seems to be born out by the so-called Easterlin paradox. Recently economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers debunked the Easterlin paradox with new data that shows a positive relationship between happiness and income over time.
Maybe the real paradox is that we are confused about what true happiness consists of as David Foster Wallace warned us. We’re back to that illusive golden mean again. Money is oxygen. It feels good to breathe deep but don’t hyperventilate.