Free Range Librarian is taking a short break. I’ll be back in several days. I had thought I’d do one last now-I’m-going-off-the-grid-and-here’s-my-last-gasp post, but then I flew into an office-cleaning frenzy, complete with flying rags and huge bags stuffed with old paper… I’m so enchanted with my efforts; I’m just five bookends away from perfection.
But (you knew there had to be a “but”) before I stand down for a few days, I must point out the obvious: the millionaires who keep working because they feel poor are not mistaken. They are hungry in their souls.
This morning we said goodbye to a wonderful couple in our church who are moving to another state, and they cried and we cried and we stood in a circle and sang songs, and then many of us (though not I) feasted on saturated fats and carbohydrates, in the manner of our People. Then we all got into our unpretentious cars and drove home with our families (chosen or otherwise). I felt quite rich, driving home in my beloved 13-year-old Honda, knowing that I was one small part of a community that mattered to a young family.
I would like it if I never had to worry about having enough money, but I wouldn’t wish financial wealth on myself if it made me think that my life revolved around reaching for the next brass ring. As the article points out, there’s no end to that. (The article eerily recalls the literature of anorexia… it’s as if, when you get that rich, you lose the ability to see yourself as rich.)
I hope you all understand your wealth and enjoy it. It goes fast, this small bag of coins.
If you comment on a post in the next several days, it may not show up quickly unless you have posted here before.
See you soon!
Posted on this day, other years:
- Say hi to Sparkle, my Civic Hybrid - 2008
- He Saw a Man About a Horse? - 2004
- Download Your Support for Kerry - 2004
Everything is relative. Decades ago when My husband and I were students and living on a few thousand dollars a year (really!)we stopped in to visit the family of one my husband’s college friends. They lived on Park Avenue in NY. He was a psychiatrist who owned their apartment and the apartment next door which was his office. His wife taught psychiatric nursing. Their home was lovely and I was impressed by her expensive wardrobe. She had just come from her weekly hairdressing appointment (an unbelievable luxury to me at the time). During the course of serving us coffee she complained about the layout of her kitchen. “If they had the money” she’d like to turn the butler’s pantry (since they didn’t have live in help)into a larger kitchen. I privately thought that if she’d cut back to once a month on going to her hairdresser they’d have the money but to her that wasn’t a luxury but a necessity. My husband and I marveled that they had then much more money that we did and made more money than either of our parents (I mean, a Park Avenue psychiatrist!)yet they didn’t feel rich. Decades later I remember also the angst that Ken Lay’s wife felt at having to sell some of their condos in Aspen. They owned more condos in Aspen than there were members in their family (4 of them and 6 or 7 condos). If you have millions of dollars and everyone around you has tens of millions you feel “poor”. Sigh! I was remembering all the pipeline workers doing dirty and dangerous work in the West Texas heat for Enron whose retirement was wiped out in the Enron disaster. They were just hoping to afford a fishing boat on an artificial lake in their retirement but were left trying to get a job at age 60+ cause of Lay, etc. It’s all relative. Poor Mrs. Lay–having to sell her 5th or 6th home. Boo Hoo. I think most of those retired oil pipeline workers would have loved to make do with just one of her homes. If you measure your worth in what you acquire you can never be satisfied. Worth is only real if it is measured in loving friends and family and happiness with them.
Excuse me while I go be sick now. “10 million, just doesn’t cut it anymore, maybe in the 70s”??????? And people wonder why the world has issues with Americans? I realize there are rich people in Europe, etc. too, but there don’t seem to be the “Po’ lil’ rich me” like we have here.
I admit, I have had my fantasies about striking it rich: usually they involve enough to pay my student loans, pay off my house, buy a NEW car, tuck some away for my daughter’s education, donate gobs to my library and then have enough invested to give me an extra $500 a month. (in my fantasy all that comes to 1(ONE) million)
Why can’t we be happy anymore???