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"Money is only worth what other people will give in exchange for it."– Balzac, The Fatal Skin
I hate money, but I cannot escape it. Perhaps I can, but I simply have not found a way of doing so. Money pervades every interaction we have and every soul we encounter. This reality exists even in Cape Town, which is wrongly perceived to be too laid-back to care about anything as mundane as “moolah”. You can steal my soul, but do not steal my money!
I was raised within a mildly severe Calvinist milieu, but privileged nonetheless. Attention often focused on the significance and transcience of money and although there was always plenty, we constantly were made aware of the price of our privilege: “To whom much is given, much is expected” was an oft repeated aphorism.
We also were made aware that it could all be gone in a second.
I tried to ignore these noble sentiments and live a life of honest excess, but even at a young age, I instinctively knew that the more you owned in life, the more it ended up owning you – the paradox of materialism?
Newly degreed and hugely naïve, I was overwhelmingly bored by the drudgery of formal employment from the outset. But the rent on the London bedsit would not pay itself, and so it was off to work I would go. Hours of nothingness interspersed with petty corporate politics, all to harvest a pittance that hardly covered the cost of that paltry existence.
Sales was a way to make more money, but it so often felt that I was selling small chunks of my peace of mind and the financial rewards paled in comparison to the dystopian torpor.
I could have had it all, had I simply made myself pucker up and kiss a little ass – but I could not, or would not.
Instead, I started a business with a friend and things were fine while we were struggling. Once the money started rolling in, our friendship took strain and a financial quotient had to be ascribed to our relationship. The relationship floundered and we moved on – a commercial divorce of sorts.
Despite this and a few other ‘corrections’, I somehow have been self-employed for 12 years, and some of the best times of my life have been when I have been in a financial quagmire. This may seem trite, but largely it has been my reality.
Life is far more immediate when you are broke. It is by no means comfortable and I would never go there of my own choosing (although I think my subconscious likes to flirt with squalor), but once there, each morsel of food and sip of beer is savoured.
I thrill in the things that hold meaning and come free, like watching a rich man yearn for the assets he does not have already.
Debt is penury and incredibly arduous, but so is wealth – I aspire to not having or wanting anything! This is some convoluted manifestation of Buddhism and completely unreal, and therefore I know I have to have and want on some level. I still am trying to determine what that level is.
Being surrounded by wealth and privilege, I realise that this wouldn’t do for my happiness. I do like steak and overseas trips, but I will not prostitute myself to have them. My vainglorious search for meaning will lead me down other roads, but this is my lot and I now know it.
I also know that my world view is convoluted and hysterical, but at least I have thought it through. Do you know where you want to be and why? How long does the joy of a new car or a new wife really last? The desire never dies and only grows with our means of satisfying it.
At the same time, it is highly unlikely that living in a mud hut and eating Mopani worms will give us joy. Perhaps we should all focus more on who we are and not what we have and where that places us around the trough of needs.
There are some old and blessed souls who instinctively understand the chimera that is money.
They realise that the only way to know your worth in financial terms, is to compare it with the worth of those around you. Western society accepts this as fact and encourages such competition through paradoxical mores such as the “American Dream”.
This dream has turned to dust for millions around the world whose assets have halved in value before their eyes. Owning property has gone from almost mythical status as a ‘safe haven’ for investment, to a nerve-wracking strategy of balancing debt and hidden costs, with plunging assets that are largely illiquid.
Do not see this as investment advice, but rather a cautionary tale regarding the wisdom of ‘conventional wisdom’.
Ask why you should feel worth more because you own the property in which you live. Surely, renting gives you more freedom to choose where you want to live and when you want to leave?
Those who rent are ritually scorned in middle-class enclaves, and for what? Just because you choose to hang an albatross around your neck, do not expect me to worship it!
One of the joys I derive from growing older is seeing so many of society’s immutable laws of morality and religion crumbling before me. I am no closer to discovering the truth, but I am now certain that teachers such as Mr “Odson” were the vindictive, petty-minded sadists that my juvenile mind perceived them to be.
The truth is that the truth lies within, and not in how much you are able to withdraw. Let us hope the penny drops?
George Joubert
