Reflection # 11: Wealthy in Spirit

I have always sworn to myself that I won’t ever care about money, that I will always do what makes me happy above what will make me money. I have always promised myself that I will not settle and become stuck in some job that I hate simply because it allows me to feel comfortable and financially stable. I realize that this makes me sound crazy to some people, stupid to others and to the select few it makes me sound spoiled.

For most people the goal in life is to be happy. But the break down between people begins when you ask them how they’ll achieve this happiness. Many people will equate their happiness to money or what they can accumulate: a nice house, that Aston Martin they’ve always dreamed of or sending their children to college. There’s nothing wrong this I guess, I just don’t think that you can buy total happiness. To me, the goal in life is to be happy, just like what everyone else wants. But how I’ll achieve this isn’t by how much money I’ll have or acquiring things, it’ll be by doing what I love and knowing that it’s about the doing that makes me happy, not the pay check that comes every two weeks. If you’ve ever worked at a job you love, you’ll know it because when that pay check comes in the mail, you’ll look at it and think, ‘this is nice I guess, but I would keep going back even if they said they didn’t have the resources to pay me anymore, I love it that much’. It's about being wealthy in spirit.

Recently I’ve been thinking about why I have this as my goal. I’d like to think it’s simply because I’m a strong willed person who doesn’t believe that money makes you happy, and that is part of it, but there’s more than that. My parents are definitely not the Rockefellers, but we’re “doing ok”. And I think this is a big part of why I have this mentality. I’ve always been told I should do what makes me happy and I’ve also always been given opportunities. This has allowed me to become a dreamer, to truly believe that I don’t need to be well off or have lots of money to be happy. Maybe this makes me spoiled, maybe it makes me crazy, but one thing is for sure, it makes just a little different than most.