Jay Elias | You can take it with you

"I have wasted Time, and now doth
Time waste me"
- Richard II

2003-07-07- 10:35 p.m.

Bet The Hand That Your Money Is On

I got perhaps the saddest fortune cookie of my life today. It read: You are next in line for promotion at your firm. Well, first of all, I don’t work for a firm, or any other company for that matter, so I know I haven’t a shot at being the next in line for anything. But more importantly, is this what fortunes have come to? Once a source of (cheesy, half-baked) Eastern wisdom, the cookies are now giving us preposterous promises about our careers? I suppose the Chinese have just decided that since we all care so much more about money than our lives, they might as well alter the fortunes to suit our concerns.
I’ve been feeling like shit a lot lately. I’ve found myself having periodic moments during the day, when I’m overwhelmed by a sense of panic, and I’m paralyzed and I cannot move. And when it happens, when I’m afraid, it is always about money. I’m afraid that I won’t start making more money soon enough, and that all the hard work and suffering I’ve put into trying to build a career of my choice will be lost. I’m afraid that I’ll keep trying to build this career too long, and that should the time come that I would want to get married or father children, I shall be cheated out of those desires. I fear I shall lose my friends, not because of angry words or broken promises, but because I simply cannot afford to accompany them often enough on their excursions to restaurants and bars. I fear I shall lose Rachel, because someone else can come along and offer her the sort of future now that I doubt I could provide for her in five years time. And last but not least in my list of stupid and inescapable fears is that I am depriving myself of the sort of happiness that money could bring me, and that I am wasting the best years of my life by forgoing the sort of pleasures that television and glossy magazines assure me that I desperately want.
I always did have a hard time arguing with anything glossy.
I’m smart enough to know that all my fears could come to pass. As time passes and my debt grows, or at least doesn’t get any smaller, the less likely it is that I can sustain it. Sooner or later, if I do not start making a lot more or spending a lot less, I’ll have to give up this dream and move on to something else. And if I wait too long, and go past the point where I should have quit, that mistake will certainly haunt me, and prevent me from being able to marry or be a parent in the manner I would choose at the least. And while most of my friends are exceptionally caring and understanding individuals, it is the truth that my finances prevent us from seeing each other as often as either of us would like or believe we should. And despite how caring and understanding we all are, there is a separation taking place already between some of them and I. As some of my friends get married, buy houses and cars and decorate guest rooms, their ability to understand how I, nearing the age of twenty-seven, am still able to postpone the sort of maturity that they are embracing. And I become less and less of a peer to them, and more of a curiosity. It isn’t anyone’s fault exactly. They work damn hard for their money; at least most of them, and they all are more than entitled to want to enjoy the rewards that their money can bring them. And for some of them, it is difficult. They must choose either to not do what they can afford and would prefer to do so that they can share it with me, or leave me behind and share their experiences with others among their friends with greater means than I. And already some are resenting me for making them make that choice. They don’t mean to, and they would deny it if ever asked, but they do. They can’t help it. In effect, I am forcing them to make a choice, between their life choices and desires or their friendship with me.
I feel guilty even doubting Rachel in my mind. She has made her choice of me with open eyes and full facts. She knows how much money I have and how much money I owe. She has an idea of how likely it is that I will never ‘make it’ in my chosen field, and that I’ll have to start all over with the burden of what the pursuit of this dream has cost. She chooses me as I am, and I have no desire to doubt that. But this is merely today. Today we are young, at least in the scheme of things, and just starting out, and there is a whole lot of future out there; far, far too much future, in fact, for us to even deal with the scope of it. And in that future, what it is that she wants, and even what it is that she needs, may become very different. I feel stupid even putting this doubt in writing, much less saying it out loud. But I know that while I may be a great number of things, I’m not entirely stupid. It has happened to me before.
It is my final fear, though, that I feel stupidest for. I’ve been trained, as a thoughtful and informed person to disbelieve this stuff that marketing departments churn out. I should instinctively know that money cannot buy happiness, and that the people in the VIP lounge at Lot 61 aren’t having any better of a time than those drinking Bud over at the Blarney Stone. But strangely enough, it is the skeptic in me that keeps questioning that. How am I to know, after all, that the folks at Lot 61 are not, in fact, having a far better time? How am I to know that driving a BMW doesn’t change driving into bliss? How do I know that my Fourth of July down on the Jersey Shore would not have been far better if we were on Martha’s Vineyard? There are people lining up outside of Lot 61, people scrimping and saving to purchase BMWs, spending what to me is a small fortune to share a house on the Vineyard with twenty people for a week. How many billions upon billions of dollars are spent each year on fantastic vacations and dinners at Le Cirque and speedboats and country club memberships, on tailored suits and spa weekends, on caviar and truffles and a dozen other foods I have never tasted? Why can’t I get over this suspicion that it is something that they know that I don’t?
I don’t want this to be the way the world is. I don’t want to have to equate money with value, or to learn that money can bring me the kind of fulfillment that following my dreams cannot. I hate it. I hate the very idea of it, the very notion that the search for happiness or at least contentment might end at my wallet. I hate the idea that this world is doing its very best to crush my spirit with worry simply because I have chosen something different.
When I was young, elementary school age, I can remember how it felt to be singled out from the rest of society as a Jew. I can remember learning that Christmas was for everyone I knew but me. I can still feel my face burning when my first grade teacher forced us to sing ‘The Dreidel Song’ in the midst of an afternoon of Christmas carols, and as the only Jew in the class every face looked at mine. And none of it, not the shame or the apartness, compares to how ostracized I feel now.
I’m not asking to be a rock star or a movie director. I don’t need a BMW, and I don’t care if I never set foot on Martha’s Vineyard. I just don’t want to worry anymore.

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Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15
Like Water Under Bridges - 2003-09-08
Jesus On The Dashboard - 2003-08-13
An Administrative Announcement - 2003-08-11
Don't Worry, It's Coming - 2003-08-02

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