I drove home from work behind an Audi. At a long light, someone needing money held up his sign, and it was the Audi driver ahead of me who gave the guy some help.
I immediately considered that dude lucky, because I am just certain that an Audi driver more than likely hands out hundreds at traffic lights.
I began, then, to think about money again. It is such a hot-bed of blocks for me, this whole money thing. It is the judgement, the shame and the fear attached to money that I find so aversive. The parts within me that are still shivering alone in dark corners, wanting so much to be included, and not knowing how.
So I let those parts stray into the light for the rest of the way home.
My Indian friend told me once that there were certain people she avoided at all costs, because they could not be taught. She said, in India, they have a saying about this. "Ripe wheat bows."
What are luxury cars and 6,000 square foot homes, diamond jewelry and designer purses, a vast portfolio and a fat savings account, or even $100 pairs of shoes and $50 sweaters? What are these symbols of? My culture tells me that these are symbols of success.
Because of a combination of simple peer pressure and a vast and infectious cultural/media matrix, if I owned all of the above, I would think I were well within my rights if I felt these things proved my superior intelligence, my superior cunning, my superior nature, because surely, if I have all of this when many have little, there can be only conclusion: I am better than you.
The punch-line is, those are not symbols of status. They are symbols of a system I never believed in. They are excessive. They are unnecessary. And, I have to believe that if a terribly wealthy individual is deeply and humbly honest, they would admit they were being overpaid.
