There are two types of people on this planet. Those to whom money matters, and for whom moolah is always on their mind, and others to whom money is a matter of the mind – if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter! The first of these folks are those who find, by design, that their heart is where their treasure is. The second kind is those who discover, by default, that their treasure is where their heart is. Confused? Let me try and explain.
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Money, as men and women have suspected for some time, is a good servant but a bad master or mistress. Sadly, since it is a universal truth that humankind cannot serve two masters at the same time, it has been the case since time out of mind (especially in mad, bad affairs of the mint and the treasury) that humanity has worshipped Mammon whenever money has been one of the options on – or under – the table. Lastly, but by no means least, the love of money above all else (even sex and power, as a referential look up your family tree – on which money grows – will show) has been the root of many evils in history, society today, times to come…
Perhaps none of this is making any sense. Excuse me, dears, while I get the dollar signs out of your eyes and the sound of clinking coins in the cash register (“ka-ching!”) out of your ears… Which reminds me: one of the world’s richest men is Hong Kong billionaire L. Ka-Shing, aged 75, with an estimated net worth of US$12 billion – but that is neither here nor there. Is it? The point that I was trying to make before I got distracted by the thought of big bucks is that greed comes before a fall… One needs only to think of Gordon Gekko’s creed, “Greed is good! Greed is right!” – and the impact that his axiomatic approach to investing money rashly, only to make more out of it rapidly, had on Wall Street. Maximum ambition meets optimal collapse. Some of us are still paying the price for having to put the Humpty Dumpty of our late, great, global economy back together again. Aren’t we?
Now don’t get me wrong, dears. I have nothing against money qua money. The finest tenor in the world does not compare to the first tenner I made… if you will pardon the poor pun.
But I’ve learned the hard way (that is, through trial and error: which, roughly translated, means by being a greedy sucker) that money – perhaps more than power – tends to corrupt. And if, thanks to human ingenuity, such a thing as ‘absolute money’ is ever invented (and some prophets of doom warn that the day is coming, what with new world orders and noose-like-tightening monetary systems worldwide), it would corrupt absolutely. And that is why I am full of nothing but admiration for the erstwhile Anglican clergyman who went on to reform the Church of England in the mid-18th Century, founding the Methodist Movement along the way, who declared thus (in a smart enough orthopraxy to accompany his nascent orthodoxy): “Whenever I earn any money, I give it away as quickly as possible – before it finds a way into my heart…”
Which brings me neatly back to my original premise: a person’s heartstrings are where their purse-strings are. Pull the pin or pull the plug on their piggy-bank, and their house of cards comes tumbling down (if you will excuse the mixed metaphors). The flip side of the coin – as with all other forms of currency with which we trade, barter, make a mint, conduct commerce, etc. – is that it has its uses, misuses, and abuses. And often, we can’t tell one from another. Can we?
So while you mull over Wesley’s idiomatic, idiosyncratic manner of dealing with money (refer quote above, as you chomp on your lamprais or sip that mulligatawny), permit me to add a few personal proverbs about provender, provenance, and Providence. “If you marry for money, you cannot expect anything but misery to be the food of love.” “A fool and his money are soon parted – but wise men are born poor.” “God helps those poor governments that help themselves. – Government.” “God help those governments that don’t help their poor… – God.” “Money is the one thing you can’t take with you – together with everything else.” “You can’t take it with you when you go, but if you live right, you can send it on ahead.” “Your full welfare there depends on how, when, and where you empty your wallet here.” Go chew on that… will you? |
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