Imagine you want to bake a delicious cake.
You decide to buy flour, sugar, butter, etc. You go the grocery store, and you happen to see a few other shoppers’ carts — they’re buying flour too.
Now imagine that instead of just getting on with your shopping plan, you instinctively rush to the flour section, and start loading up your cart with flour, and you put off buying butter, sugar, etc. for later — they’ll always be available, but for some reason, people are buying flour. Is there a shortage? Did someone discover new uses of flour that makes it very valuable? Who knows… but best to load up on flour, just in case. In fact, let’s go to all the nearby stores and start buying up flour there too.
Months go by and you are sitting with a ton of flour — you still haven't baked that cake, you still haven’t even bought butter and sugar. You innately know you pursued the wrong thing - flour instead of cake - but because it’s hard to admit you’re wrong and change your ways, you start defining yourself as the richest person in the neighborhood, measured by pounds of flour owned.
How ridiculous would that life be?
Yet, most of us pursue flour instead of cake.
We pursue money rather than the things we really want — relationships, health, knowledge, adventure, etc. Sure, to get some of these things, some money is must-have, some more money is good-to-have, but beyond a pretty low amount, it’s a need-not-have.
We spend the precious things we have — time and energy — to pursue money, even when we don’t need much more of it. Why is that? What’s the addictive quality of money?
It is valued by others. Much of our desire for money stems from our observation that others value it.
"Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires." - René Girard
We know that mimetic desire — wanting something just because others want it — is a surefire way to long-term dissatisfaction, yet we find ways to rationalize it. We tell ourselves stories, that happiness to us involves owning a massive house that requires over a decade of large monthly payments, having our kids go to private schools, or one day leaving a bulk of our life’s earnings to charity (let me maximize my earnings - it’s for a good cause).
In short, we continuously move the goalposts of our own happiness — not raise — but move them away from the “cake” ambitions of relationships, health, knowledge, and adventure, so that we can justify pursuing the “flour”. Money can’t buy friendship, but hey it can buy a house and expensive snacks to host friends with, so let me pursue that.
Money seems to have a gene-like ability to consume us, all the while giving us an illusion that we’re in power. In this sense, it is akin to wheat’s domestication of humans.
“Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn't easy. Wheat demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn't like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke their backs clearing fields. Wheat didn't like sharing its space, water and nutrients with other plants, so men and women labored long days weeding under the scorching sun… Moreover, the new agricultural tasks demanded so much time that people were forced to settle permanently next to their wheat fields. This completely changed their way of life. We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.” - Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2018).
So, how are we to feel about money?
I say we stay neutral to it. Of course we should ensure we have a financial plan / budget we stick to, driven by our long-term goals, but be careful not to let the assumption of money shape our goals.
More importantly, as a mindset — We should neither actively chase money nor fear losing it, and definitely not measure ourselves by our possession of it. Take the signaling value / mimetic desire out of it. Get comfortable with the notion that we will likely be poorer than most of our peers, that others may judge us for it, and yet we will still have enough and still be happy.
When we can overcome the discomfort that comes with “I’m not going to be rich”, we gain the freedom to define and pursue our real goals — the cake, not flour.
Along the way, the riches may come or hard financial times may befall us, but equanimity to money leads to satisfaction more reliably than the pursuit of it does.