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Blog 470 – 11.19.2016

The Deceitfulness Of Riches

Money is important and one should put aside a little out of all that comes in if for no other reason than to avoid always having to go into debt to cover unexpected expenses. We should anticipate the unexpected and be prepared for it. An excellent credit rating only proves you pay your debts on time. But I have covered all this about the importance of a stash of cash in a previous blog.

Today I was talking with a young man who is a hard worker with a skill, a beautiful wife and lovely little daughter. Like many young men he loves to hunt and it is a very expensive hobby. Again like a lot of young men, myself included, he briefly dreamed as an even younger man of being a forest ranger – getting paid to be out in the woods protecting our pubic lands from poachers and those who would abuse and destroy our public treasure. He went on to say that he looked into it and four years to get a forestry degree for a relatively low paying job turned him away from his dream.

We are told over and over in today’s emphasis on “having” instead of “being” world to “Follow The Money.” Earlier in the day I spoke with an older retired man who said he was learning the guitar, and thinking of starting a new career as a business consultant too. We both remembered a scene from a Star Trek New Generation episode where Captain Picard told a man who had just been awakened from a century plus long cryogenic sleep and was looking for a bank to get all his back pay with compounded interest, that people no longer worked for or even used money. In Gene Roddenberry’s future people worked at what the were good at, what they enjoyed doing, for the satisfaction of doing what they loved doing.

I like a multitude of people kind of put my first best dreams of the work I wanted to be my life’s work on hold. I admire young people wise enough to put marriage and family plans on hold till they get their education first, formal or life experience, till they are earning their livelihood doing what they want to do. If you do what you really want to do, what excites you, and drives you to be better and better at it,  the financial rewards will come. It is the Law. But if you follow the promise of quick money now, the deceitfulness of riches, you will find it not only an illusive butterfly most often but a destroyer of dreams as well.

To young people and older people alike I say follow your heart, do what you enjoy doing, the money will come and with it the joy of doing something worth your while. What a revolutonary idea – work that makes you smile. May Gene Roddenberry’s future become a reality for us all. Or in the words of Captain Picard, “Make it so.”

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White