I was listening to Tad Hargrave, from “Marketing for Hippies”, describing the most sleazy marketing techniques he has come across… And I wondered…
All these people’s desperation to make money no matter what… It must be borne out of fear. It has to be.
What are they so afraid of? That they will make less money?
And is that such a bad thing?
I have spent the entirety of my adult life being deeply and truly poor. Which sucks, in oh-so-many ways…
But one of the “upsides” of being so poor is that I don’t fear poverty so much. I know I can survive on little.
I cannot imagine myself ever applying sleazy, slimy marketing because… why? What difference could that make in my life?
What’s the actual difference between making more money and making less money?
It’s all just money…
Let’s talk about poverty (I know…)
I don’t want to minimise just how horrific it is to be poor, because it is.
That said, most of the horrific parts of being poor have to do with “internal dramas”.
It sucks to not have money, yes.
But you know what stings, what cuts the deepest?
Feeling unworthy. Feeling unloveable.
Feeling… “unnecessary”, unvalued, unseen, unimportant.
Seeing yourself as so many people see you: a waste of space, a waste of human flesh, a waste of valuable things like water, food, shelter, air…
Experiencing life as a “ghost” of sorts, because when you can’t spend money you can’t really interact in a world that’ runs on money.
Unloveable.
Truly and intrinsically unloveable.
Who on Earth will look at you twice when you don’t have any money? Huh? When you don’t do anything of “value”?
People ask “what do you do for a living” and you stutter…
“I – I – I – I don’t”.
It hurts to have nothing, but it hurts far more to feel like you ARE nothing
This is a really messy, horrible, painful, unglamorous way to learn a very important lesson:
You are not what you do, you are not what you have, you are not your wallet/bank account/income/job title.
If you can find a way to learn this lesson while scuba diving in the Seychelles, I’ll take my hat off to you.
Usually this lesson is learnt the hard way: either by getting nowhere despite enormous effort (Hi!), or by getting somewhere real good and discovering you are not happy and you have to give it up, or by reaching success and then watching it come crushing down.
You gotta learn to like yourself irrespective of how much money you make.
You just gotta.
Otherwise you will never be satisfied, and that would be tragic.
Worse: you will never feel safe no matter what you do. If you can’t count on your own support when the money vanishes, then you will be forever anxious and scared.
May you always remember that, in yoga-speak, you are far, far bigger than what you own, what you do, what you have… and even bigger than what you think and feel.
