Tonight, as you go to sleep, try to imagine this.
Imagine you are waking up from your sleep. Light penetrates your eyes harder than usual. In fact, the whole atmosphere feels so different. You are not in your bedroom, that's for sure.
Then you realize, you are in a forest.
No, not just any forest.
Every single tree, in the forest, grows money.
And the soil is made of gold.
A dream comes true, indeed.
You start trying to collect as many of the valuables as you can. I mean, come on, who wouldn't. Also at the same time, you try to navigate yourself out of from the forest.
And you did it! Cheers to you. You have found a road that leads to a town. Maybe you can get help there.
But, to your surprise, the trees and the soil at the town are also made of money and gold respectively.
And even more surprising, they don't even care.
It turns out, whatever planet or universe you are in now, are not running their economy with money nor gold.
Just like how you would not even care seeing a leaf fall down from a tree, or how you would just shake off dirt from your shoes,
that's how they treat the money from the tree and the gold soil.
Instead, their whole economy revolves around salt and sugar.
As you venture more into the town, you can see how salt and sugar are important to them.
You keep eavesdropping complaints from people there that there are not enough salt and sugar at their home.
There are banks everywhere, to store salt and sugar.
People invest in mining salt and sugar.
Suddenly, someone grabs you at your shoulders. A gun is being pointed at you.
Oops. You're being mugged.
"Give me your salt."
Wait, you don't have any.
"Impossible. Give me your salt. And your sugar, if you have them with you."
You keep insisting on him that you don't have any. Why would you have them anyway?
Your heartbeat increases every second, worrying for your life. You try to offer them the money and gold that you had collected at the forest earlier.
To your surprise, he replies, "Why the hell are you giving me this junk? Wait, are you playing with me? You better not, or I'll shoot you."
Of course you're not, your life is at stake.
You start to lose your patience, and yell,
"I do not have any salt of sugar with me. Why are you threatening to kill me, just for that?"
He scoffs.
"Why not."
He shoots. Game over.
Lesson learnt, I hope.
We need to realize one thing. Money is man-made, and gold is valuable only because everybody wants it. Before there is gold or even money, we used to trade things to get things.
For example, you have a fish. But you want a chicken. So you go to find people who have chicken, and trade your fish for it.
At that point, the chicken becomes valuable to you, and your fish is an important asset for you, to get the chicken.
That works even until today. Ask yourself, do you really need money? Do you really want money? What can money do for you? Nothing. It is just a piece of paper, or metal with writings and scribbles written on it.
You don't actually want or need money.
You need food, shelter, clothes, stable jobs, good relationships and stuff.
You want that big house, that nice car, that newest iPhone, that fastest Internet plan, and... stuff.
Money is important, but what you use it for is much more important.
And they are only valuable, because everyone wants it.
Why? So then, they can use it to get what they want and need, by giving them off to people that have what they want and need. And those people will accept the money, because now, the get to have what they want and need, by giving them off to other people who have them.
It's a cycle. And of course, it is better than directly trading things to avoid value inaccuracies and thus dissatisfaction. A helpful one indeed.
But immerse yourself too much in it, you will forget things,
and suddenly money and gold become your God.
Don't enslave yourself to them. They are not God.
They never are.
They never will.
Comments
Post a Comment