How To Stay Out of the Money Trap

Khemit B.
Khemit B.
Sep 7, 2018 · 5 min read

“It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence” -Immortan Joe, Mad Max: Fury Road

“Would you like a glass of champagne before takeoff, sir?”

I looked up from the business class menu where I was deciding between the seared salmon and the filet mignon. “Yes, please.” I say.

I’m heading to Paris on another of my frequent business trips where I’ll stay at a five star hotel and comp all of my expenses.

Several years ago, I was a military veteran whittling away my meager savings on an MBA in the vague hopes that it would give me a foothold to finally making some real money.

Now, I work for the most profitable company in history and make a 6 figure salary even before stock and bonuses.

I have everything I thought I wanted. But I’m in The Money Trap, and I’m miserable.

I know what you might be thinking: “Boo hoo! You’re lucky enough to be in a position that others would kill for and you have the gall to complain?”

And maybe you’re not wrong. Maybe the aimlessness we often feel SHOULD be cured by money. Money is an incredible thing. It can provide liberation, convenience, and freedom from scarcity. At its essence, money is a tool that pushes the terrifying unknown further and further away until everything is predictable, stable, and safe.

But while money can help provide some freedom from uncertainty, it cannot function as a goal in the absence of any other goal. Too often we mistake money for what we hope money will provide: happiness, finally! And we are crushed and confused when it fails to live up to that promise. We’ve fallen into a trap.

The trap is a trap of confusion. Money is an elaborate tool like a house, filling multiple needs like safety and comfort at once. But without meaning, love, and purpose a house can never be a home, and a home is what we all truly crave.

“This isn’t life! This is just stuff!” -Lester Burnham, American Beauty

A driver ferries me from the airport to my hotel. I check in, explore the amenities, and dip into my complimentary bottle of wine. For the rest of the evening I order expensive things from the room service menu, obsessively check my stock app, social media, e-mail, then on to mindless web searching or podcasts… then back to the stock app.

I do anything to keep at bay the disappointment I feel in what’s become of my life. I’m ashamed of that feeling; it shouldn’t exist! Haven’t I finally found success??

I’m actively avoiding a deeper question that gnaws at me: what do I want to do with what’s left of this life?

There are very few beliefs we hold so strongly as the belief in money’s ability to provide happiness. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

One of the more illustrative examples is the case of the celebrity suicides that occur all too frequently. Those unfortunate and high profile occurrences confuse us. We are seldom so directly confronted with evidence counter to our strong-held beliefs about money.

We find it hard to imagine that anyone possessing so much financial wealth could be so profoundly unhappy, so we rely on incomplete answer that fit our worldview: it was drugs, it was alcohol, it was mental illness. The unspoken implication is that mental suffering not based on a lack of money isn’t really suffering at all.

But the real answer is harder to accept: that suffering, the thing that drives people to substance abuse and contributes to mental and emotional instability, is seldom linked only to our financial means.

We suffer in the absence of goals of substance and the hope that they provide. We thrive when we have goals that fulfill not just our need for comfort or stability, but for inspiration that sustains us. Comfort is the house, inspiration the home. When we mistake our desire for one for the other, we end up working to build the house while the home continually eludes us. This is the essence of The Money Trap.

“Go then, there are other worlds than these.” -Jake, The Gunslinger (novel)

At some point during my comfortable well-paid life, the question of meaning began to consume my attention. Why did I feel so unfulfilled despite my “success?” What could I strive for that would be meaningful even in the absence of money?

If I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I would be financially poor forever, what could I dedicate myself to that would make life worthwhile?

For me the answer was synonymous with the things I loved — stories and the inspiration they provide, people and community, and the understanding of how we can live better lives. For me I realized that engaging in the exploration of those things WAS the meaning of life. And so I began reshaping my life to that purpose.

Nowadays my work involves helping people use narratives as a catalyst for self understanding and inspiration, and building a supportive community around that goal.

What I do now may never make me the kind of money I once made, but everything about it is in alignment with what I want out of life, and what I want to see in the world. That makes the world tolerable in a way that the singular pursuit of money never did.

Money is not the enemy, and leaving a well paid job is not the only escape from The Money Trap. The escape is found in contending with the obvious falsehood of the story that we all unconsciously tell ourselves. The ridiculous and pervasive story that money will cure all of our ills and make us happy forever. That story is the enemy.

The only way to escape that story is to set your sights on what is truly important. Don’t aim at the means to the end, aim purposefully at the end itself.

In aiming properly you may discover a wealth of spirit you didn’t know was within you. In aiming properly you may find a richness in life that always evaded you.

In escaping The Money Trap you may find yourself in a place that feels very much like home.

— — —

Inspiration and healthy narratives are the enemy of The Money Trap. Surprisingly, the resonance we feel with fiction is one of the best ways of pointing us in the right direction. You can learn from your personal resonance with fiction using the technique outlined in this free guide to Smart Streaming.

The Ascent

A community of storytellers documenting the journey to happiness & fulfillment.

Khemit B.

Written by

Khemit B.

Entreprenuer, writer, and founder at TheCharacterArc.com

The Ascent

A community of storytellers documenting the journey to happiness & fulfillment.

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