April 29, 2008

• WCFQ 2a: Who measures one’s worth?

  Writer’s Choice Featured Question #2

  A. Would you rather be rich or poor? Why?
  neogirl_426

  So as the least popular question this week… guess I’ll answer this one…

  I don’t think I’d like to be poor, but I don’t know that I’d like to be rich. My family has always been “lower middle” class. It amazes me that we’ve managed to last as long as we have. People have it worse than us, and some have it better… but that we have managed to keep a roof over our heads and have vehicles to drive, etc… all the things that people are expected to have, yeah we have that. I even have a computer, though I bought it on credit. Supposedly I have very good credit…. mostly because I try not to spend too much beyond my means. So I have a car loan, a credit card that I rarely use, and a three year old computer that I just paid off in January. We’re actually doing pretty well. I wouldn’t mind doing better, but I am satisfied that we’re ‘doing alright.’
  

  When I was still a kid… my stepfather embezzled money from the cleaning company that he and my mother started and ran off to Florida with another man to begin his drug induced suicide. We lost the house. My mother still owes the government, but unless we win the lottery, I doubt we’ll ever even begin to pay it off with the interest that has since accumulated. We lived in several different places until my mom managed to get back on her feet. We were still struggling somewhat when I quit school. My mother’s one stipulation was that if I quit school, I get a job and begin paying rent.
  

  I sometimes envy those kids who have never had to pay rent to their parents. It must be nice to receive a car for a birthday present or have your education paid for by mom and dad. I’ve met people like that, so I know they exist. And you know, not a single one of them knows the value of money… they don’t know what it is to work for a living, to earn an honest wage… Not to lump all such people together, but every one I’ve met has been a whiny, lazy excuse for a human being. They wouldn’t know hard work if it tattooed slacker on their foreheads. These are the people who are always late or call in sick to work. And when they are at work, they lean on the counters or do anything but what they’re supposed to be doing. They are easily bored and never self-motivated and go right back to leaning on the counter once they finish whatever task they are given. They’ve been given everything in life but a reason to live.
  

  So if that is what being rich means, well, yeah, I’d rather be poor. Because so far as I’m concerned, being poor isn’t the worst thing I could be. Least I like myself. At least I don’t need someone else to help me out of my self-induced boredom by giving me something to do. People who say they are bored simply haven’t tried to find anything to do. What they mean is that they are not motivated to do anything worth doing. I am rich in intelligence and (my own idea of) virtue. I am my own person, whereas these supposedly “rich” kids are owned by the money that rules their lives. I may not have accomplished much as measured by our society, but at least I know who I am and what I want from life. I’m not one of those spoiled rich kids who have to be told what to want by their parents or the media.
  

  I may constantly be thinking of how to get more money to do the things I want to do (as opposed to the things I need to do), but at least I’m thinking. I don’t imagine I would ever like to be rich. Would I like more money? Yes, please. I could use a bit more, but not the amount that would qualify me as rich. I want “just enough” to get by. “Just enough” money is just enough for me. I’ve had less and survived, but I’ve seen how More affects some people and I don’t want to be like them. I want to be a real person, not a whiny, lazy parody of a person.
  

  If I ever won the lottery, I’d give at least half away to charity. If I ever became president (fat chance), I’d donate half of my earnings to charity. $400,000 a year? That’s twenty times what I make now (if I round up generously), and I’m not starving… I have a roof over my head. I have a car and a computer. I have enough to indulge my one real vice…. books. What does the president need $400,000 a year for? If I made just $5-10,000 more than I do now, I could probably afford to move out on my own and live comfortably.

  So if it came down to a choice between being “rich” and being “poor,” I think I’d rather be poor. Rich people don’t seem so rich to me. They don’t seem happy, no matter how the media depicts them. They seem rather at a loss as to what exactly they should do with all that money. They don’t seem to really belong to our species, for all that they’re put on a pedestal and used as an example of what everyone should strive to be. Rich people seem rather poor in the things that matter to me.
  

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  April 29th

  
  This is the second day of Floralia.

  
  

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  On Pagan Tree Day, plant a tree dedicated to your favorite god/dess.
  
  
  

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  • 7:23 pm
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