The Colors of Money: More Physical
People learn best from stories, both from living them and from the telling.
My first car was a bare bones Datsun, and when I married we had a Toyota Corona. Those two cars provided me as much enjoyment as any form of transportation I have experienced since, probably because my only criteria for an auto at that time was to get me where I wanted to go as cheaply and efficiently as possible. Over the years we progressed through Volvos to a succession of Mercedes. I chose the Mercedes because, late one evening on a trip to southern Indiana to visit my mother, I was pushing the speed limit, going over eighty mph, when the transmission seals on our Volvo wagon overheated. We lost our transmission fluid and came to a halt.
My wife and I, carrying our infant son, tramped along a desolate cornfield-walled stretch of Highway 63 in Vermillion County Indiana towards what resembled Tony Perkins’ Victorian house on the hill in Psycho. Barking farm dogs heralded our approach. At that moment I vowed, if we survived the night, I would purchase the safest motorcar available. Mercedes Benz was the clear choice.
Although I told myself I was upgrading solely for altruistic reasons, providing safety for my family, I soon found that not only did I enjoy the silky smooth suspension, the ultra-quiet ride, and the cat-like quick response, but also the turn of heads and respectful looks I garnered as I tooled down the road. I secretly relished this silent homage and quiet envy because, in those days, Benz owners were not as prevalent as today. Eventually, I grew uncomfortable with the image others projected on me because I owned this particular car.
Someone’s car often defines his or her status and wealth. They are a good symbol for how we perceive physical wealth. Physical money dominates much of our awareness because it appears so dominant in our daily lives. We work, earn, borrow and buy. It is a cycle we know well. Physical money dominates our attention.
The size of something is often confused with its depth. In an evolutionary context every succeeding level transcends, or goes beyond but includes, all previous levels. Evolution creates greater depth and less span. There are more electrons than atoms, more atoms, than molecules, more molecules than cells, and so on throughout the universe. Although it may appear that bigger is better, the truth is that less is more, from a developmental standpoint. One human being is more, has greater depth, than the sum of all of her component parts, which have much greater span.
So while money on the physical spans the greatest part of most peoples focus and attention it can not reach to deeper levels of importance that play such an important part in how people feel and think. In the end it is not what we have that brings us meaning and satisfaction, but the meaning we derive from the having.
After all we are human beings, not human havings.