Money and Kin

I sit here in the early hours of night and wonder what is it that I've gotten myself into. There is something that some humans value more than anything else. Something that others say is important but not as important as their God. Something that others kill for.

Money. It's one of those things confuses me. I'm not afraid of it. I don't necessarily like what it does to people I know and love. Yes, I realize money is an inanimate object and therefore can't make thinking beings do anything. But it's possession has caused untold horror and suffering.
When it comes to money, yes I'm probably over my head. But honestly, I just don't understand it's importance and necessity.

Humans, and those who are not but forced to live in this world anyway, work all of the time, usually at jobs they can't stand for things they can't take with them. People work 52 weeks a year in a hope to get 1 or 2 weeks free to spend on vacation, usually fixing their house or staying home because they can't afford to go anywhere. SOme uninformed beings compete with each other in trying to work the most hours in a single week for companies that will not remember them a week after they leave (involuntary or voluntary). WHy? Progress? Why is less time to spend with people you love and care about progress? If you are too tired to spend time with your family, read a book, or even pursue a hobby, then what good is it?

Advertising companies tell us, it's what we need. Everyone has it, and to be happy we must have what everyone else has. Are we so stupid as to believe a bunch of people sitting in some distance office caring only about their bank accounts? The best times I've had are spent camping with close friends and family in the woods with a communal fire, where stories and laughter are ever present. And music from those that can actually play.

I know that to survive in this world and to give my daughter the best chances, I need to learn how to deal with money and manage it. I don't. I admit that. I just really don't see its necessity. It's seems like a stupid way to live your life -- always at some else's beck-and-call. If you need money, want money (healthy attitude and knowing how to use it or not) you still are still at the beck and call of bosses, the increase and decrease of your finances are still at the beck call of comanies, banks, and shareholders, who mostly only care about their own bank accounts.

We call cultures/peoples without a money system primitive. But are they? Does it have to be a hand to mouth exsistance? Is it so horrible?

We live in a place that is saying it's okay, and preferable to live on credit. To live beyond your means. It's in the culture -- most of them seem to be going that way. America is there, most of the industrialized countries are either on their way or they're there too. Our Great-grandparents, shoot, most of our grandparents would cringe that we live on credit, and that it's okay.

But even if you live with your means, have a healthy attitude towards money, and can manage it. Having it and retaining is still at the whim of others.

Money is something I don't understand its necessity, its place, its anything. But for my daughter's sake, I'd like to learn enough about it to teach her the right way and how not to let money control her or not to let it be more important than her family or her friends.

LIfe isn't about who gets there first or with the most, Life is about the journey. Its about what we leave behind. I'd rather have a simple life, but full of love and trusted friends and family than opulance surrounded by shallow people who only want to be seen with the 'right' people, that are near you because you have 'it'.

No, I don't envy those who have more money than I do. Nor do I consider myself naive. I simply don't get it.