Money has value because we assign it to it. Without us saying “money is worth this or that”, there won’t be anything to it, right? I was thinking about what money is and I realized that it might just be just a physical quantifiable measurement of time. Years don’t count, because you can’t see years, right? So time is money – we heard this over and over before. It was coined in a business related environment and it’s true. However, we cannot separate business from normal life any more so, in a way, money is the method through which we can see who’s life time is worth more.
How on earth I got to this idea? Well… Think about it for a bit. What was money initially meant for? To facilitate trades, right? When money didn’t exist, we would give something we had (like a chicken, for instance) for something we didn’t have (let’s say a bag of potatoes and some cheese). We gave more of what we had plenty of, for something we didn’t have at all. Because we wanted it. We needed it. And we decided together with the people receiving the things we offered, if they are worth the things we were requesting. And it was a back and forth negotiation until we settled on the “price”. This was taking a long time probably and to speed things up, we assigned value to each item we had; a value in a common currency: money. Thus, money became the (root of all evil! muhahah. nah, I’m just kiddin’) measurement.
Some people traded more, or had better negotiation skills, or whatever they did or didn’t do, but they ended up with a lot of money. Now here’s the interesting part. Having a lot of money means literally nothing else than having free time to do other things apart from fetching and preparing food and cleaning the crib. Correct? Nothing more and nothing less. Money gives time to us, not value. Money is needed by everyone to easily change it for what they need and want (be it food, clothes, house, heating etc.) . So what money does, is basically frees up our lives from doing basic necessities every single day, so we can grow! So we can find what brings value out of us and into the world and excel at it!
Think about back in the days of the nobles and peasants. If the peasants wouldn’t have shared what they had worked for (firewood, berries, wheat, you name it), the rich people would have died in their damp cellars kissing their gold coins. (I do know that things were mostly taken from the peasants, but that’s not the point here). What the rich people had was more time. More time to do things like… writing books, reading them, get better at playing instruments, even improving their shape and sounds. Basically, improving on every level and doing every single thing that didn’t imply working with your hands out on a field to make food and clothes. Right?
Some don’t know what to do with the time they gain. They get bored and waste it on silly things. But that’s a topic for another time.
Everyone wants comfort. Some people don’t think they should work physically for it. And that’s alright, too! As long as they provide the people who do it with things that the latter wants. I guess this is how entertainment has begun.
Times have not changed, though. The rich live off the time of the poor. Time which is translated into money. Does this mean that the rich people’s time is worth than the poor people’s time? Does it? No. All lives are worth the same, right? Morally, at least. Reality proves us differently.
I am 33, but sometimes I feel older or maybe life has just sped up more than I would feel comfortable. Why do I say this? Because I find it fascinating, unbelievable and utterly shocking at the same time, that people who literally don’t do anything apart from showing their lives to the world have become rich because of the internet. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t say this out of spite because I don’t care how people live their lives. I care about my life, how I live it and what I expose myself to, but we are living in times where you can’t help seeing what’s going on around us. I am still extremely shocked how things work these days. There’s no added value for you if you look at how other people live. How about you start living, instead? When you don’t know what to do, it’s okay to ask for guidance, but on a daily basis, you should live your own life! Not dream about living other people’s lives.
Just two questions I have for you to ruminate on:
1. what if, what if!, everyone stopped using social media for a week? Not the internet altogether, no. Just social media. For one week. And instead of having their attention in their phones and on other people’s lives, they shift it to out of the phones and into their own lives? How much would everyone grow? How much would everyone experience through living in the physical world, where we actually live?!
2. what if, what if!, the “influencers” would suddenly stopped making money off the viewers ? Would they able to do anything to support themselves in order to have food on their tables? Would they be able to bring any kind of value out of themselves and into the world? I want to see value!
Viewers make influencers what they are. Influencers hold this status only because people lifted them to up there, just like it has been in the past: the rich had privileges because the poor gave them those privileges. Besides, the poor (mercenaries included here) didn’t come together to bring the rich people off their pedestals. I wonder when will people see that they give out time of their lives to strangers and then they ask themselves why hadn’t they been living?
Think! Seek value everywhere around you and see how that changes you!
Everything has been written before. 
Leave a Reply