Money makes the world go around. Doesn’t it? In our society money can buy you a lot of things. Not only can you buy cars, homes, and nice toys, but it can buy other things that go unnoticed. Things which, quite frankly, money should have nothing to do with. Things like respect, power, and even love.

People love to live in lala land and pretend like this doesn’t happened. We like to believe that money isn’t so important, that a woman wouldn’t love a man his whole life just because he can bring in the dough, or vice versa. That people would still appreciate you and respect you, even if you were broke and homeless. Reality has a funny way of hitting such people and waking them up.

You see, for a long time my stance on money has been conflicted. I didn’t know if money was something that I should pursue, or if it was something I should just let go of. I didn’t know if it was something that was good, or something that was bad.

I solved this problem like I solve most problems. I decided I didn’t want the problem anymore, and so I kicked it out of my mind. Denial can be a wonderful mechanism when you know how to use it properly. But like I said above. Reality has a funny way of hitting people like myself and waking us up.

I’m not so sure now that completely ignoring money is the correct way to go about this. Instead, I need to find a healthier stance on money, as it’s obvious that I can’t just ignore money.

What Is Money To Me?

The root of my problem is not money. To me, money is just a currency of exchange. A nice universal borrowing system. Money has no intrinsic value. It is only valuable because people collectively agree that it’s valuable. There are many things like this, in fact, not just money. But money seems to be a particularly popular option for most people.

Some other options include sex and relationships. The body of a woman, or man, is seen to be valuable because of how sexy and attractive it is. Everyone tries to agree on what beauty is so they know what is valuable and what is not valuable.

This system of relationship value is linked to their self esteem. If a person thinks they are beautiful, they think they are valuable to someone of the opposite sex. If, on the other hand, they think they are not beautiful, then they believe that are not valuable or worthy of love and relationships.

What does money have to do with sex and love? They are both seen as things you get or acquire. Money is something that you have. You get money. Sex is also something that you have. You get laid. You get some. Love and relationships are the same way. You have a boyfriend or girlfriend. You have a husband or a wife. These are all things you get or acquire.

So really it is about gain. Wanting money is about wanting to gain something. Maybe it is respect or a nice social standing. Maybe it is love and sex. I don’t know. The real question is, what do I expect to gain from having money? Why is money an issue for me?

Well, there is the obvious one. There is the linking of money with life. If I have money, I have food, shelter, and whatnot. I have life, effectively, but money itself isn’t what gives me life. In fact, I can’t conclude with 100% probability where life actually arises from. It’s popularly believe that life is simply a biological phenomenon, but I don’t know for sure.

So one of the underlying fears of losing money, is actually a fear of losing life. On the flip side, to gain money is also seen as “gaining” life. Obviously, these are both ridiculous notions. There is no clear connection between life and money.

Closely related to the first one, and the real reason for my desire for money I think, is actually my desire for financial freedom. In this case, it isn’t the money that I want either. Instead, it is the freedom to use my time in the fashion that I wish. I actually want freedom from my job, is what I want. Or rather, I want to have a different job.

I think this is where the real problem lies. It lies in my struggle for freedom and the ability to spend my time in whatever manner I want to spend my time. Maybe this is what I should be focusing on instead.

But how do I achieve such a feat? Is it that I have a certain mental image in my head, which doesn’t correspond with my reality, and this is just ticking me off? For a long time I’ve had the dream of having financial freedom, but I don’t know exactly what this would entail. Certainly, I would get to stay home more often. But I don’t know if that’s what I really want. It’s just a happy image of financial freedom that I have created in my head.

Maybe, instead of dropping the notion of money and financial freedom, I should drop the mental image of what my “ideal” life of financial freedom should be like. What does it mean to have a dream anyway? To strive for a goal? In reality, this means that you don’t accepted your current life or some aspect of your reality. You want to trade it in for something better. What does this mean? It means you secretly hate things the way they are right now and you want something else. Something better.

I see now. This is the real mistake I have made. This is why I am unhappy. It isn’t that I want money, or financial freedom, or a nice house. It is that I have created this mental image of what my life would be like, if only I had all of this money. This has caused me to hate my current life, and become miserable as a result.

Every time that I have lost money, or have failed to achieve more financial gain, this mental image of a happy life has gone farther away from me. As a result, the image of my current life has become more and more unacceptable and depressing for me. This hatred of my life is what is actually causing the distress. This has nothing to do with money at all. I choose to drop this mental image, and accept and love my life the way it is.

And now back to my regularly scheduled blissful ignorance of money problems. So long as I continue making more money than I am spending, everything will continue to be grand. I’ll stay away from money, money will stay away from me, and we’ll all live happily ever after.

I just spent a week lying in bed with a fever of 105+ coughing and sneezing with a sore throat, runny nose, headache, dry skin, sore eyes, and a complete lack of energy. If someone would’ve came up next to me with a gun, I may have asked them to put me out of my misery. That’s how sick I was. But this wasn’t just a normal sickness. I must point out two things here.

First, I rarely ever get sick. And on the rare occasion that I do get sick, it never lasts longer than a couple of days. I don’t even remember the last time I’ve been sick for a week. In fact, I’m not sure if I’ve ever been sick for an entire week before. Sickness is just something I normally don’t have to deal with. Thus, the mere fact that I got sick for a week is utterly strange.

Second, this occurred right after I switched my diet to a low fat raw food diet. It’s impossible for me to not notice the correlation here. I change my diet and I get sick almost immediately.

The conclusion? Raw food will kill you. Yes, you heard that correctly. Raw food will kill you.

What I really mean by this is that the raw food diet is not for everyone. It’s pretty clear that the diet is not for me. It may not be for you either. Just because this diet has worked for other people, this doesn’t mean that the diet will work for you. You should think very carefully about whether or not this diet makes sense for you before you just dive in.

For me, I made a serious mistake in just jumping into this diet. After reading about all of the claimed benefits of the raw food diet, I just had to see it for myself. So I did, and the results were a horrible disaster.

I’m not saying that the raw food diet is bad, or wrong. It’s clearly been very healthy for some people to switch to the raw food diet. I’m just saying that you should really think about whether or not the diet makes sense for you personally.

In short, you have to do what works for you. If something works for someone else, this doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you. This post is a reminder to my future self that the fire-aim approach doesn’t work very well when you’re aiming at your foot.

For me, I learned my lesson. And it was a very painful one indeed. But now I’ve learned my lesson, and I have some simple wisdom to share with you.

Don’t eat the bananas.