The Things We Do

Why do we do the things that we do? What makes us decide to spend our days on specific tasks instead of others? There are millions of different reasons, I'm sure, but the results are often not what we would expect. It seems like a lot of the things we do, if not almost all of them, revolve around money. Some of us spend our lives trying to make vasts amounts of this thing, this idea, that we call money. Some of us only try to make enough to get by. There are people on every point of this spectrum, but this is not the only thing that guides us. The other main guiding force seems to be happiness. We spend a great majority of our time trying to find a balance between doing what makes us happy and doing what makes money. Some are fortunate enough to get both from the same pusuit. That is the american dream. Some people give up the things that make them happy in order to make more money, and some people give up the money in order to be happier. These are two very different kinds of wealth with two very different kinds of value.

I can spend a day working out all of the numbers, plans, and programs required to build tens of thousands of dollars worth of stone countertops and then later that day spend less than five minutes making a Breve, or a Cappuccino, worth dramatically less and find some very interesting results. One is worth more money, but the other makes me happier. One might last a lifetime while the other might last half an hour, but their values are not necessarily based on time or money. Value seems to be quite unrelated to time and money. Time and money are costs, but value is a more ethereal reward. We value the things that make us happy. We worry about the things that cost us time and money. I have a friend, he writes the blog titled The Whyte Dragon, who just wrote a post very closely related to this idea. In it he talked about why he does the things he does, makes the choices he makes, based on what makes him happy. These ideas are closely related to the ideas contained within Atlas Shrugged by the late, great, Ayn Rand. I highly recomend the book to anyone who hasn't read it.

Our culture, however, seems to revolve more around the money aspect than the happiness aspect. Advertisers have spent vast amounts of money trying to convince us that they are the same thing. Spend your money on this and it will make you happy. They want us to believe that the acquisition of money, and then the spending of it on things, is how we should base our level of happiness. But things don't make us happy. They never have. Think about the things that you buy, aside from the necessities, and try to find even one that, just through the ownership of the thing, makes you happy. We can find happiness in the use of things or in the creation of things, but it is difficult to attribut happiness in just the having of the thing. It is why we get tired of the things we buy. It is why we are always replacing these things with newer and better versions. It is why our economy works the way that it does.

We buy because we think that we should, because everyone else does, and becuase we have gotten into the habit of doing it. We do not save because, as a whole, having the money doesn't make us happy but we think that trading it for goods or services will. But it is not this end result that brings with it the real reward. How different would the world be if, instead of working at a thing in order to make enough money to buy happiness, we found a pursuit that helps in some way but also makes us happy in the process? What if that pursuit could provide us with enough money to live comfortably? I think this is the true meaning behind "I do what I want." Having as many things as the neighbors means very little in the end if you acquired them by doing a thing that you hate to do. In the end, every "thing" ends up in a garage sale or the city dump. There are few exceptions.

Humanity as a whole spends a lot of time complaining about how the leaders of the world are doing a horrible job and how, in the next election, we'll vote someone in who will actually do what we want them to. We are told and assume that the vote is the power. The true power is in the money. We give the money to the businesses to pay for the politicians campaign. We are getting what we paid for. Lobbyists get their money from businesses. Tax money comes from us and from businesses. We have th power. We create the money. We say one the with our votes and quite different things with our money. Money is a means. It cannot buy happiness, but it can help us to change our way of life. With every dollar we spend, we are voting for what we really believe in. The idea is to find out, and to know, what exactly we are paying for. Want to decrease our dependence on oil? Don't buy an SUV. Buy a car that gets the highest possible gas mileage, or ride the bus, or ride a bike. Want big business to stop exporting jobs? Buy locally grown/made products. Want to discourage the big businesses from using sweat shop labor in foreign countries in order to produce their goods? Don't buy things just because they are cheapest.

Phrases like "Quality, not Quantity" and "Made in the USA" used to mean a lot more. You can hear this said almost anywhere. It's not big business that screwed up. It was us. It's doing our shopping at places like Wal-Mart and Target. We all know that politicians and businesses respond best, and most quickly, to money. Take away profits and they'll listen. Take away funding and they'll do an about face. We are more powerful than any government, but we have to hit them where it hurts. We have to get a grip on the thing that is sensative and squeeze until their eyes and ears open. We have to do it as a whole, or at least a majority. We have to take away their toys.

Talk is cheap. Money isn't.