the inanimate object that can ruin you when absent, and ruin you when abundant
weed? LoL... no... love? maybe... to some people. money? maybe... to me."Wealth is power", "money makes the world go round", "money is the root of all evil". whcih one is true? i find that all are. possibly because i always find that one cannot exist without the other, that is, that good cannot exist without bad and so on. but also because money is something that everyone can't live without and can't live with.
as a child i believed that money was what made problems in my life and in the lives of people i love. so for a long time i despised the use of money as motivation. money as reward. money as a gateway to happiness. my ideals revolved around those ideas of living life not to make money but to make memories and to be happy. to do what one feels makes them alive. maybe some people find this in making money. but for me, before, money was merely a pleasant bi-product of doing something i enjoy. literature was to be my motivation. to teach people who had a thirst for knowledge beyond the obvious rules of life. the people who's eyes would glimmer and darken when given possibilities of what an author meant when writing a piece of text. when i first started doing literature, i was naive, ignorant shallow and materialistic. i am at least less of that after a few years of studying the subject. still unbelievably ignorant. still naive about certain things, definitely still shallow, but at least less. when i began studying a book beyond it's cover, beyond its pages, beyond its words and even beyond the authors' intended themes, i felt as if my mind had regions never recently known to exist. like there was some sort of electric impulse brave enough to venture further into the convolutions of my grey matter. and so my mind grew.
perhaps killing the natives of this new world such as ideologies of love and life. of death of religion. of humanity. replacing it with the realities of heartbreak, of passively existing, of existentialism, of secularization. of the uncertainty of what humanity is. it may be morbid, but like almost every attempt at wiping out a race, some survive. and those which did mixed or converted or stood strong. and so i have the contraversial views in my head. constantly debating within my mind of what i, the owner, should believe and follow.
this new found state of mind, call it chaos, call in indecisiveness, call it open-mindedness, these new discovered regions of my brain ached for more. and ached to show to others that there is more out there. more than following each other like a massive group of lemmings as they run aimlessly through the forest and off a cliff to their inevitable death and doom. more... there is more.
almost instantly i knew that that would be my goal in life. to teach people about the world through the eyes of a writer that may have completely contrasting views and lifestyles from us, and yet can produce a beautiful piece of literary text. in a few lines, in a few stanzas, in a small play, in a 500 page novel. oh the passion i felt as i day-dreamed constantly of what i could do one day.
the money in teaching? when i could be a doctor? or someone in the medical field? someone who could earn enough in a year to buy a house? hah! money... i would think to myself. money hasn't much to do with this. money is merely the least of what i will gain from doing what i love. besides, money is what destroys people. and so i worked hard to fulfill this goal.. of course, i was only 16... and i'm only a few years older than that now.
and yet, with only a few years between my first encounter with 'living', the 'supreme' society that has cultured in my mind now begins to manifest its corrupt ways. slightly more close to achieving my goals, i find myself re-evaluating my motives. and i was disgusted at myself for getting excited at the prospect of earning enough money for other plans of my future. more excited than what i was doing to earn this money.
where have my values gone? my genuine motives for education and knowledge? had they died?evolved maybe? lost their way?or have they been overpowered?
money is power. money has taken over my dreams and turned them into an economic plan.
and here i sit neglecting the beautiful pieces of literary texts that i had once loved, and instead i am crouched at my desk staring at a piece of paper with numbers and figures, thinking of the possible methods and ways of getting the most profit from doing my 'job'.
ahh but what is this ranting about? a mere sign that i am still very naive, if not even more so. inexperienced, innocent, very much ignorant. perhaps today i rant about money as i ranted about love. and tomorrow i might completely lose sight of what i'm doing. but at least i hope that if one day i am blinded by the materials of society and life. if objectives in life become merely to do and get. that i hope that at least i won't forget that there are people who are looking up to me, depending on me, and hoping the best for and from me. and for myself, i hope that happiness is something i can always find in the intangible.
posted by Yani Malai @ 3:50 AM
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