All right you have had a week of trying to be more fully aware of how much money your time is worth and how much time money is worth. How did it go were you able to keep to the meditation of associating the price you pay for some thing with the amount of time it takes you to earn that money?
Last week I presented a hypothetical situation to you of finding money worth different values. It is interesting how something like money causes us to disconnect from ourselves in such slippery ways. All of us more than likely have certain points at which we may find our behavior boundaries shifting depending upon the behavior and also depending upon the amount of the money.
It is easy to sit in judgment on people who commit a money related crime, a crime such as embezzlement or robbery. But if you are like most people when presented with money that is laying on the street apparently lost there are certain denominations of money you will not walk by and leave laying where you found it. Our relationship with money is something most people do not even think much about.
When you purchased goods and services this past week did you begin to notice some things that perhaps you had any second thoughts about? Were there any products you began to think not worth the amount of time it took you to earn the money you were expected to spend?
Different reactions will occur to different people based upon several factors. One such factor is how hard you physically or even mentally have to work. The less energy you expend doing you job, or thought of another way, the less you have to sacrifice doing your work, the less money will mean to you. Another factor will be whether or not you have enough money to do the things you want to do, or how rare money is in your current situation.
Depending upon those two factors and possibly others a twenty-dollar bill will be worth different things or different values to different people. Have you ever considered thinking about money in this way? Chances are you have not, and you would not be alone. This is another problem with these funny pieces of paper we have assigned a numeric value to. The numbers don’t mean the same thing to all people, and yet the system the number serves expects them all twenties to be equal.
I can assure you the single parent working a minimum wage job has a different appreciation for a twenty than the person making a six-figure income. I am also reasonably certain a twenty means something different to a person who lifts heavy objects and sweats all day than to a person who sits at a desk all day; even if neither likes their job.
Many of us have forgotten these things or perhaps we were never aware of them in the first place. And our awareness has further changed with the use of a plastic card that represents, well what does it represent? That piece of plastic can be almost anything really, it can represent cash we have or cash we don’t have. It can be a twenty or it can be a thousand dollars. But what it fundamentally represents is our effort, and our time.
Money also represents the effort and time of the product we wish to consume. But that is hard for us to relate to. It was a tad bit easier when people went to a cobbler to buy shoes because we saw that person actually fit us for the proper size, make the shoe for us, and was easily identified with the product we used. Now when you buy a pair of shoes, who made it for you? Actually no one made it for you. You weren’t even in the mind of the person who made that shoe any more than you are buying that shoe from any one person.
Someone in a factory sat at a machine and turned out hundreds of identically looking shoes which were boxed up and distributed to hundreds of stores. Sorry to say but you were just a statistic some manufacturer counted on to buy a product. No one in the entire manufacturing process actually cared about you at all. The clerk in the store may have cared some about you, but the relationship between you and your time and effort, and the product and the maker/makers of the shoe have all been replaced by symbols.
Please do not think I am advocating doing away with the system or advocating an overthrow of our financial arrangements in as a society. Even if I were it isn’t likely to happen. But we are able to change our relationship with and perspective of money. It begins with being more self aware and as Buddhists that is at the heart of all of our practice.
The practice of thinking about purchases not in terms of dollars but in terms of hours is something I have done for years. Sometimes I would do it very intensely and at other times I would do it only occasionally, say with items over a certain dollar amount. The effect for me was that I began to not buy some things thinking that I worked too hard and that product wasn’t worth my effort and time. I also began to consider money in a different way. I no longer thought of it as a twenty-dollar bill but as two or three hours of hard physical and mental labor, especially when my job was physically demanding. That one, two, or three hours of work was also affected by how much I either liked or did not like the work I was expected to do.
Before we can begin to really talk about money and the Dharma we really need to change our relationship with and understanding of money. I really hope you have adopted the practices I have suggested so far, and if not I hope you will begin to try to apply them from today.
Perhaps it might be useful to review the exercises. Briefly again, the first is to silently sit and meditate on paper money. Really closely examining what it looks like what emotions or feelings arise in you, what changes inside you if you think about losing that piece of paper? Also become aware of how much your time is being compensated per hour, what it takes for you to earn various amount of money; how long does it take for you to earn twenty dollars? Finally as you go through your day and you make purchases shift you thinking from how much a thing costs in dollars to how much a thing costs you in time and effort?
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Now it’s your turn. Please feel free to add your thoughts.
