(IJCH) - In Response to @steembusiness - Personal Freedom and Wealth

IJCH - Inside JaiChai's Head (meaning: My warped, personal opinions and musings)

From the Author

Salutations

I am JaiChai.

And if I haven't had the pleasure to make your acquaintance, it's very nice to meet another fellow Steemian.

I just read an awesome post by @steembusiness:

https://steemit.com/life/@steembusiness/breaking-free-my-plans-dreams-hopes-and-aspirations-vol-2

Then I posted this comment/reply:

@steembusiness,

Very insightful post.

It shows a great level of maturity.

The ability to step back and be both a participant AND an observer in one's life takes quite a few years of living, introspection and retrospection.

Sadly, for many, this personal wisdom is never discovered.

I truly hope you can find a new passion (or rediscover an old one) - some activity similar to what you did as a child for hours because it was so fun, something that get's you so excited that you lose all track of time, something you would do for free - BUT can also ethically make a living at it now.

Notice I did not say get rich.

That does not equate to happiness. Having a lot of money does not mean you will be happy. How many unhappy rich people do you know of?

But, here's another question that hints towards an illusive notion, a seemingly paradoxical phenomena:

Have you noticed how much easier it is to save money when you're happy?

Conversely, don't we all become spendthrifts - irrational about what we buy - when we desperately want to simply escape, forget about our troubles and "make those bad things go away"?

Which leads me to the concept of "wealth".

The Concept of Wealth

It's not how much you earn that makes you wealthy, but how much you can save.

Now, I am not advocating life as a penny-pincher; or life as a hermit.

We have all heard of the sad stories of lonely old people whom everyone believed to be poor while these elderly persons were alive - eating cat food and living in a dump.

Then upon their death, authorities and relatives find thousands of dollars stuffed into their mattresses and hidden under their ratty, soon-to-be-fossilized furniture.

These types have a serious money neurosis; a deep-seated, maladaptive relationship with money.

And the causes of this are too many to discuss in this comment/reply (e.g., early life trauma like war or a macroeconomic catastrophe, abusive parents that equated money with love, sudden poverty from affluence, affluence from generational poverty, etc.).

These miserable people will hoard money; even though they have plenty. They fear it. They fear to spend it; even to the detriment of their own health and mental well-being. They embody the "scarcity mentality".

I hope you find your balance - a balance that inevitably will lead to the freedom you seek, my friend.

And please ponder this:

"Most people focus on getting rich rather than becoming wealthy." Dr. R. Buckminster Fuller - a world-renowned architect, futurist, inventor and visionary.

Buckminster measured wealth in time.

He defines wealth as: A person's ability to survive X number of days forward.

What does this mean?

It is simple.

You can either make more money or spend less - Live within your means, or get more "means".

And I suspect that you're like most of us who've traveled your path:

"You will find that when you are doing what makes you truly happy, time will fly, wealth increases; while the cost of living magically decreases." - JaiChai

Imagine that?

Namaste (my preferred definition: "I recognize the divine in you, my friend"),

JaiChai

(End of comment/reply)

By JaiChai

Many thanks for reading my post. And if you enjoyed it, please: Upvote, Follow, Comment and Resteem.

- JaiChai "My mind was a terrible thing to waste..."

About the Author

He is a retired U.S. Military veteran. Believing that school was too boring, he dropped out of High School early; only to earn an AA, BS and MBA in less than 4 years much later in life – while working full-time as a Navy/Marine Corps Medic. In spite of a fear of heights and deep water, he freefall parachuted out of airplanes and performed diving ops in very deep, open ocean water.

He spends his days on an island paradise with his teenage daughter, longtime girlfriend and three dogs.