Money is an important factor in our life, and is often linked to our well-being and state of mind. There is no taking away from the value it gives as an enabler and protector, but one has to be careful of giving it the right perspective. We can either make it a goal in itself, or allow it to enter our life as an outcome of honest effort and right living. The way we look at it determines our relationship with money.
Money is like petrol in a car. Without petrol a car won’t run; similarly, without money we cannot sustain our businesses, professions, and our lives. However, we don’t drive the car for the petrol, we drive it to reach a destination. Similarly, when we have a purpose beyond profit, we drive the direction and application of wealth; money does not drive us.
Money gives us the affordability to get things we desire. However, we have to be careful that our desires don’t start defining our way of living. Nothing wrong with giving ourselves a better quality of life, but managing money with responsibility is key. Its true worth is the fact that it can help us raise our standard of life, not just our standard of living.
Money can either feed our sense of ego or our sense of gratitude. When we do well and start arrogating to ourselves that we did it, we often forget that there were many along the way who helped us and, in their own way, played a part. Of course we should feel good about our hard work and achievements, but with a sense of gratitude and responsibility. Money is not the only measure; the wealth of smiles we created along the way is what we will look back on and cherish.
Fire, when used well, can give us a warm home and a warm meal, and when misused, it can burn the barn. Money can ignite our ego and take us in a dangerous direction, or it can warm the lives of many, including ours. Money in itself is never the issue; the responsibility with which we manage it is key.
It is our duty to give our best and allow the most to enter our life. And when we realise that money comes for a purpose and is not the purpose itself, we live like an ocean. Just as the level of an ocean does not change if we add or take away from it, our inner level of abundance of love, care, and giving never changes. Money should enable us, but should never define us.
(Pic – Siracusa, Sicily)
Agree totally, but I feel there is one more dimension that continues from your perspective.
Money often gives us the illusion that it is entirely our own achievement, but in reality a large part of our ability to create wealth comes from the family we were born into, the values we inherited, the education we received, the opportunities society gave us, and the people who helped us along the way. We are therefore not just creators of wealth, but custodians of accumulated human and family capital.
Our responsibility is not merely to consume wealth, but to grow it responsibly and deploy it in a way that benefits our families, employees, society, and future generations. Wealth may change shape and increase in amount, but its true purpose is continuity, stability, and progress for all the stakeholders connected to it.
What we inherit should ideally be passed on brighter and stronger than we received it — like an eternal flame handed from one generation to the next. The comforts wealth provides are important, but they should ultimately create the freedom to live with greater balance, gratitude, detachment, and higher purpose.
Money is the fuel in the tank for life’s journey, but it is not the destination itself. Once survival and struggle are no longer consuming our minds, we gain the ability to focus on higher values, meaningful action, inner growth, and realizing our true self through the way we live and serve others.
After all, we come with nothing and leave with nothing. But just as we leave our children behind and teach them our values and ways of life, we should also leave them better off in every form of capital — human, environmental, spiritual, and financial — than what we ourselves inherited. If every generation does that responsibly, the world naturally becomes a better place and people become less attached to wealth itself.
Beautifully put Akhil