A perfect game of bowling is 300. That’s it. You can’t get better than perfect.
Perfect is overrated.
What we want is meaning in the process.
Getting it that feeling perfect will leave you underwhelmed.
Getting it mostly perfect will leave us seeking for better.
We can be given values and try to derive meaning. But in the end, it is fruitless.
We can also set our own terms. Define our own values. Set the compass in the direction where we want to go.
When writing our story, we can’t help but define the struggle. And meaning follows.
When we give money as payment, the transaction is over. Perfectly balanced. This is for that.
However, when we give a gift, there is a tip on the scale. You now owe something to that person. Of course, when this gift is given generously, we understand that the debt doesn’t matter. What matters is that interaction brings us closer together.
Thomas Hawke is on a quest to publish one million photos in his lifetime. Let’s say it will take him 40 years. That is 14,610 days. Which means he would have to produce 70 photos per day to reach that goal. If he misses a day, that means 140. That is a high commitment. It also means that Hawke understands that the stack of photos that will move his audience is small, and the throwaway pile will be significant. But you can’t get to the work that changes us without having a stack of okay photos.
Dignity flows wherever agency is present. When we use an agency to contribute, we can’t help but feel a sense of purpose. We can make sense of the suffering. We have something we can point to that we can be proud of. Happiness also comes when we share it. The first thing you do when you make a great meal is to call someone over to taste it. The same is true for art, nonprofits, and small business owners solving real problems—it’s creating connections. When one human can look another human in the eyes and see the shared experience of being alive.
When we settled for a 40-hour work week, it certainly was better than a 72-hour one. But why stop at 40-hours? Because industrialists and capitalists created laws that said so. As a result, we settled that this is the way things are. So, we settle again when healthcare isn’t a fundamental human right because, hey, that’s just the way things are. We settled with a two-party system because it seemed too big to change the political system when the one we got carried us here. The goalpost keeps moving, and we watch as humanity corrodes. It is easy to settle when you have already done it once. The same is true about corruption. When you do it once, you feel like you can get away with it again.
Convenience is a new problem in human history. For most of human history, convenience wasn’t an issue. To make bread, you had to bake it. You had to pull the grain, grind it, and prep it to bake. It lasted for a couple days, and you needed to do it again. Now, you can buy a loaf of bread and store it for weeks. The industrialists saw this and created whole industries around the power of convince. Now, convenience has turned to one-click shopping at cost. We are addicted to convenience and it simultaneously kills our only planet.
We get to choose what it is we want to focus on. Which story to tell about ourselves and the world around us? One full of abundance, possibility, growth, and abundance or one that is scarcity, fixed mindset, and limitations. In the end, we get what we hope for. Each of us in all of this is searching for meaning in our lives. We can’t fill it with materials. No matter how hard we try, it won’t fill our cups. Sure, we can distract ourselves, but in our hearts, we know better. No one wants to feel like a rat on the constantly spinning wheel or someone who keeps pulling the lever at a slot machine.
This story of money has fundamentally changed the interactions we have now and the language we use. We have become so transactional in the way we operate. Author Lewis Hyde has pointed out in The Gift that communities were built on gift-giving for thousands of years. When we gave our neighbor a gift, there was an imbalance; as a result, these interactions brought the community closer together. Since money wasn’t around, you needed to pay back your neighbor somehow. Money, on the other hand, drives us apart. Money transfers value away from communities to the central bank. When we pay for something, we are done. No one owes anyone anything. There is a price for a good or service; you spend it, and the deal is done. There is no need to check back in afterward.
I am unsure if Albert Einstein said this, but famously, he is attributed to have said that compound interest was the world’s eighth wonder. “He who understands it earns it; he who doesn’t pays it.” Translated, debt grows, and savings grow slower. A simple example is if someone who views money as a tool may figure out how to save a few bucks each week and put it into the market, where it compounds until one day you have a healthy retirement account after 40 years. However, someone who tells themselves a story of money as this burden may buy themselves a 500-dollar television on a credit card will see the interest compound at 20+ percent rates, and the debt grows out of control.
Yes, money is a story. But it isn’t that simple either. It would be unjust to say it is the only thing that drives us into wealth or poverty. Economist Raj Chetty’s work has shown that we can accurately predict someone’s chances of economic mobility based on their zip code. Race, incarceration, discrimination, education opportunities, social engagement, family dynamics, short-term assistance, and even landlords play a part in upward economic mobility. It’s a map that is already drawn for all of us now. It feels like determinism based on circumstances of when, where, and whom you were born to. The culture says it is the individual players’ fault if you are not rich.
Attribution theory is the idea that when we are successful, we point to internal forces that got us there. We are likely to give ourselves credit for making the right moves. When we fail, we are more likely to blame external forces. “The dog ate my homework.” That’s because our narrative works overtime to protect us from ourselves. We don’t want to be wrong, we don’t want to be blamed, we don’t want to be judged, we don’t want to be seen or exposed.
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