Hold On Loosely

Insecurity:  Feeling more anxiety than seems warranted.


More musings on money . . . 


There's never enough money.  There's not enough money in the whole world.  When I get cranking on the topic of money I invariably find that I've been horribly screwed.  Someone else has my money or someone is trying to get whatever's left if they don't already have it.  The government gets too much and I'm not paid enough and everything is too expensive.


The Promise says this: "Fear of financial insecurity will leave us."  I may be paraphrasing that but you get the gist.  I don't feel like leaning over and picking up my Big Book, which is 18 inches away from me at this moment.  I'm afraid it might burn me like holy water burns the devil.


I have to concentrate on the "fear" part of that phrase.  That's the working part of the promise.  It definitely does not say "financial insecurity" will leave us; it says "fear" will leave us.  (Ed note:  SuperK got out her book and the phrase is actually "economic insecurity."  That doesn't sound right to me.  That doesn't sound right at all.  Maybe I need to read my Big Book more often.)  The point is that if I'm not right with my Higher Power then I can get worked up about anything.  I can be sitting on a big pile of swag and still freak out about not having enough money.  I could win the lottery and I'd bitch about the taxes.


I went to a fancy college-prep high school.  I was on a scholarship.  I think they wanted some kids from . . . well, not the wrong side of the tracks but closer to the wrong side than to the bucolic setting of this school, where tracks were forbidden by law.  There were students who didn't get cars on their 16th birthday, or even new cars; they got fancy new sports cars.  And the funny thing is these people were as worried and upset about money as the folks in my solidly middle class neighborhood were.


I know this to be true: the more I try to hold on to what I have the more power it has over me.  If I loosen my grip I relax a little.  I crushed the shit out of a lot of stuff.  All of us have to look at our own circumstances, of course.  The point is that when I'm selfish with my money or my time or my possessions, then I enjoy them less and less.  I learned that if you're not at peace with what you have then you'll never have enough.


I would like to try to manage some lottery winnings, though.  Definitely would give it a shot.