Reflections on money and the needs it meets: I bought a Lamborghini

Last week I turned 30 and as a present, I bought myself this Lamborghini. I posted a picture about it on my social channels this last week and the hundreds and hundreds of reactions to it got me thinking.

There were more reactions to this picture than anything I’d ever posted before. They went into all different kinds of emotional directions, 95% sharing in with my excitement and celebrations, including many comments about my shoes. And some reactions that I interpreted as more irritated, hurt, or envious.

The exposure of wealth seems to often trigger something to a lot of us, no matter our personal circumstances. It brings out vulnerable, forgotten, dreamy, and sometimes irritated and hurt fragments in us that are touched and want to come out.

I began pondering about my own relationship to money like I have done so a few times before in articles.

The more time I spent pondering and researching my own inner questions that I have about money, the less scary the topic has become.

How an over-emphasis on money stopped me from paying attention to other needs in the past

I started wondering about a list that helps me see which human needs money is good for in meeting or can contribute to meeting very significantly:

• shelter
• food
• fun
• contribution/support
• security (some)

I was surprised that the list was actually this short.

Then I wondered about human needs that although money can play a role in, are often further removed from that:

• authenticity
• belonging
• integrity
• creativity
• self-expression
• hope
• understanding
• to matter
• warmth
• trust
• to know and be known
• acceptance
• affection
• empathy
• love
• intimacy
• awareness

I smiled at that.

In the early years of my twenties, there was a strong focus on the generation of money, contributing to other people’s lives through software and achievement. And I got relatively good at it, amassing so much that today I don’t have to think about certain needs like food, shelter or transportation anymore and whether I can afford something.

But in the later years of my twenties, I had to come to terms with the fact that this focus on contributing to other people’s success, wealth, and achievement, although meeting and contributing to some of my needs, wasn’t a complete answer or an end of the road. Living alongside Buddhist monks and nuns for quite some time, I witnessed firsthand how different life can be when the role of money and achieving, although not absent, is much more de-emphasized. While I had focused on generating money, they intended to generate other forms of energy, like love, affection, empathy, warmth, trust, and so forth. And as I joined them on also generating those human qualities, I felt myself balancing out a lot more.

My subsequent emotional and spiritual journey has opened me up to a vast array of other resources that aren’t money based, which made meeting those needs much more productive.

I continue to believe that money plays an important role in my life and in the lives of the people that I meet. But the over-emphasis on it has vastly decreased for me and the generation of money has made room for the generation of other resources that I find fulfilling. I still enjoy making money, who doesn’t like it, even when it’s someone’s grandmother handing you a large bill for your birthday? Out of the people I know, that feels good to everyone. And I love that I can get myself a fun and expensive toy every so often, that’s a huge privilege.

Engaging with the topic of money

I find that simply engaging with the topic of money and what role it plays in one’s life, how much one wants of it can be a powerful initiator of deep inquiry. Too often I find that the money topic is simply brushed over with simplistic statements and arguments. “Money is good”, “Money is bad”, and the like. I think when we treat money that way, we do ourselves a disservice of exploring something that is so present in all of our lives every day. In fact, I think that we’re missing a huge opportunity for intimacy and inquiry.

The topic of money is one filled with vulnerabilities and hurts and insecurities with almost every person that I breach it. And therefore is a source of powerful wonder, exploration, and healing. That goes for the billionaires and multi-millionaires I’ve coached and talked to about money as much as with the monastics I’ve lived in the monastery who all have committed to not having any money at all.

Questions

Here are some questions I’ve found powerful in relation to this

• What does money mean to you?
• How is it in service to you to live the life that you want? Where is it stopping you from becoming the person you long to become?
• What is revealed as you engage with the role that money plays in your life?

Here are two more questions I’ve been sitting with this week too

• If nothing needs to change or get done, what would you still enjoy doing?
• If you stopped efforting, what would feel easy to do?