Meet Carlo.
I met him in a tiny crepe shop downtown Minneapolis. It was one of the warmest, most welcoming and chilled-out places I’ve been in a long time.
I asked Carlo one question. “If you didn’t have to worry about money, what would you do with your life?”
This was his response.
“I’d enjoy every day to the fullest.”
He spread, then flipped the crepes on the griddle.
After some thought and a little discussion, Carlo added “I’d be happy.”
So what can we learn from Carlo?
Carlo understood that my hypothetical question is a trick question. “If you didn’t have to worry about money, what would you do with your life?”
Does not worrying about money mean you’d have all the money in the world? (In that case, you’d hypothetically be freed to buy anything and everything you ever wanted.)
Or does not worrying about money mean that money wouldn’t matter anymore, that it wouldn’t carry currency or weight in your life at all? (In that case, you’d hypothetically be freed to do and be whatever you wish.)
I prefer the latter. When I conceived this series, I really didn’t want to know all the things people would buy if they had unlimited dollars. I wanted to know what they would do, or who they’d want to be if they didn’t have to worry about money.
I guess we’ll leave the ultimate interpretation of this question to philosophy class, but I think Carlo was on to something. If we weren’t so driven by money, more of us would live our lives to the fullest.
We’d take in the day.
We’d do what we love.
We’d love more richly.
We’d sigh in relief and peace.
And we’d be free to just be who we were meant to be.
So here’s my question. Obviously, money is here to stay. So how can we learn to enjoy our lives to the fullest, anyway? How can we make the dreams of our heart come true, anyway? If you have thoughts, I’d love to chat.
*This post is a part of a month-long 31 Days series titled Dreams from the Street. If you’d like to read more from my series, click here and you’ll be brought to the series landing page where all 31 posts are listed and linked! You can follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/AmyBPederson where I’ll tweet links to all 31 posts using hashtag #write31days, and I’d LOVE to connect on Facebook at facebook.com/AmyBPederson! I’m so glad you stopped by. Make yourself comfortable and take a peek around the place. You’re welcome back anytime.
It’s interesting to see how much money affects our lives, our everyday decisions. I do think we’d feel much freer if we didn’t have that weight on our shoulders…Good thoughts, good story.
Thanks much, Emily. I think money affects our everyday decisions much more than we know. We’re all so enmeshed in the culture that sometimes it’s hard to see it objectively, for what it really is. Agree that “we’d feel much freer if we didn’t have that weight on our shoulders.” Of course, this is all theoretical, because money will always be a currency. But it’s interesting to think about it more deeply and explore the possibilities, with or without money factoring in. Blessings, Emily.