It is about money, honey!

A reader wrote: I regularly read all the articles at tickledbylife.com. I would like you to carry an article with the title “How to live without money”. In olden days people used the barter system. If this is possible then black money from the system will vanish, hunger for amassing wealth will vanish, so many good things will happen.

Boy! What a coincidence that this question came to be asked of me. Considering that I have lived most of my life without an adequate supply of the essential moolah, I must be an expert on this subject. From the last I can remember I have had to mooch and plan for even to most of banal things; even a cup of coffee. But by golly, was it fun?

On the question of coffee or any other, essentially to mooch you have to have friends and in that I have enjoyed exceptional Grace of the Lord. Now my policy is that only fools buy them; whatever these things are. So here was my day planned out. Early morning visit to a friend and of course coffee and browse his newspaper. Then reach the office of another friend just in time for the most divine coffee again. And later if lunch could be fitted in, that would be fine but not as important as the coffee. The 4 pm coffee was the cup that required all my meticulous planning but I managed it for 25 years so I suppose I did well.

Let me relate to you how planned my life without money. I bartered my knowledge of the French language by teaching at the local YWCA and received in return a bunch of bank notes which were exchanged for a bike and camera etc. Then I wanted to go to France as some friends invited me. So I bartered the camera and bike for new bank notes that were exchanged for an airline ticket. But I am not that stupid to blow it all off. So I asked an uncle to refer me to some family friends who gave me a bunch of pearls to explore a market for them in France. I gave those pearls away to anyone who would give me in return a paper that would be legal tender for a new camera and some left over. Back home, with the ‘left over’, I paid the friends for the pearls and bought a new bike and astonished everybody with my new camera; not to say with everybody wondering how I managed a trip abroad on my kind of income.

But then I got tired of all this planning and I got married and my saga ends there. We then come to the original question of living without money. The questioner presumes: In olden days people used the barter system. If this is possible then black money from the system will vanish, hunger for amassing wealth will vanish, so many good things will happen.

How naïve! Humans are humans. Nothing good can ever come out of their propensity to grab and accumulate. Nothing comes of nothing. Barter or not, nothing good will happen; of that I am certain. There is buyer and there is a seller. How intensely the buyer wants the seller’s product will decide the exchange rate and the level of fleecing; above or below the table. So let’s be pragmatic.

Seriously speaking aren’t we missing something? What after all is money? If you are referring to gold mohurs and paper bank notes then they are just that. They are pieces of metal or paper. It could as well be sea shells. It is the value you give them that makes them what they are: an exchange rate valuation of goods, products and services. So this is the wrong way to study this subject.

The point is that we have to give to get. We may think we are enjoying things free of cost, but are we really? Cash or kind, payment is always in the pipeline. You were not under the impression that I got all my coffees, scot-free? That would be the understatement of the year. I paid by doing odd jobs; being of service in some way or the other. It just happened that I do have some subjects of interest in which I am considered good and advice and help was in demand. And I gave it freely, after all free cups of coffee, meals and what-not did not come by out of the blue.

So the long and short of it is: there is no living without money. Even my three year old daughter won’t give me a kiss without a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate. And about my wife’s payment schedule it would be best not to talk about it at all!

Money is an optical illusion. Try to get a free cup of tea from a hotelier and you will see? Either you will pay in predetermined exchange rate via bank notes or else wash the dishes in his establishment!

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PK is a teacher of languages/communication, counsellor and a businessman active in 6 countries. He combines his knowledge of life with his education in management, applied psychology and occult psychology from his time in The Ashram in Pondicherry and assists aspiring managers to reach their next level. Please visit http://sites.google.com/site/pkcentreforchange/Home