Can We Use Money Better?

When I decided to not use money for a year, it was no great sacrifice. In all honesty, I have never really been all that good at using it anyway, and although I have managed to find comfort in its existence from time to time, like many people, it has often served as more of a deterrent to my happiness than as a catalyst for it.

I didn’t, and still don’t, hold any far-fetched hopes of abolishing money from the world altogether, nor am I trying to convince anyone that they need to give up its use. However, I have found that in my own life, I am largely quite content with appreciating the present moment and all of the abundance that it offers without using money as a proxy for the value that I find there. In the numerous jobs that I have had over the course of my life and the various roles that I have played, I have found the most satisfaction in working for the simple cause of fulfilling the immediate goal of the task at hand without using my present actions as a conduit for further fulfillment.

As far as how I survive, I continue to allow Life to provide as I provide for it. I have meager needs and have found that they are met quite adequately by my community as I seek out ways to meet the needs of others. Utilizing my gifts as a writer, filmmaker, artisan, craftsman, laborer, cook, photographer, counselor, teacher, and whatever other roles open themselves up to me, I feel that I offer certain values to my community that cannot always be adequately quantified by our present monetary system. By offering my talents as gifts to my community, I…