Worry or Live?

We all worry about money from time to time.  A thought that captures my attention sometimes is what happens if there is a medical emergency that completely wipes out my bank account and retirement savings.  In all my advocacy for financial discipline and literacy, I’m still acutely aware of the possibility of an event so bad that it exhausts all my financial resources.  When I focus on this thought the anxiety in me begins to stir and I start thinking that I need to make more money.  I start thinking about certifications and going back to college.  Both are fair courses of action if I truly want to pursue those pathways.  However, I know that my meditations on those things are a fear response.  The reality is that there are situations so bad that they can’t be outrun with any amount of money.  Terminal Cancer, some other untreatable illness, or a fatal car accident could take my life or that of a close loved one.  

I’m thinking about these things more often now as I consider the care of my elderly mother while at the same time considering having children with my wife.  Both situations cause me to think a lot about the fragility of life and there’s this urge to want to fortify my family from any and all vulnerabilities.  But I know that’s not possible.  I also know that for the last 17 years of my life I have practiced discipline with my financial resources.  That discipline has helped me land on my feet in the face of many emergency situations in the last 17 years.  That said, if I did get wiped out financially, how would I rebuild?  I would put into play the same habits and principles of money management that I currently live by.  Nothing changes.

To worry about money or things and not be fully considerate of how we handle money and why we want things is a little ridiculous.  Yet, I do it all the time.  Much of my musing is about learning to focus on the right things.  The things that are very much in my control.  As I get older, time moves faster which makes time even more precious to me.  Even though I’m guilty of it all the time, I know it’s a waste to complain, to worry, to be anxious and waste time on things I can’t control.  This reminds me of a couple lines from my favorite poem, IF by Rudyard Kipling, 

“If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, 

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss”

It’s the never breathing a word about your loss that really gets me here.  Since I left home to go to college I have spent countless hours thinking about how much money I make.  This as opposed to thinking about how I use the money I have to be the person I want to be.  I want to be the person Kipling describes in the poem:  stoic in the face of tragedy and steadfast in the midst of adversity.  

Whatever time I have left with my mother and whatever time I get with a potential offspring, I damn sure don’t want to waste any of that time worrying about money.  Of course, money isn’t unimportant but since I left home for college, I’ve always had enough.  I’ve never been starving or homeless.  So it seems like I can give time to worry or I can give time to living.  The choice is obvious.

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