The Money Thing

The million triggered something. What is money and meaning in the well lived life?

A million dollars can be…

  • A book sized block of gold or meals for a decade or 20 weddings or 4 degrees from a top university
  • A fraction of a CEO’s annual salary or 241 rice farmers and their family working all year
  • Research into the biggest disease, malaria or 83,333 rural family in Kenya having access to income

It could be as simple as million dollar health insurance policy. Peace of mind for a minor illness… actually, is it really about being healthy?

A million is a pretty amazing thing. It’s big enough to do something with and it’s small enough to have meaning.

At the other end of the money scale: there is an estimated 1.2 quadrillion dollars in the financial markets. Mind boggling. If a million dollars is a square millimeter, it’s 1.6 football fields.

The million is a useful measuring stick.

But the interesting thing is what is it that we want to measure?

In life, is it the millions? Or is it something else?

As a career focused A type personality in banking and technology, millions can easily become the thing. It’s a job hazard. It’s easy to loose sight of the meaning.

We saw this in the Financial markets in the last decade, where decisions showed ethics had lost meaning.

There is value in meaning. Even in the financial space. Particularly in the financial space.

If the money thing was not there, what would you measure your life by? What give it significance? What gives your life meaning?

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