I submitted an essay several months ago to a National Public Radio Program called This I Believe, an international project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives. Browsing the archives is like a walk into history through the stories of a variety of people from the famous to the ordinary. Since the program is based upon a 1950s series hosted by Edward R. Murrow, some of those early clips are available as well.
You can visit the This I Believe website read these stories or post one of your own. Or, if you’d prefer, I’d love to read your story in this space.
Here’s the one I submitted to NPR which is titled, Money Isn’t Everything…
I find myself in the exciting, yet precarious position of having everything I ever wanted…except for money. I have a fantastic marriage to a talented artist and musician who is, hands down, my best friend. I have three healthy and mostly happy children who, at ages 19, 18 and 10, are constantly growing and changing and becoming the people that they are meant to be. I live in a 100 year-old home that is ripe with the kind of character that comes from slightly crooked ceilings, original moldings and recently repaired plaster walls. I am an adjunct professor at a welcoming University and a writer whose work is slowly but surely finding an audience. I play the bass in my husband’s Spanish rock band and I have good friends who are interesting and creative. All in all, in the midst of historic economic uncertainty, I am living just the kind of relaxed, avant-garde lifestyle I’d aspired to when I was an idealistic kid. Back before I abandoned these dreams to go out and make some money,
Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against money. And, when I was a single mother with two kids, I needed money to pay the rent, put food on the table and build a life for my fractured little family.
So I did.
And, as one job led to another, I went from living paycheck-to-paycheck to actually having a little more than I needed to keep my head above water. Things got even better when I met and married my husband Martin. A Uruguayan immigrant who’d shelved his own artistic aspirations in exchange for body-crushing but lucrative work in construction, he went from making $10 a day at age 15 to building a profitable small business.
As our careers took off and our coffers filled, our quest for the American Dream began to take shape. Sure, we noticed that there was less and less time to do the things we loved, but we thought that was just the price of growing up and getting ahead.
I can’t pinpoint the moment when we crossed the line from working-to-live to living-to-work–or when accumulating things took priority over having time to relax or create or spend time with our kids. But cross that line we did.
The houses got bigger, the investments more substantial and our dreams of a simple, creative life became a distant memory. We worked all the time and were dead tired when we were off. But we had plenty of disposable income.
The money that had once served our needs had somehow become our master.
So, about five years ago, we made a change. Stepping out in faith, we took some bold steps, left our careers and began to pursue our passions. As a result, we have more time, more peace and a lot less money. We haven’t taken a vow of poverty. We’re actually quite hopeful that our new endeavors will bear monetary fruit one of these days. But if they do, I believe we’ll handle it far differently.
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