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Adults Ambushed by the 'More' Mentality

Written by: Les Brown

Article Overview: There's a paradoxical effect that afflicts us: when we sell our talents, they lose their meaning. Yet, we desire the rewards that financial success brings. What price are we willing to pay for it?

Adults Ambushed by the 'More' Mentality

When I was just a kid (without an 'allowance'), I used to dream about what I'd do if I had $100 (an enormous sum of money). I would be happy because I could buy whatever I wanted. Now, the time has come where Craig and I can easily spend well over $100 taking a couple of friends out for a decent dinner. In fact $100 doesn't buy a whole lot of groceries anymore. When I was back there dreaming about my $100, I remember my mother buying a shopping cart full of groceries, paying with a $20 bill and getting change back. Wow! Are those days ever gone for good!

In the meantime, ancient as I am, those old childish thoughts of 'if I only had $$$$, I could be really happy' still come back to haunt me from time to time, although far less frequently. I've actually discovered that those childish thoughts of 'more' = 'better' that I carried over from childhood into to adulthood are really just pipe dreams. However, at the same time, they're deadly pipe dreams because, rather than dream-fulfillers, my desires for more are actually dream killers. Here's the pattern: a) I want more, so therefore b) I need to sell my services, so that, as a result c) I can get paid money to buy what I want.

So, what's the problem with that? As it turns out, when we're paid for performance (or punished for non-performance, we effectively kill our joy of accomplishment. What we sell in order to buy 'more', winds up being our soul. In a sense, Karl Marx accurately described the soul-deadening effects of capitalism, only not for the reasons he suspected. Once again, the pursuit of happiness in the guise of 'more' can be distilled down to childhood fantasy translated into adult terms. The cult of 'happiness equals more' causes all of us — children as well as adults — to empty our passions of their intrinsic meaning and value. Rather than experiencing the joy of creativity, we subjugate our feelings to a 'higher' value of economic gain. Sooner or later, that subjugation will come back to haunt us when we suddenly realize that our lives have become nearly joyless rote repetitions of intrinsically meaningless behavior for the sake of a promised reward that never comes. Ouch!

This sad script plays itself out in so many lives: perhaps even in yours. It puts you in between two untenable positions: to create wealth, you need either to perform tasks that are truly meaningless to yourself (drudge work) in order to make a buck or you need to prostitute yourself by selling your passion for financial reward (and opening yourself to the financial punishment that derives should you fail to perform) and thereby emptying your soul's desire of any purpose or meaning for you. This is one of the great conundrums you face as midlife approaches. This dynamic spans a large part of the ennui that afflicts so many otherwise successful people: that gnawing question at the back of your mind that causes you to question whether this life that you've chosen for yourself was the right one, after all.

Part of the transition from adulthood to real maturity consists of facing and resolving this conundrum. Once you realize that you've been ambushed by your own career and life choices, a much more fundamental decision gnaws at you: do you continue along the same path (creating more of the same results), or do you change paths and try something entirely different (perhaps recreating the same situation that you're trying to escape), or might there be a third choice that will allow you to come to terms (and, ultimately, resolve the apparent conflict) between who you want to be and what you need to do. Can you ever successfully resolve the fundamental dichotomy between desire and duty? Oh yes . . . it's not easy, but you can do it, if only you know how and have the courage to follow through.

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Article Tags: accomplishment, adulthood, capitalism, childhood fantasy, couple of friends, cult, desires, dream killers, economic gain, enormous sum, groceries, guise, karl marx, passions, pipe dreams, pursuit of happiness, shopping cart, subjugation, sum of money, whole lot



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