“If you’ve got the money ...”
Now, you may or may not know that Jamie-T’s famous lyrics actually continue like this:
“If you’ve got the money,
I think it would be funny-oh-oh-oh,
To take your girl and spend a bit of your cash for me”
But it’s the first line alone that I’m really interested in; “If you’ve got the money”... Don’t get me wrong, I’m a strong believer that ‘money doesn’t buy happiness’ but I do think that it takes a huge weight off your shoulders and helps to provide a sense of peace and security, especially for the future. But the lyrics “if you’ve got the money” transport us into a dream world where money is no object and subconsciously force us to think of every single decadent thing we would do and buy...
Yet, whilst a world with an abundance of money would be great, I can’t help but think that a world without money would be even better. There’s a great video on YouTube called “What if money didn’t matter?” by Alan Watts and it’s honestly worth a watch (even if it’s just for his voice...) In short, he argues that a life lived to the fullest, doing what you love doing is a lot more valuable than any sum of money offered for doing a job that you hate. I know, in theory it is a lot easier said than done. After all, we all need to make a living some how; we all need to eat and a place to sleep at night and the only way to achieve that is by earning money to afford it.
However, the video really did make me think. I’m twenty years old and between me and you, I honestly have no idea what I what to do in the future (scary, huh?) Sure, I have a great education behind me and plenty of options that I could peruse, but do I want to? No. Each question the video fired at me, “What would you like to do if money were no objet? How would you really enjoy spending your life?” they all lead to one answer: cooking. There’s nothing I would rather do than to wake up in the mornings and head to my own little restaurant where I would cook and bake to my heart’s (and customers’) content. And then the little question that society has etched so deeply into us popped up, “But what about the money ...” It’s easy enough having these dreams and aspirations but it’s kind of hard to achieve them without money for the start-up costs to begin with.
So for the time being, I’m going to carry on working hard in hope that one day I too can say that I lived a “life that is full of doing what it is you like doing (rather) than a long life that is spent in a miserable way”.
Note from the editor: You can watch the video that Katie mentions here: http://youtu.be/je3rQevW-cw
How important do you think it is to choose a job that you love? How important is money to you?!
