Unlearning the Money Trap in My Second Life
What was once a planned break to write my memoir has since become my unplanned retirement from pharmaceutical marketing. My unexpected life’s career when I expected my life’s career would be something else entirely. At one point it was ministry, then teaching, and then looking for any job to pay back my student loans.
Taking a temp job to support myself and service my debt, this chancy career choice would eventually lead me down a strange and surreal path to the world of pharmaceutical marketing. Promoting pharmaceutical drugs to physicians and potential consumers. A recently created profession that exist in only two countries. A vocation that added very little to the world if I’m candid and honest with myself.
Nevertheless, my work gave me a sense of belonging and contributing to the world because I was earning money. Earning money gave me a sense of purpose; a tangible value of my worth in this world. A worth the world will always offer us, until we’re no longer generating wealth. This world reducing us to solely economic creatures, soulless cogs within the machine.
Our treasures are stored and saved on earth. Our trinkets are left behind when we decay in death. Our trophies mean nothing when measured by money as opposed to limitless love.
Like many people, I have fallen into this trap of equating my purpose or even my life’s value based on the dollars I could generate for myself and my companies owners. A worldly snare in which human worth is measured by money. An enticement of evil in which human value is marked by money. A dangerously deceptive desire in which the love of money becomes the root of all evil.
Because I no longer earn money for what I do, my head tells me I’m not valuable. I’m no longer contributing to the world. A message that reduces me and everyone to a thing. Objects whose purpose is to generate wealth.
This is the messed-up message every creator or contributor to the world hears. Unless you’re getting paid to do something, it has no value. Money somehow legitimizes your work. You’re no longer an amateur, but a professional.
This all-star status is only because someone believes that money can be made; not whether or not what’s created has any value. We produce lots of things that have little or no value. We produce many things that will actually harm you; we literally fund our own self-destruction at times. Caveat emptor, let the buyer be aware. Yikes.
It’s not by accident that those who take care of our most vulnerable are the least paid. While those who manipulate financial markets or distract us by selling fear are highly compensated. Any American Dream that’s about financially crushing other Americans is an evil nightmare.
I’m unlearning a lifetime’s worth of learning. Believing that my value has already been demonstrated, because I’m made in the image of God. I’m more than enough because I am a child of God. I’m soul and spirit and subject.
Remembering that the dozens and dozens of weekly stories I’ve written over the last year and the several hundred daily devotions I’ve posted aren’t about money or even notoriety but love. A force far more formidable than money. Any act of creation that creates more love in the world, honors God. God is love.
Even as time pushes against my life’s energy, I get out of bed because I have obligations I’ve made to myself, to others and to God. Committing myself to honor God through my living and my writing. Posting personal stories on a public platform that still remain very hidden from the world. A reminder that it’s my dedication to the Divine, not dollars, that’s driving my daily desire of devotion.
Knowing that my life won’t be measured in dollars, but in the love that I create.
Peace. God loves you.