My wife is worried that we are going to lose the value we have in crypto. I understand her well, after the struggles we have had in the last years, conditions she hadn't really experienced before, as she always knew she had a fallback position. Me however, have faced financial challenges a lot in my life and am accustomed to living a bit more on the edge.
One thing I am glad about at the moment though is, that while I haven't much outside of crypto, at least my portfolio is looking a little bit more diverse than it was not so long ago. Hive used to be by far the largest part of my holdings, but over the last year I have taken some opportunity to diversify a little (a little too much in some cases) and have seen some gains in some of those tokens that has allowed me to spread risk a bit further.
What I have noticed by making myself less "reliant" on Hive is that I am much calmer than I was, as not all the eggs are in the one basket. Don't get me wrong here, I really want Hive to do well and I will work heavily for it, but I feel less pressure. It is similar to when I took a second job atop my already established business - while the workload increased, as did the work stress, the risk managed position and a little more financial stability meant that I didn't have this daily feeling of being chased.
In my experience, it is hard to act well under financial duress, in the same way it is hard to act well when angry, panicked or desperate. This doesn't just affect me of course, it affects everyone around me and everything I do, generally for the negative. I work well under time pressure, poorly under financial pressure, although I have learned to take a "business as usual" approach the best I can, to compensate for my habitual responses.
I had a new client start with me today and we were getting to know one another and we were talking about the challenges he faced in his divorce a year or so ago and how it affected him. This is a person who works in metal manufacturing, has sleeve tattoos and is a Finn, people not known for their sharing of personal information. But, we all need a place to talk and when someone can offer an environment where we feel comfortable and safe, we tend to open up.
We spent time talking about the natural responses we have to breakups and how it seeps into everything we do, often making us less capable to do what ew might have been great at prior. We tend to be less effective at work, worse parents and generally more disrupted, as we go through an emotional rollercoaster, with it always sitting close behind our eyes, reminding us of our disappointment and anger. It is hard to let go and move on, but in time we mostly heal and potentially, learn far more about ourselves and become stronger for it, improving our ability to deal with the world.
Perhaps due to my teen years, financial scarcity affects me in ways it might not impact on others, but I have essentially avoided learning about how to improve myself in these areas and instead, have lived in fear. The solution to this issue isn't to work to become rich, but it has to be understood that in the current and likely future society we have, we are all going to struggle if we do not take financial well-being seriously.
I do understand my wife's concerns about the loss though, as for years I have been telling her that, "it will be okay, that we will work it out, that we will survive", but it was largely empty, with the only real plan to make it okay being, work more. Which I did, but there are limits to just how much work one person can practically do in order to bring income. At some point, working "smarter" has to be combined with the work in order to compound the efforts and this requires finding new forms of revenue.
But it isn't enough to make more, that "more" has to be used well to generate income or at least, not used at all in order to build up some kind of nest egg. If that more is used to expand lifestyle in relation to the increase, no matter how much work is done, nothing changes other than what we consume. And at least for most of us now, we likely aren't entirely happy with where we currently are.
Life isn't all about money and it probably shouldn't be such a focus in our daily lives, but we are all affected by conditions and money is a feature of our environment, no different to the weather or the city in which we live. Our conditions affect us in many ways, including what we are able to do. If it is a sunny warm day, we might choose to go to the beach, but if we live far inland, we likely can't. While we do have choices, our environment limits our opportunity to choose, in the same way that if we do not have money, our options to purchase opportunity is greatly reduced.
While the best things in life might be free, even basic subsistence in modern society requires money. And, when we struggle to have enough for what is required, it is very easy to feel the pressure of scarcity and act accordingly, which is in general, not that well in comparison to when we feel we have enough. "Enough" is subjective and also based on conditions, but most people will have some sense of what this means to them, based on their own life experiences.
I wrote piece the other day about this being "the year I walked away" from debt and this constant feeling of not having enough, by building a stronger foundation and expanding revenue streams. Each day I work toward that goal, with the end goal being that my wife and daughter will never have to face the stress of not having enough, or having to pass up opportunities for happiness by doing something they are good at and will love, because they don't have enough to take the chance.
While there is value in the struggle and I believe it plays a large role in who we are, I am not sure how much value there is in economic struggle, especially long-term. Perhaps the challenge shouldn't be trying to get enough money to survive or even thrive, it should be in exploring who we are and what we can do, in order to practice ourselves into the best versions of who we can be. When we are always having to chase a dollar first, it doesn't leave much time or energy to become our best.
A lot of people might disagree with me on the importance and connection of financial availability to happiness, but that could be due to the meme of "money doesn't make you happy". No one questions this, as either they have enough and are still unsatisfied, or don't have enough and have to believe that they can still be happy. Of course though, anyone can be happy under all kinds of conditions, but some conditions lower the bar, some raise it.
Money can't of course make us happy, it is just a tool, but it has the unique attribute of being able to buy almost anything. It doesn't care what it buys, but what it buys become conditions of our lives that influence us. I would love to be able to take my daughter to Australia to meet her family, but can't. I would love to be able to buy some time with my wife where we can be alone to enjoy each other's company over a nice dinner occasionally, but when we do, the sense of the "cost" is weighing in the back of the mind - both of ours. I would love to never again have to worry about my card clearing at the cost of groceries. I would love to be able to be able to be more charitable, without having to think about what I am going to have to go without to be so.
A world of abundance isn't just about ending suffering, that is just the first step. What it has to push into is us discovering the best versions of ourselves as individuals and as a society of people who inhabit the same environment, the one that affects us all and limits our opportunities. One day, money might not be a feature of our environment at all, but they aren't the current conditions of our lives.
Charity starts at home, so does the world of plenty.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]