"Financial Health" is a marketing gimmick.
Now don't get me wrong. I do not mean to say that anyone who wishes you good financial health, is trying to sell you something.
Just take the example of the controversy around blood cholesterol. My most well intentioned doctor, was worried about me when she saw higher than normal cholesterol in my test reports. When I showed her the FDA report rubbishing any linkage between cholesterol and heart disease, she said "this only tells us what we don't know". Even though we now know that the "bad cholesterol" story served only the drug makers, there are too many people already convinced about it.
That's just how our mind works. Once we are convinced about something, we find that everything justifies that belief. Everything can be explained with that belief. But the belief is still only an illusion.
And as with all illusions, it appears as a complete, proper and fully functional reality!
Okay, so we might say, even if it is an illusion, what's wrong with being financial healthy?
I will give you a simple and direct example and then take a quick minute to explain the connection. While many of us might take clean drinking water as a given, in some regions of the world, one pays as much as the price of the crude oil for a bottle of drinking water!! Really? Yes!
Okay, so what's the connection? The connection is that you might earn and accumulate more money, but if that which was free once upon a time, starts becoming expensive, then with all our effort, we are only running on ice; and in my opinion we are actually sinking in!
Like all great sales pitches, the 'Financial Health' taglines also aims at creating a conviction by strengthening an insecurity within us - that of not having enough. Unfortunately, that insecurity creates the very thing we are afraid of. It is the insecurity of oil which created wars. It is the insecurity of life which is catalysing deaths.
There is physical health, there is emotional health, we can even say there is social health and environmental health. But there is no such thing as Financial Health.
It seems we have fooled ourselves into believing that happiness belongs to a place, somewhere and sometime in the future. And that we need to do something to reach there. And in this belief we have given up that which is right now and right here. right in our hands. Our intrinsic, inherent, happy nature.
The world keeps running harder and harder. So do individuals, countries and institutions. But the only 'purpose' that gives us, is to find that we still have 'a long way' to go! That long way, is really a race, to nowhere.
We don't have a long way to go, we have gone a long way off. The best we can hope, by running harder, is that we will come a full circle. The best we can hope to do now, is to simply stop running.
Money is only a measure of wealth. The real wealth is the underlying resources that money can buy. If we destroy those very resources, money will be of no use. Once we step out of the race to build financial health, we will give a chance for mother nature to recover, we will give a chance to our relationships to flower and our society to come together again.
There is already enough for everyone. What we truly need to do is do NOTHING.
And that's the difficult one. Because if we have nothing to do, then who will sell that to us :D :D
