About ten years ago now, I was serving food at a homeless shelter by the airport. Not many memories stay that long in my mind anymore, and all that I did on that day is lost as background noise but for a single line in a single conversation. The memory is hazy enough that an elderly woman who could have been serving next to me or who could have been on the other side of the line who was being served, said to me in conversation as she spoke about her life, 

“My husband was always saving money, always working. He never took time off to spend with his family. I always did say that he would be the richest man in the graveyard.” 

Who knows, maybe that ancient woman got the line from a book, or perhaps even if it was, that she could have had that exact thought or experience. It certainly struck that line-server like the invisible bell of poetry which had been sagely gleaned from her life experiences. It is an undeniable luxury of those who come after to hear and sometimes see the mistakes that the elders have made, and that singular window into her life lended to me a lens for which I could better use to chart a course before me – that when faced with the option of money I should ask myself what it is that I would be using that money for? What good will it do me when I am dead? 

Not that I am in any regards a nihilist (it is a shallow and lazy philosophical position, which is not deserving of a seat at the adult-table). But the question, “what good will it do me when I am dead?" is to frame not the ‘rate of acquisition of money’, but to pose to myself ‘the expenditure of my time’ against and alongside ‘the expenditure of my money’. Such as, 

"What use is there in being the richest man in the graveyard? Erroneously in a cartoon villain way, (looking at you Indulgences) should I endeavor to collect money and then try to trade it to any god in the afterlife, as mayhap my life is weighed against scales of good and evil? Or, if I have spent all of my life pursuing money for the sake of money, rather than the sake of anything else – the end result is that I am the richest man in the graveyard for nothing." 

“If, then, I even save it up to hand it off to my child, what is the ratio of work-to-life balance? And if I am saving for my child, will I hand it off to them who might blow all of my life's labor in just a few years? Thus my eternal toil is a brief respite, and then my child too will have to continue to toil once the money runs out. Then you will be the poorest man in the graveyard and they will join you there too." No wonder that Marcus Aurelius said in his great, private work, Meditations: 

“...to have good tutors at home and to know that on such a thing should a man spend lavishly (in Ancient Greek: without spare)." 

If immediate money is chased at the cost of future potential money, there will only be a net loss, i.e: that spending without spare to educate your child will be a gain for them later, but saving money for them now without investing in a good education is as good as (potentially) throwing your money away once you are dead. The same is true for other investments: investing in protecting the climate now so the smog cities of the 1970’s don’t return. Investing in the health and fortune of your neighbors so that the neighborhoods and cities are safer. But to just toil away to make money and throw it at another person is a gamble on whether or not it will be money well spent. 

I believe that the old sage’s quote about her dead husband whose money no longer serves him – that his life was in some ways wasted because all he did was grind for empty wealth. Thus the realization that money is not the goal, it is an intermediate tool and an intermediate goal to be used to enrich the world around you, and hopefully if you are a loving parent, to enrich the future of your children; a future which they will share with all of the children of all the world when you have passed. 

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, in his passage on Children: 

“...For their souls dwell in the House of Tomorrow, which you cannot visit, even in your dreams.”

As a further reflection away from children on wealth for wealth’s sake: plenty of people in America talk about the member states of NATO not having ‘paid their dues’ or ‘America pays for the safety of the seas and the free trade of the world’. Those were true, but, statements that only make sense when you finish the sentences, 

“NATO member states do not pay their fair way. America wants its money more than power projection.” 

“America pays for the safety of free trade. It’s time everyone gives us money or we pull away.” 

So America saves dollars now, but, then the result is the future of the free trade which many generations profited massively off of is in peril. 

And it is clear by the massive trade profits for China (Reuters reported a $1.2 Trillion export surplus for China since President Trump’s tariffs have sent countries away from the U.S. and into the arms of rival nations), that the end goal for American voters is ‘immediate money now’ while tradewinds will shift downstream profits away from future generations of American children. 

When the immediate acquisition of money supersedes the very idea that “money is a tool for the ‘immediate and future’ enrichment of our own lives and the lives of others and our children,” we may very well have graveyards full of rich skeletons, grabbed in gold and silk before the worms return them all to ashes and dust. And what will become of those who come after? Will the memories they share of their parents and loved ones be shared from either as a woman serving food to the homeless or a homeless woman or child be: 

“They weren’t around the family. Worked all the time.” 

Go, seek money, but recognize that it should never be the end goal, or the end of a logical reason or argument. Money is a tool to change the world, and the people around us.  

Austin Petak is an aspiring novelist and freelance journalist who loves seeking stories and the quiet passions of the soul. If you are interested in reaching out to him to cover a story, you may find him at austinpetak@gmail.com.