MON€Y
The more business-minded can obviously point to countless success stories
where the businessman (or woman) in
question is under-qualified or simply
utterly unexceptional and whose success comes from either a single brilliant
idea or being “at the right place at the
right time”, but, me being me, I find the
most powerful example of this phenomenon in the wild and wonderful
world of rock n roll.
Paul McCartney and Keith Richards
are two of the best and most popular
musicians in the history of popular music, and despite neither having any affiliation or even patience with ‘organised
religion’ in any form, they both constantly speak of a belief in a ‘higher
power’ that they experience through
their song-writing. Both master songwriters have noted constantly over the
years how many of their best and most
loved songs were ‘received’, rather than
written, by them. Most notably their
biggest respective hits, Yesterday and (I
Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, apparently
came fully formed (musically, if not lyrically) to their authors while they were
asleep. And they’re not alone. Creative
people of all kinds and of all religious
orientations constantly report similar
occurrences when it comes to their creative and commercial successes.
AND THEREFORE?
So, what does all this mean on any sort
of practical level? Most of us probably
aren’t going to end up as absurdly
wealthy rock stars or businessmen, after all, and some of us may even find
ourselves fighting to stay above the
poverty line, but if we’re not in charge
of our own monetary destinies, where,
precisely, does that leave us? It certainly can’t be anything as simple as the
idea that the better we are as people,
the more money G-d will give us. Such a
simple, causal relationship isn’t just naïve, it’s unquestionably wrong. “Nice” is
not a word that is often associated with
the filthy rich and there’s probably a
reason for that.
Taking back some sort of internal locus of control then, requires us looking
at the whole situation a bit differently.
Hashem Himself is, as always and by
definition, inscrutable, and trying to
properly navigate through a const [