A million choices to make
If "money doesn't matter" was a lady in a red dress sitting on a bar, I wouldn't touch her with a 5 feet pole. But Carlos would buy her a drink. I hate that phrase. I find it crazy. But Carlos would not think as I do.
I look up to Carlos Marcelin, the owner of CRM Jewellers in Miami. Not because of the insane inventory he has or his amazing journey of climbing to the top from the bare bottom, but for his current ideology. He is a multimillionaire with a multimillion dollar house and a multimillion dollar yacht funded by his multimillion dollar inventory. He is, in the most literal way, living the life.
Even after having loyal employees and enough money to retire, he comes to his shop every single day. Never misses a day. He still makes sales and deals with customers. He denies moving away from what brought him his comfortable life. And whenever the chance comes he says "I have everything I want in life, my family".
In essence, that is the most important thing to him. Family. A very minimalistic desire in all ways. If I were to read between the fine lines then I'd think that he would not mind losing everything if it meant he could keep his family happy and together.
That is his life. All he wants is to continuously work and take care of his family. And to be honest, at this point he doesn't even have to work! If I had the same opportunity why would I say no? What else is there to life?
Come to think of it, the only people who say this phrase probably have enough money to put a cork on their problems.
I have never been in that situation. I do not know what it feels like to have enough money to liquidate all my problems and additionally keep the people I love happy and satisfied. So of course, I would always think of that phrase as unrealistic or pretentious. But in reality, I have no grounds to base my judgment on.
A million dollars would undoubtedly make life so much easier. I mean easier. Not flashy. We have a mantra at home: "money comes and goes". Sounds better in Arabic: "Fuloos yiji wa yamshi". It is, in many ways, a different way of saying "money doesn't matter".
It paves the way to giving more power to experiences compared to money. Money is here today, tomorrow it might not be. What will remain are the memories created and the experiences.
At the end of the day I will eventually do back to earth without a single penny. What will forever remain in the timeline will be the things I did and the memories I created.
The simple things.
And you know what they say about the simpler things, they are always free.
Funnily I can picture myself with an extra mil. Still wearing plain solid color clothes. Still picking walking over driving. Still going to the stores, looking at things and thinking "nah, that's a depreciating asset". Still looking for investment options to retire comfortably. Still scouring the internet for good books. So the same?
What I wouldn't do is quit my job. I love my job. I love helping people. It is something that gives me pride. But I can picture a lot of people quitting their jobs if they had a million dollars, because it doesn't make them happy. So...money really doesn't matter I guess.
Something that matters deeply to me is friends and family. I think I speak for most of the people when I say that if the shackles of money didn't exist, we would be surrounding ourselves with friends and family. Creating new memories, laughing, travelling, etc, with the people closest to us.
The simplest way of saying it is that an extra million dollars would not change my lifestyle in any way, but rather amplify it. I'd still be living the same lifestyle, a lot more comfortably. I would choose to live how am today. Its clutter free.
So maybe, both Carlos and I would ask the lady in red for a dance.
I invite @priyanarc and @trincowski to participate in this contest.
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