Day 256 – Desire to be rich

Not so much anymore, but for a long time I had a huge desire to be rich.  This was never fulfilled, of course, as I am anything but rich.  And why did I desire to be rich?  Well, that is an interesting question.  The answer to that is that I had deep insecurities growing up that seemed to get worse by the time I was a teenager and young adult.  I felt inferior to others.  I had trouble communicating and making friends because I was afraid to talk, afraid to express myself.  I compared myself to others and then through comparison and judgment saw myself as less intelligent, not fun, boring, and felt as if I had nothing to say.  I had a lot of anxiety socially.  I had trouble getting girl-friends. I would freeze-up while talking to women.  Although my early child-hood has lots of satisfying memories of good-times with friends, as I became an older kid, like at high-school age, I found that I had less and less friends and really the only friends that I had were the kids that ‘pushed’ their way into my life.  I felt un-worthy to talk to the females that I was sexually attracted to.  This really got to me.  I saw all my friends and the other guys at school with girl-friends, but I had none.  Well, ironically, at first I had several girl friends, but by the time I was in like eleventh grade and on, it was like I could no longer communicate with the opposite sex and this went on until I was like 28 years old.  In essence, I felt inferior to all the other kids and young adults and this inferiority got worse by the time I was like 14 years old or so and lasted throughout my 20s.  I also felt different than everyone else, like I was the only one that is like me – weird, I guess you can say.

So, I started to create within and as myself a desire to be rich as the solution to my problems.   I started to create a story within and as myself like ‘I am some kind of super-genius who nobody understands, like Einstein or something’.   And this would explain why I can’t seem to get along with everyone and get what I want – which is sex and relationships with women, and respect from guys.

And so, time went on and this inferiority problem that I had didn’t seem to get any better and I wasn’t getting what I want, which was fulfullment in either male or female relationships; and thus, I was seeing myself as an outsider more an more, and then this desire to be rich started to emerge and the become stronger and stronger. 

I also started to create a story about myself where I was like this eccentric yet-to-be millionaire, because there are rumours and stories about eccentric millionaires and how millionaires are so different that the regular people out there – so I started believing this about myself.  And so, I started to have all these expectations that one day I would be rich, like I had convinced myself that this would actually happen.  Then, this through this belief system that I had created about myself, I started to feel secretly superior to others –as if ‘you will see!  I will be rich one day’.  And so the desire to be rich became stronger within and as my experience because I could not wait for that day to happen to me, that day I would become rich and then proved to the world, and really myself, that I am not only equal to everyone, but actually better / superior.

So, years went by and I never became rich.  Instead, I never found a good job, or a really good job in that I have a decent job but I am definitely anything but rich!  And so, eventually this desire to be rich became not so strong as participating in this is like torture when it is not actually happening, you know. 

So who was I within all this?  I was competing with everyone else for supremacy and status.  I felt inferior.  I experienced myself as inferior and wanted to experience myself as superior through being rich.  Through being rich, I perceived that I would be able to get what I want and that is ‘respect’ from men and attention from women; and to be seen by others as someone who actually is cool, who actually is intelligent, who actually does have his shit together.  You see, I had projected my own self-judgment onto others wherein I perceived others to be judging me as inferior, stupid, socially inept, boring and then wanted to prove everyone wrong through becoming rich – the ultimate winner!  And then this never happened, so I had to eventually let this desire go because it wasn’t really serving its purpose any longer as I started to have to face myself as the one who wants to be rich and then doesn’t become rich – and that’s like torturing yourself.

So, it is interesting what really motivates us and who we really are within it.