I love the idea of work. I’ve worked all my life; life without it would be empty and less meaningful.
It’s great to have money to live on, but the idea that money and savings alone bring me peace and meaning was just wrong. I call it the Big Lie, which makes corporations happy and humans anxious and often miserable.
When I was younger, I was taught that security came from working hard, making a lot of money, and having a lot of cash tucked away for the sweet reward of retirement. Capitalism constantly feeds this idea, which frightens people—people like me—into doing what corporations would like me to do, not necessarily what I would like to do.
Sometimes, they coincide. For most people, they don’t.
I knew very few happy people who worked long hours in a job they disliked so someone else could get rich.
One day, some years ago, while working on television, I was called into my boss’s office and told to fire 70 people who worked on my program. The company was looking to be bought, and to get the right price, the workforce budget had to be slashed to draw buyers.
I protested. Why fire this innocent person? Do it or leave, I was told. Don’t argue.
I spent the day firing good people who had worked at this company for years and had nowhere else to go. It was a day of fear and tears.
I have never forgotten that day, and I often ask myself why I didn’t just say no and walk away. I also learned that people with money are not necessarily happy. Money requires a lot of attention.
But I knew the answer. We had a new baby and just bought a new house, and I was afraid of losing the security of a well-paying job.
It took me years to find the correct answer for me.
Security is an illusion. Life is driven by change and uncertainty. There are no guarantees.
The truth is that security is not so much a state of life as it is a state of mind.
The idea is meant to support the eternal American quest for safety, which, in this country, means money. Making enough money to retire (I am not retired and have no intention of ever retiring. I choose to do work I love, not necessarily work that makes me safe with money), move somewhere, go fishing, and hang out with the grandkids at Disney World.
The idea depends on accepting the false notion that the future is predictable and nothing will ever happen to us—hurricanes, tornadoes, fire, sickness, accidents, the typical corporate collapse, betrayal mergers, or epidemic layoffs.
Just ask the millions of people who have been burned and flooded out of their homes in Florida and elsewhere while insurance companies fled state after state. Are they secure?
Working for a corporation often meant something a while ago—IBM, AT&T, General Motors—especially with promises of pensions, retirement funds, and security. People were told loyalty would be rewarded by security. Numerous corporations, including my TV company, promised lifetime work.
Those days are gone. Treating workers well is too expensive for the modern corporation. Workers are expendable, like cars, when they age. We throw them away.
When push came to shove and the labor movement weakened, most corporations, including the three I mentioned, abandoned their promise of loyalty and security and began firing workers when their profits declined, as they often do in business.
Shareholders insist on that. Loyalty does nothing for the profit margins that CEOs must live by.
The first thing Evon Musk did when taking over Twitter was tossing half the staff into the street. That’s standard practice now in Silicon Valley. Those tech fatcats say they didn’t know they could let people go, even when they were making money. So now they do, even when profits are high. It’s how people feel about cutting lawns.
The idea that life is predictable is the ground that our notions of security stand on.
Everything will be the same as it is now. Forty years down the road, we’ll be safe.
We know that the wealthiest Americans are often the least happy or content. Making and keeping money takes a lot of hard and unpredictable work. “Those who have cattle have care” is a famous saying in Kenya. These gargantuan yachts are very difficult to maintain and repair.
Security, when linked to money, as it almost always is in America, is meant ot give us options in difficult times, and very often, it can and does. But it also does many other things and usually brings a frightening burden, not necessarily a blessing.
Living a life centered around money and being obsessed with financial security sometimes blinds people to the present, as it did to me. And to the joys of life. Perhaps most importantly, it kept me from daring to follow my bliss and pursue my dreams, which are often the meaning of life. I know very few parents who urge their children to be happy rather than prosperous.
For me, security came at too high a price. As a best-selling author, I made a lot of money. No one told me that things like a breakdown, a divorce, and profound anxiety could take it all away. I never predicted any of them happening to me.
The curious thing is that the less money I have, the happier and “secure” I feel. I sleep so much better when I’m not worrying about how much money I will have down the road.
I have volunteered at an Assisted Living facility for the past ten years, and the stories of the residents touch me.
The residents tell me about how they worked hard and saved money for retirement all of their lives, only to find that it takes only one or two surgeries to blow it all away. No one predicted that; they lived their lives committed to security. It was, they tell me, a myth, a lie. It worked for corporations. The big regret I often hear is: “I wish I had done what I wanted to do, what I loved. There is no security in work anymore.”
The conventional idea of security was putting too high a price on my life and my natural sense of security. I just got more and more anxious about it. I could not move beyond what was safe or what I was told was safe.
When I decided to follow Joseph Campbell’s call to the Hero Journey and climb my mountain, I learned to rethink the idea of security and what it meant to me. I found there is excellent security in a spiritual life.
Security meant not being frightened about money but instead learning the joy of doing what I wanted to do, was meant to do, and have always wanted to do—go to the country, write in freedom, live with animals, do good, find love, and live the way I wanted to live. What kind of price do I put on that?
That is the security I want and found. And yes, there is a price to pay for it. There is a price to almost everything we might decide to do. That’s life.
Life on the farm is not a paradise without stress and worry. But it is the best thing that ever happened to me and has made me secure in what people call the spiritual direction. It is a spiritual life in many ways, a love that seeks happiness, compassion, and love. God has nothing to do with it for me; it comes from my heart and soul.
The need for financial security caused me to abandon my dreams in favor of what was supposed to be sure rather than strive for what was best for me. I would rather be me now than me than that day I threw 70 people out of work.
I don’t have much money anymore but happiness and joy; almost all my fear is gone. I know of no one who ever became happy hating. Just look at Donald Trump.
I lived with animals in nature and with someone I loved dearly. I
I took Campbell’s advice. I follow my bliss along with my wife, who follows hers. I follow it every day. This binds Maria and me in a way that has left our marriage more secure by the year, while more than half of the marriages in the country fall apart. It was tough to love when I was unhappy and fearful.
The most common idea about security smothers other thoughts and aspirations. It keeps us up at night and creeps along during the day. We look over our shoulders all the time to prevent panic. We are prisoners of the new idea of being secure. That’s what security was doing to me.
This common idea of security is false, a myth, and often a lie. Anyone who expects to find security in an American corporation is blind. Just ask the tech workers who were getting free lunches and no longer have jobs.
For me, it placed my very life and left me dependent on other people and circumstances and decisions beyond my control or influence.
I don’t wish to seek security in the hands of Elon Musk, the new Rockefellers, Bernie Madoff, or any politician.
For me, there was only one way to shed this dark cloud hanging over me: Don’t bow to it, don’t believe it, don’t bet your life on it.
I’ve repeatedly learned that something else is always waiting for me when I want and need it.
Calamity and pain are as much a part of life as security has ever been for me.
A new understanding of security has brought confidence, growth, wisdom, and enlightenment. It reminds me of hate in a way. Hate hurts not only other people but also hurts me.
