How would money change your life?
There's an underrated Cyndi Lauper song called "Money Changes Everything." Yesterday's news story about a father's plot to murder his own son in order to keep $16 million in lottery winnings for himself drove this point home loud and clear. Stories like this illustrate the ways in which sudden wealth changes people for the worst, mucking up relationships and screwing up priorities. Is it any wonder that Roseanne went seriously down hill once the Connors were rich?
But money, as we all daydream about as we gaze out from our cubicle, can spell freedom. If you imagine yourself rolling in dough, you take away one of our oldest excuses in the book for not going after what we want: "Yeah, I'd visit Italy/go to cooking school/have a baby...if I had the money." Imagining that you've got millions burning a hole in your pocket can reveal what you really want out of life. Because after the shopping spree loses its thrill and free time seems less dazzling, you'll have the means to craft the ideal life for yourself on your own terms.
There are, of course, the obvious answers. You'd paid off your debt, you'd move to a nicer place, you'd spring for some fancy wheels. Sure, who wouldn't? But what would you do after that? For those who wouldn't want to just blow through their windfall like a high plains tornado, what would you do?
This is a game I like to play regularly, both alone when I'm staring out a window and with my friends over a beer. You learn a lot about the deepest desires of your loved ones when you ask this question. Someone wants to make movies, someone wants to write poetry in a farmhouse, someone wants to give every school an organic garden that the kids till themselves. I, myself, want to eat sausages in Munich and see wild animals in South Africa and just keep going and going.
Okay, so here's the clincher: playing the game isn't a way to answer the question and be done with it. Thinking about how money would change everything is a way to open a door to a life filled with more of what fulfills you. The nutty thing you sometimes realize is that you don't need to win the Power Ball to go back to school or start writing your novel. What you need is the awareness about what you really want and the time to make it reality. Time is money, of course. But sometimes the fiver you've got in your pocket is time enough to buy a cup of coffee and dream big.
So what would you do with millions? How would you change your life? Would you start that bakery, self-publish a book, take flying lessons? Spill!
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