The Bridge #87
in which we start to look at money from multiple perspectives
Hello
Welcome to The Bridge!
A quick word about the photo above:
It’s a part of Piazza San Marco (St Mark’s Square) in Venice, a rather magical (and touristic) location.
If you’ve never been, as I hadn’t until quite recently, then watch the film A Haunting in Venice (à la Agatha Christie) and eat dinner at an authentic Italian restaurant. Then have some gelato. It’s very nearly the same thing. Venice is a brand now. & it’s beautiful.
Something Serious
Billionaires are out of touch and much too powerful (by Rebecca Solnit)
Maybe we don’t need the headline to know that billionaires are out of touch and much too powerful, but it is worth repeating. Because sometimes the relatively wealthy (people who own a home or people who own a business or even those who are millionaires) can falsely equate themselves with the ultra-wealthly, as if the values are aligned. Well, first of all, I hope not!
Accumulating wealth for comfort and safety should have a limit, shouldn’t it?
At some point, though, the world’s obsession with money can really get to your head, and you keep accumulating until you become a celebrity for it! It’s ridiculous. Bill Gates, for example, is not someone we should admire and respect, even if he’s a relatively generous philanthropist. He is not putting his money in the right places to effect real change. Let’s shift our attention elsewhere, and change our politics.
What if instead life were like a game of Rummy?
(first one to get rid of all your money, with the most beautiful results, wins!)
Something Interesting
Ashh Blackwood created this song for social media. (not everything on TikTok is trash.) Later she expanded the song to be a bit longer: “You’re Gonna Be Okay.”
It’s like a modern-day twist on “Three Little Birds” — an easy-to-remember mantra to soothe the anxious mind.
The song serves also as a helpful reminder, tools are tools. We can distract ourselves endlessly with social media. We can fall into terrible traps (imposter syndrome, excess consumerism, smartphone addiction, brainwashed troll polarization).
& we can also discover beautiful little nooks, cozy and reassuring, with kind-hearted people creating helpful things to remind us, “You’re Gonna Be Okay.”
We sing:
It is loud in my mind today /
I’m jumbled up, I cannot think straight /
No matter how many steps I take /
Everything feels so far away /
So I’ll pop out my chest /
Take a deep breath /
I’m gonna be OK /
Yes, it’s loud in my mind /
I’ll take my time /
I’m going to be OK /
Something Fun
Once upon a time, there lived a man named Roy, born into a weathly Jewish family just outside NYC. He was orphaned at the age of 12 and moved to Paris at 20. He stayed there for five years painting, visiting museums and making new friends.
Then he learned, reading a biography of a famous artist (now-dead), that the artist had lived in poverty while alive, even though today his name is known the world around! (That artist was Vincent Van Gogh.)
Roy decided that he would use money to support artists during their lifetimes. He returned to NYC and even though the stock market crashed, he played it smart, rode the waves, made a fortune, and then started buying the paintings of living artists, promoting them to museums and art dealers, and … thanks to him, modern art bloomed (and the artists lived well too).
Roy died at the ripe old age of 107, having truly made the world more colorful. Thanks, Neuberger!
Something to Practice
What if you were to save $50 a month for one year,
then donate or invest that money ($600 at that point)
into something you really really care about?
How would you feel afterwards? Can you imagine how you would feel?
JPC ❤️