Tuesday night, it was arranged from my Benefactor to stay here overnight. He knew I was going to go to Times Square Church that evening and he decided to give me one of his timeshare nights to save me a late night trip back to Paramus. Crazy, right? After getting exiled from NYC, out of the blue, I get to spend a luxury night back there.
My Benefactor, like most people with money, downplays his wealth. Fact is, he is one of the many US citizens (maybe world citizens) who was born to the right people. Within himself, there is very little financial redeemability skills. No, I mean it.
He doesn't pay his own bills. He does not understand how to bookkeep. He cannot navigate through the internet. He inadvertantly turned on a shower/sauna function the other night in his bathroom, and called 911 as a result. This man is a pure wreck.
Due to his genetics and parental example, however, such a man caught enough values and had enough financial cushions that he could make some rudimentary investments while working at the Post Office and accumulate some money. Then of course, a parent dies and he gets several buttloads of money deposited into his account with which to re-invest in this house and stocks. And one of the chief reasons he invited me to live here was to watch his cats for him when he goes on binges and overnight weekends with his ladyfriend, and to be a live-counselor to help him kick his addictions and also help him with the above mentioned stuff. (Oh it was just a crash-bang party at 2:00am trying to calm him down while his shower was innocently hissing.)
You'd think he was enviable, but you would not want his life. He self-diagnosed himself as having Asperger's autism, as the professionals did for his son. His ex-wife, his son's mother, has a physiological mental illness but is functional (I spoke to her the other afternoon, and this is what she told me. She is not much different than she was when I knew her 15 years ago).
Having money is sooooooooo not the end-all and be-all to happiness. It's so crazy to be told this and never really believe it until you see it. In the absence of things, all you ever know is the ache of not having them. Are we destined to only learn lessons by experience? Is the alternative only to bear a hunger and longing that, by definition, can never really be satisfied? Which in turn means that we are insatiable happiness addicts. Insatiable because no matter what state we find ourselves in, there's always something else we think we need to make us happy. Just ask Paris or Jennifer or Brad or The Donald or Renee and her country singer.
Or just ask me.
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