Motivational Monday…

I started thinking about the ultimate motivator.  The thing that everyone wants at the end of the day…happiness.  If the word “money” flashed in your head as you read the first line, well, think again.  Don’t get me wrong, in my head my conversation with money goes a little like this:

Mr. Simms (money): Do you have any experience?

Robbie (me): No, sir, I have no experience, but I’m a big fan of money.   I like it, I use it, I have a little.  I keep it in a jar on top of my refrigerator.   I’d like to put more in that jar.  That’s where you come in.

Fine, so that isn’t really me, but I do use that line from The Wedding Singer.  You see, I want my kids to be happy.  However, I remind myself that more money does NOT equal more happiness contrary to popular belief.  You might be thinking about this, and how you would be happy if you could only do X,Y, and Z…which involves money.  I’m going to break off here with a short story.

Years ago, I taught at a private school for a brief time.  After seeing so much poverty, it was extremely difficult for me to work in this environment and see the peacocks walking around with their plumage on display.  The cars, the houses, the clothes, the donations of FAKENESS started to get to me like I was an extra in Jerry Maguire, but the sad thing was, this was their idea of real life.  One of the kids came to school in clothes that hardly fit him.  You might be surprised.  His hair was never combed, his shoes might be a little tight, and this, ohhh this, was something I knew about from my previous school.  His father was working on wife number five I believe.  The babysitter, I mean “nanny” brought him to school.  I was told that by all means necessary I had to be nice to this father as he was a big supporter source of money for the school.  Ha.  They really didn’t know who they were dealing with, did they?  I was nice.  Very, very nice, when I asked him about how much time he spent with his kids.  I was nice when I mentioned this child bought lunch every single day, and was still hungry, so perhaps he wasn’t getting enough at breakfast.  I was nice when I mentioned his work was sloppy as he did it all by himself and no one checked it.  And I was extremely nice, when I said, please read with your son every night.  After two years of being at this school, I could take it no longer.  I will have to tell you about the other things that went on at this school later, but needless to say, I realized that the kind of money these people had, the kind I will likely never see, did strange things to people.

So happiness my friends, is what I want you to focus on today.  But if you need money, I will leave you with this thought:

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