Among the most basic of our necessities are: a roof over our head, food for our bellies, and procreation to assure our species in the future. If this was all we needed, many of us would be ready to rock, but not necessarily rockin’.
Think for a moment about your own situation. If you have a roof over your head to keep protected from the elements, food to eat, and sex to entertain you, what else could you possibly need? In order to have these three necessities completely covered, we need financial intelligence for the first two, and emotional intelligence for the last.
In addition to these three basic necessities, what are some of the others we must satisfy?
Clothes to cover us, friends to laugh with, family to make us feel good, and love to sprinkle over everything we do, are also important. In the case of these needs, we also need financial intelligence to manage the first and emotional intelligence to manage the others.
If we think about life, in its most basic sense, what more do we need than a roof, food, sex, clothes, friends, family, and love?
Nevertheless, we have been conditioned to “need” much more, including some of the following:
- A better telephone, even though the one we have still works
- A television with a flat screen measured in feet instead of inches
- A watch which costs the equivalent of small towns in many places
- A tablet with the latest technology, and of course worldwide free wifi
- A red Ferrari that can go 180 mph, though that’s way over the speed limit
- A big house with a huge pool and ten extra rooms for all your family and friends
Just to be clear, I’m not saying these things are undesirable, I ask only this:
What price you are willing to pay for something not 100% necessary?
For one moment, let me play the “Devil’s Advocate” regarding some of our “Basic Needs”.
- When you think about it, a “stupid” phone makes the same call as a “smart” one
- A television from the last century shows the same image, though a bit blurry
- An ordinary watch tells the same time as one much more expensive
- The computer you’ve had forever still connects, though it is slow
- Pubic transportation is available to take us about anywhere
- Having a roof over our head is a wonderful blessing
To make sure I explain myself in my message to you; any objective, material, spiritual, or otherwise CAN be valid. In fact, having in a mansion with a huge pool, a red Ferrari, the latest tablet, an expensive watch, a television covering the wall, and the greatest telephone, must be very nice. But, once again, I ask:
What is the cost you are willing to pay for all this?
Everything has a cost, though it is not always paid in money. The cost of outstanding success in the business world, has cost more than one his family and his marriage. The cost of trickery and deceit, has cost many others years in jail. The cost of spending all of our time with our family, and not working, could also mean our family does not have enough to eat.
It’s a question of delicate balance we must strike between work and play. Ideally, the best thing we can all do is to make our work our play, and that way, we never have work again. On our own way, the best we can do, day after day, is to value ourselves for WHO we are, rather than WHAT we’ve got, and give it our very best shot.
Rob McBride ∞
LL IV 9