Via Ed Cone I just read a piece by Dave Winer called Transcendental Money that he wrote five years ago.  This excerpt will give you the gist:

Now I can define my term. Transcendental money is the amount of
money required to transcend time. It makes just enough money to satisfy
all your reasonable needs, wants and desires, but no more. You can do
the math yourself, factor in the cost of living where you live, or want
to live, it’s just arithmetic to determine what your transcendental
money number is.

Once you have your real number, the true nature of money reveals
itself. No matter how much you have, you never feel secure. Sorry, I
didn’t make the rules, have a talk with your god, or your dog, or
whoever you turn to for spiritual guidance. The unhappy ending for all
of us is death, we all lose this game, there’s no winning strategy, and
no matter how much money you attain, you can never feel secure, unless
you trust nothingness, because that’s where we’re all headed.

So money offers a chance, in its absence, to find a happier purpose to
life. I believe that no matter how much money you have it can’t bring
you that secure "I Will Exist Forever" feeling that our hearts all feel
we deserve.

Now, having no money certainly offers a chance to postpone living until
you get the money. I’ve been there, done that, got the prize. But I’ve
seen people with huge piles of money-sweating money who believe that if
they just double their fortune they will feel truly secure. I can’t
help these people, but I can help people who are truly poor.

I read this at an opportune time.  I’m getting ready to head to D.C. to join with some of my fraternity brothers (Iota Xi chapter of Sigma Chi) to help out a brother who’s hit some hard times.  I also know someone going through a divorce and navigating some rough economic waters, literally having a hard time paying the bills and putting food on the table.  So money, or the lack there of, is definitely on my mind.

Part of me feels guilty.  Why, I wonder, am I so caught up in the day-to-day of my own existence, worried about things that are so petty in comparison to the problems that some friends are facing?  I know, I know, it’s human nature, but that knowledge does not alleviate the guilt and quite honestly I don’t think the guilt is misplaced.

Far too much of life is spent in pursuit of more; more money and the supposed security that more money brings.  Mind you I’m not arguing that money is not important. It most definitely is critical to our every day existence just as healthy crops and ample game were critical to our ancestors.  What I’m saying is that even when we have enough money we don’t perceive it as being enough so we spend an inordinate amount of time seeking more. 

Reading Winer’s piece it occured to me that he was on to something.  Money, or at least having it, truly is transcendent.  Most of us have experienced cycles in our life when we have less or more money.  When we are in a down cycle money is our means for survival and when we are in an up cycle it is merely the means through which we get ourselves more stuff, more vacations, etc.  Of course if we don’t control ourselves during the up cycle then we can quickly spend our way into a down cycle, rinse and repeat.

And then there’s the unknown that the future holds.  We’ve all known people who fall on hard times, sometimes by their own hand and sometimes by fate (failing health, natural disaster, etc.).  The uncertainty of the future causes us to feel the need to stockpile money "just in case."  Of course that’s prudent, but only to a point.  Figuring out what that point is, when enough is enough, is critical to being able to take the focus away from day-to-day economic gain and placing it where it belongs, on day-to-day giving.