Marquez T Woods Feb 9th, 2021
What’s the saying?
“Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it does buy freedom.”
That’s a little misleading. It isn’t just money that supposedly buys you freedom; it’s Fuck You Money.
Fuck You Money: The exact amount of money required to tell an individual or organization to go fuck themselves without facing repercussions.
Fuck You Money is an antagonistic definition of freedom. We tend to think of freedom only in the context of breaking oppression — something on the other side of the fence.
But what would we all do if we hopped over that fence?
What desires dance on the other side of Fuck You Money?
We do follow some sense of Maslov’s Hierarchy:
Survival first.
Then, we salivate for infinite euphorias and a departure from the responsible efforts we’re tied to.
The variables are different for everyone, but the essence is the same. We aspire to materialism, lust, and laziness in our dreams of freedom.
Maybe you’re the exception to the rule.
But if you’re like most, you have equated freedom with a fantasy of luxury and convenience.
How free are you really if you’re anchored to fantasies? In all likelihood, you don't have Fuck You Money yet. So, even in your imagination, the most unrestricted place in this world, you are still locked on to hollow ideals.
How can you be free in reality if you are not free in your mind?
Let's face it, the fantasy of Fuck You Money is a pair of diamond-adorned handcuffs.
What’s worse, they’re handcuffs you put on your own wrists.
Fantasies can be dangerously addictive, like loving someone for who they might become and not who they are.
Or…
Fantasies can be an avenue to addiction, like the ideal situation (perhaps Fuck You Money) becoming so painfully out of reach that escapism is the only numbing agent.
Addiction is the antithesis of freedom.
Hopefully and maybe regrettably, you’ve realized that you are anchored to some fantasy in this way.
Maybe you’re not as free as you thought. Maybe what you’ve been striving for all these years is to entrench yourself deeper into a charade.
Maybe you’ll try to break away from your fantasies, from your addictions. Maybe you’ll hide from them in your work. Maybe you’ll vainly deny that your work is just an avenue to your soulless fantasies.
Eventually, those fantasies that you're turning from will begin to feel like the police banging on your door.
Every day.
Without a warrant.
They are blatant in their attempt to irritate you into action. They incessantly knock, knowing they cannot enter without your say-so, and you exhaust yourself ignoring their persistence. Hoping they will lose interest in you.
Hoping you will lose interest in them.
Maybe you’re the exception to the rule.
But if you’re like most, they never need a battering ram to enter.
You let them walk right in.
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