There is beauty in the dust motes that swirl in the sun, in sitting in bed crying over your favourite book, in dreaming about all the possibilities that your freedom affords you.

Money: we can’t live without it, but I sure as hell don’t want to live for it. It’s the age long question, do you work to live, or do you live to work?

I just finished watching Blue Jasmine, directed by Woody Allen, it was nominated for quite a few academy awards, and intense would be an understatement. It’s the type of film that uses juxtaposition to make you feel uncomfortable as well as intrigued as the protagonist Jasmine goes around ruining the lives of those around her while simultaneously destroying her own.

In spite of the way that Jasmine is presented as being the one responsible for all of the misery in the film, I’m not sure that I feel like placing the blame entirely on her. (Spoilers ahead…) So, yes she ‘looked the other way’ when it came to her husband’s not so legal business deals, and yes she called the FBI on him when he told her he was in love with another woman and wanted a divorce. But its easy to forget in our patriarchal mind-set that this is a woman who, vanity and self absorption aside, has been humiliated by her husband who has been cheating on her for years. The crux of it is that everyone in Jasmine’s ridiculous world of wealth already knew and failed to mention it to her, and on top of all of that, when confronted about it her husband pulled the classic, ‘you’re crazy’ in an attempt to worm out of it. Thus Jasmine, ultra classy, annoying, socialite, is cast out of her pretend life and into a harsh reality that she cannot cope with. She is forced into living with her sister, who is a working class mother of two, and lives in a cute apartment in San Francisco. I realised after I thought that I’d rather live in the sister’s small and quirky apartment than one of Jasmine’s fancy mansions, that I really don’t want to be wealthy. I wouldn’t turn away a million pounds for anything but I’m talking about wealthy as a life style, being a lady who lunches, a socialite.

I’ve not grown up with a lot of money, I was raised in a single parent household with my mother who got a degree, worked a job and took care of two kids all at the same time, needless to say we never have had very much money. In spite of this we never wanted for anything and I loved my childhood so much that not a day goes by that I don't wish I could go back and just stay a seven year old forever, I had a freedom I never stop yearning for. Now as a student I spend more time living off my overdraft than anything else, and it makes me realise that money isn’t even real. I’m probably making no sense but stay with me… This is a world in which money is absolutely necessary. The drive for earning money is ingrained in our psyche, we’re taken to school, we plan for university, and then we get a job. From age five we’re striving to make a living, to have a career. But what if it’s all just an illusion, Jasmine’s whole life fell apart overnight, her fancy houses and clothes rendered obsolete. Her fabulous connections, and party skills are useless in her new life because she never learned how to be truly happy. She believed that having a shit load of money and a lavish lifestyle would make her happy, but it was all just an illusion.

I can honestly say I’ve never been happier than I was when I was a kid and we had nothing. I would rather be up at night worrying about the bills than worrying about the ways that Mrs next-door’s fat ugly son is better than my own, because that to me would be the biggest failure. When the day comes that you stop finding joy in simple things, when you stop seeing the beauty in a cosy home filled with sunshine and love, when the colours of your fancy kitchen/diner is all you have to worry about, that’s when you know you’ve lost your way. There is beauty in the dust motes that swirl in the sun, in sitting in bed crying over your favourite book, in dreaming about all the possibilities that your freedom affords you. There is no freedom in money; sure it can buy you a ticket to wherever you want to go, it can buy you people’s attention, but at what personal cost? Maybe you’re free to go wherever you want, but your soul is not free. It’s wrapped up in a paper bill and that’s meaningless. 

Its important for me to note that I’m not so cynical as to believe that anyone with a comfortable bank balance is automatically a douche, and I want to earn enough money to be an independent woman but I sincerely hope that money never rules me. That if the day ever – god forbid – comes when money controls my life I’ll have the guts to bail and move into a tent in the wild to live with the Buddhists. All joking aside, there is a fine line between being sensible and delusional, I’m not an idiot, I know that in order to live comfortably you need to make money and I intend to. My irritation comes from the fact that tiny children are forced into a world of constructed reality; they are shaped and moulded into robots, who may go on to make millions, but will be slaves to the system. Children should be out rolling around in mud, chasing their dreams, free and wild and enjoying life. Young adults should be given time to figure out what the hell they want to do for the rest of their lives, and society needs to slow down and allow people to be the way they want to be without being judged and to live freely... I seriously hope that I'll always prefer Jasmine's sister's life than hers, that I'll always appreciate having something happy and comfortable and most importantly that I'll always hold on with both hands to my freedom. 

And that’s my highly pretentious rant about money and life over.