It was a random Thursday in the beginning of March just after noon, and I had a giant pretzel in my hand when an epiphany hit me with an almost nuclear force.
We’d just wandered out of a bizarre shopping center with giant letters spelling LOVE adorned with folded origami shapes, wandered further down to The Black Abbey, a medieval church that still holds service, and over to a castle that was built somewhere around the year 1200.
Something about it being noon, something about it being a Thursday, something about seeing people scurrying about Kilkenny, Ireland going to and from their lunch break from work, something about being 4300 miles away from home gave that epiphany the wings it needed to fly my way, and fly it did.
“We are so lucky,” I said to Sarah with a bite of pretzel in my mouth.
Fast forward 3 years and a little change, to this Summer. A poet, a photographer, and a musician stood talking on the sidewalk on a hot July day after filling Sarah’s bread shed with fresh sourdough loaves. The conversation drifted towards money, towards business, towards the unceasing hustle that’s required to even make it today.
Sarah and I (the poet & photographers) were talking about how hard it’s been to make ends meet as artists, how we’ve been hustling for 16 years. I told our friend, Brett (the musician) that the last time I’d had a boss was when I was 17 years old, and that it was at a discount golf store a friend of my Dad’s owned. We told him how we think every day how we probably should find a “real job” that paid “real money” like he did, something to fund our artistic endeavors, something to pay the bills and take at least some of the fear out of the equation.
Brett’s mood immediately changed, his entire face shifted shape. A guy that only smiles, laughs his way through conversations and just seems permanently casual, he got strangely serious and furrowed his brow. He got quiet, before saying:
“No. Please. Not you two, not ever. It’s not worth it. Fight it as long as you possibly can. Please.”
In truth, neither of us were actually serious, both just trying to impart that we completely understood why he had a ‘real job’ that helped fund his music; in truth, we both knew that we’d never be able to do this, especially me. I knew from a very early age I was not cut out for anything that remotely resembled a true, real, conventional job. I knew between my Autism and general distrust and abhorring of anything ‘normal’ when it comes to employment, I could only ever be my own boss, but still, sometimes it’s beyond hard. Sometimes it’s beyond scary trying to make ends meet, trying to support a family. That day, having that conversation, my mind immediately floated off and up and away and much more than half of me drifted back to Kilkenny, Ireland on a random Thursday, a couple of minutes after noon. To the epiphany that I had that day with such acute and aching accuracy that it stopped me mid-bite, that it made me cry when trying to explain to Sarah what I was feeling.
I looked around that day in Ireland and I felt the most overwhelming sense of gratitude that we were there. That we two adults stumbling towards middle-age, were standing in the middle of a medieval city that’s stood since 500 AD, ironically, the start of the actual Middle Ages, eating a pretzel on what, for so many others, is a work day. I thought of people back home waking up, eating a quick breakfast, and beginning their commute into a job. I pictured some sitting in offices, in cubicles, I pictured some in hospitals, in factories, in school buildings teaching children. I pictured some happy, some miserable, I pictured them all wishing (probably, but maybe not, I didn’t think this with any ego, only sincere and abiding gratitude and appreciation) that they could be where we were. Eating a salted giant pretzel whilst wandering along the cobbled streets, the river walk beside that castle that’s stood over 800 years. I thought not of the money we weren’t making, the bills we still had to pay, I thought not of all we couldn’t afford to buy. I just thought of what we had, what we’d built, what we’d traded to get there.
When I came back to my current senses, when I allowed the glaze to wash off and over my eyes, I looked back at Brett and agreed. I smiled, felt a strange heavy ache for what he was saying, and said thank you.
The things we trade for money, I realized, shapes the lives we will live, the people we will become.
I experienced, again whilst sweating in the July heat, another burst of epiphanic understanding. (Did you know epiphany, comes from the Greek word “to reveal?” How much sense does that make!?) Here’s what I realized:
I would rather make the barest minimum of money, the absolute smallest amount required to get by, if it means the bonus that I receive with it is this life we have created. If we get all we get.
I would—and continue to do this—trade all the financial security in the world for the routines Sarah and I have carved out of the marble of Normality that we are surrounded by. I’d trade it all for the workouts together every day at 10:56am, for the apples we eat side by side in Adirondack chairs on our deck after lunch each day. For the ability to be home every day the kids come home from school over these last 10 years, the chance to watch them at their hundreds and hundreds of track meets, for the ability to be standing beside The Black Abbey on a Thursday afternoon next to the woman I love more than anything on earth, eating a mediocre pretzel, and listening to the sounds of life around me.
I know there is one massive exception to this rule, and that truly all Sarah and I have ever wanted to do was make enough money to give most of it away, but I saw that what so many trade is the little bits of joy and beauty, the moments of connection that waft by as they chase the accumulation of more, as the Sisyphean task of having enough continues to knock that boulder down that hill and ask them to push it once again to the top. I saw that so often people give away their time, their energy, their peace, their calm, not just to make those ends meet, but to exceed those ends in every possible way. More pennies mean more cars, nicer clothes, bigger boats, second houses that won’t know your presence long enough to become homes. So often, we sacrifice what could be for what we believe should be based on the movies we watch, the articles we read, the advertisements we’re served, the Joneses we fight to keep up with.
Here’s a truth: Sarah and I get by, but honestly, not by much. I’ve seen a slow decline of support for this place, and as silly as it sounds, every lost paid subscriber makes it just a little bit harder to invest the time, energy, and love, that I do into this Signal Fire. We aren’t booking nearly as many weddings as we used to, probably the inflation, the economy, the shifting dynamics of young relationships, probably a thousand things we don’t even know about, but all of this adds up to making things scary for us a lot more often than we’d like.
But…But…I wouldn’t trade this life for anything, for any amount of money or security or even the abating of that fear. It’s not worth it, not for me, not for us. We are together, we do what we love, we make what I firmly believe we’re here on this planet to make. We meet people all over the world and become friends, we help, and we help, and we help, and we try so hard to be better versions of ourselves every passing day. Year by year, we continue to be together, we spend all our days and nights in each others presence and feel nothing but appreciation, but wonder, at how we are able to do so. To live this life.
For us, it’s worth so much more. So very much more.
A lot of these Signal Fire essays are born from epiphanies, some I know precisely where they will go, how they will spin and turn and end up. Some, however, are like this one, and I don’t even know what it is I’m truly trying to say, I just know I want to say it, that I need to say it, just in case someone out there feels the same, just in case someone needs to read it.
Sometimes the words we say have a shape, and that shape is an exact copy to the negative space in someone else. Sometimes they are the last piece in a puzzle they’ve been working so hard to complete, that sneaky little final bit of cardboard that was hiding, stuck on the underside of the lid, all this time.
Maybe this is that for you, maybe not. Maybe you love the cars you were fortunate enough to buy, the boats that bring you the lakes, the clothes that make you feel like the beautiful person you already are but needed reminding of, and if so, I am so happy for you, too. For me, I have always wanted to be rich enough to give everything but what I need for bills away, the rest hasn’t mattered, but I understand that is not the case for everyone else. This is ok. This piece is not a judgment on the way anyone else lives, it’s just a statement on slap-in-the-face realization that hit me that day standing in Kilkenny, and again this summer as I stood and talked to Brett, as I listened to him talk about time and how hard it is to carve enough out to chase his passion, his music. What he’s traded along the way.
I think a lot of us have felt very poor, for a very long time, and I think we’re maybe all starting to realize it’s never been about the money we were told it was, not really. I think it’s always been more about what we’ve traded to chase it, what we’ve had to swap, and I think we’re realizing we maybe, just maybe, got the raw end of the deal.
Maybe this, maybe so. For me, for us, I’ll fight for this life as long as I possibly can. I’ll stay this course, I’ll work my hardest, I’ll hope for the best.
I might be poor, but dammit, I’ll never feel it. Not once, not for a moment.
I hope you don’t either.
A lifetime traded
for more money in the bank.
This is why we’re poor.
Song of the Week
SOME things are worth trading money for. This book is one, I swear to the great green jellyfish in the sky.
