Money is a construct.

It took me over 30 years to really understand this. The pursuit of wealth had always been an unintentional one for me. I knew that I wasn’t born into it, I knew that people who had it seemed better off, and so I oriented my entire life around the pursuit of career success without much investigation.

For a while - mostly in my early thirties - I had a one dimensional understanding of wealth. To a large extent, this perspective was shared by a large majority of mid-career millennials like myself at time. Somewhere between 2015 and now, being wealthy became the opposite of aspirational. In 2021, The Guardian shared a confusing report that looked at shifting attitudes across Gen-Z and millennial populations in the UK around the economy. Nearly 80% of millennial and Gen Z Britons blamed capitalism for the housing crisis, while 75% believe the climate emergency is “specifically a capitalist problem” and 72% backed sweeping nationalization.

At the same time, popular culture was increasingly damning the wealthiest groups in western society. HBO’s critical and commercial darling ‘Succession’ spent four seasons - about 37 hours straight - scooping up every single award for repeatedly making the point that billionaires do not deserve what they have. The 2022 satirical black comedy “Triangle of Sadness” took great pleasure in throwing a group of out-of-touch passengers on a luxury cruise ship around a cabin in their own excrement and vomit. And AOC literally wore a dress with the words “Tax the Rich” spray painted across the back to the Met Gala.

Like many of my peers, I started to wonder if buying into the pursuit of wealth was an indicator that something was actually wrong with me. But as I get closer to 40, I understand that it’s simply more complicated than that. 

Growing up, my family had next to nothing. We couldn’t always pay the hydro bill, and I still remember gerry-rigging some wires to create a completely makeshift antenna to plug into the single television we owned in our living room to get whatever tv channel we got. Wealth was a complete mystery to me. What I was missing wasn’t just a basic understanding of how currency, investing and the economy work. I didn’t realize that we were completely starved of the luxuries that come with the time and space that wealth affords you.

I started working at 11. I did a pretty inconsistent job of delivering newspapers to my neighbours on the five or six blocks that surrounded our semi-detached home in Oshawa, Ontario. It was the only way I could afford to do anything with my friends who typically had more financial stability than we did. I developed a good work ethic very early on, which I’m grateful for today, but I didn’t have the freedom to be truly creative, or explore different pathways than the most conservative one available: go to university, figure out how to pay for it, get a secure job, by a house and so on.

Now, as I sit in a different phase of life, having accomplished things I didn’t know were possible as an underage paperboy - I understand that the pursuit of wealth is a necessary evil if you want to be comfortable within the structures that we live in. It’s not all bad. Contributing to society is a useful practice. But in the rearview mirror I can see so many different versions of my life were we not collectively trying to figure out how to make ends meet in my household.

The value of money is invented. But the time and space that we get by having it is incredibly real. Financial security gives us the ability to leave toxic situations, take care of our selves and our loved ones and for some - creates space for creativity. It may well be a relentless pursuit - the state of the economy is more unpredictable than it has ever been in my lifetime. But as it stands, wealth and wellbeing are still inextricably linked in the west, and it may be the best and only way for us to find the room we require to experience as much joy as we can in this mysterious existence.