Is money the root to all evil?

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By Roland Michel Tremblay (about the author) Page 1 of 3 page(s)

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For OpEdNews: Roland Michel Tremblay - Writer

I do speak for the people, for a change. It has been said throughout history that money and religion were the root to all evil. It would be hard to deny it, both are responsible for most wars in this world. They are both about control and power, though they are both presented to us as our salvation. Well, are they our salvation? This is a message of hope, that you do not require money to survive, or to achieve your dreams.

I suppose you could have a completely different point of view about what money really means, depending on how much you suffered in your childhood and later on in life for a lack of it, or how much freedom you enjoyed because there was always plenty of money around you.

My opinion is that money does not really matter, depending on how you truly feel about it. For example, if it stops you from achieving whatever you feel you should achieve, then you've got it wrong.

There is no reason why money, or a lack of it, should ever stop anyone from achieving his or her own dreams. If you feel otherwise, you need a reality check, you need to learn to live, you need to learn what life is all about. Just take risks, there are always solutions over the horizon.

It has been my observation that people who always had plenty of money appeared quite peaceful, happy, laid back, and even beautiful. It's like, they never had anything to worry about for most of their life, and it seems to show.

On the opposite side, where there was a lack of money, it was a living hell. Shouting, fighting, arguing, compromises, rage and anger. You could easily add an ABH (Actual Bodily Harm) or a GBH (Grievous Bodily Harm) to the mix, it would not be unexpected. Like if that sense of injustice could make you permanently ugly and incapable of thinking about anything else but your own misery.

This is called the path to self-destruction. We are reaching the root to all of this, what we are all about. It is my new found duty to change all that, to show some sort of a light, a way out. There is a way out, even if at first, it will not seem that way.

Peacefulness and happiness never come from poor families or failures. Genius, yes, it can. You are born genius whether you are rich or poor, and hopefully you have a good chance to use it to your own advantage and become rich one day out of it. But peacefulness, happiness, contentment? You can only hope to discover those once you're rich, if it is not already too late by then.

There is a point of no return where you can never be happy no matter what, as if one could get used to be miserable and could never be anything else. Pessimistic one day, pessimistic for a lifetime. Miserable for too many years, misery for the rest of your life. You can only hope to find what you expect in life. And so, you can reach a point where what you will only be able to see, is a nightmare with no way out.

I am damaged beyond repair, I will never now find happiness in this lifetime. If I were to become rich tomorrow morning, I'm afraid, I'll never be a new man, I would still be the miserable human being I am now. I would also be so cynical about it, I would be convinced that it would never last, and so, I could only possibly be rich for a little while, and then go back to normal, a life where everything is about money, every single argument, every fight, every sentence.

People are so obsessed with money, with getting out of their misery, that they can't sleep at night anymore. Their dreams are larger than the universe, and at the end of it there is only disillusion. Is the only solution left, is to listen to Nine Inch Nails' new albums, and feel something in between? Between feeling reaching some sort of freedom, or actually accomplishing something towards it? That would not do. You are significant, you can be as significant as you feel you should be. You would be surprised, you can get heard, you do make a difference!

Thinking otherwise, is the result of the capitalism system we grew in. You are reminded every time you open a magazine or watch the TV. Happiness is only possible when there's plenty of money around. Freedom, or the feeling of it, without the finance to back it up, is a utopia.

Never mind that I have been at the height of my happiness when I had to count my pennies to buy a bag of chips, or crisps as they are called on this side of the Atlantic. I won't go into my personal misery when I arrived in London 15 years ago. God I was happy then, but it had more to do with the fact that for the first time I was free to do whatever I wanted, free to go out every night in Central London, even though I could not afford the three pints of beer required for me to get off this planet.

I was never affected by money, the lack of it, or having a lot of it. There are always solutions presenting themselves when you drop everything to seek adventure and exploration. I suffered though from the people around me who could not think about anything else. It drives their mood, their whole existence.

I always thought that having money was some sort of an obstacle, because the risk of losing it is too great, and so you do not take any risk anymore. When you don't have any money, you have nothing to lose, you can leave tomorrow morning for Los Angeles or Paris, like I did before, and not even think twice about it.

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