Life is Not About Money
“What else is there?”
Back in the late 1980s, I took a semester off school to work in a political campaign in Mississippi. It was effectively an internship. At the time, I had political aspirations. When this opportunity opened up, I took it. I wanted to see what it was like “in the trenches” of a congressional campaign.
The experience gave me (a 19-year-old at the time) an eye-opening perspective of American politics, but that’s for another article.
While I worked on this campaign, I met a young man (he was in his late 20s at the time). I’ll call him Rick (not his real name). Rick was the quintessential “yuppie.” It was about that time that the term was coined, and he fit the description perfectly. He was young, handsome, fit, polished, upwardly mobile, and drove a BMW (similar to the AI rendering of an 80s BMW at the top of this article).
He was helping out in the campaign, and I got to spend a fair amount of time with him. During one of our conversations, I remember blurting out, “Rick, money is not the most important thing in life.”
I don’t remember exactly what he said to lead up to my declaration. This was almost 40 years ago. But I vaguely recall him pontificating about his future plans and dreams, and all of them revolving around money.
