ENOUGH Jewish Personal Financial Life Planning™ vs The MORE AS CERTAINTY Fallacy

Readers - yes, this entry has a decided Judaic orientation....

ENOUGH  Jewish Personal Financial Life Planning™ vs

The MORE AS CERTAINTY Fallacy

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.

 It takes a genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction

E.F. Schumacher

Per The Tanya, desire is the result of Lack (manifested as If Only)

            And the underlying tactic of the Lack/ If Only desire sequence is acquisition (Cain in Hebrew) and its derivative tactic: MORE 

Thus, implicationof  “If Only” is:  “then” (then all will be okay). And ‘more’ often than not, then requires even MORE .

            Thus: the cascade:

            LACK

                        IF ONLY (Desire)

                                    ACQUISITION

                                    MORE, MORE, MORE

                                   

Initially,  the palliative MORE may temporarily result in gain (pleasure) or avoidance of loss (pain). But inherently for MORE or even being ‘on the road’ to MORE – there is never ENOUGH. Intrinsically, MORE  seeks the ever elusive  Sisyphusian illusion of CERTAINTY (2) & its siblings PERMANENCE & CONTINUITY.  Further MORE’s fundamental belief is that MORE is MORE is always better. (Ironically, MORE, Better, Now has a habit ((in time)) of becoming Worse, Less, Latter!)

Thus,  the cascade of lack, if only, acquisition, more, then – taken to its illogical illusory conclusion - is for the purpose of attaining ‘certainty’ (and NOW! Damnit!).

And yet, while No is till Thursday, Never till next Friday, Forever till next Sunday the only certain things are death, taxes, and that  per President Reagan “no one washes a rental car before they return it, we continue to Quixotic quest of MORE for CERTAINTY. (1)

CERTAINTY:  unconditionally guaranteed UNCERTAIN.

Man plans, God laughs (2)

Yiddish proverb

            So if there are no guarantees – no certainty (save death, taxes, and not washing a rental car), and if, especially for the 45 year old + - the biggest concern is the fear of outliving their money – the  MORE addiction is due to the fear of not having ENOUGH. How ‘then’ does one minimize & manage this anxiety while dealing with the second largest concern: finding meaning IN one’s life– other than resorting to the comfortable altered state of the  habituated  MORE compulsion – The MORE –ifest Destiny (3)?

ENOUGH JEWISH PERSONAL FINANCIAL LIFE PLANNING™:

Healing personal financial anxiety,

Aligning & puttin’ money in its place (ENOUGH to live on),

To connect (Tzavta), elevate & transcend to one’s significance & assignment

What one is meant to do (ENOUGH to live for) & meant to be

            In contrast to the ‘altered’ state of MORE Personal Financial Planning, ENOUGH Jewish Personal Financial Planning is for an “ALTAR-ed” state.

In Hebrew, there is no word that is synonymous with God connoting MORE However, the third of fourth reference to God in Genesis in the Torah is the name Shaddai. Shaddai literally means, ‘God, God Almighty, God all sufficient, ENOUGH! And per Rabbi Meir Tamari in With All My Possessions, Judaism is a culture of Enough.(4)

            It is near impossible to suppress let alone eliminate the culturally reinforced MORE addiction imperative. Per the words of Rabbi Henoch Dov ‘you can’t get rid of shtick’ or those of an old flame ‘you can’t get rid of your insecuriorities – only manage them.’ Thus, the MOREon MORE compulsion, at best, can only be subdued and limited given 100,000+ messages of dissatisfaction (not enoughness) and if only (again not enoughness) in our culture (in advertising etc.) per year.

There are financial tools to manage subdue MORE to calculate what is ENOUGH. However, without acknowledgment that all is derivative (some would say faith) there is a tautological recycling MORE  as there is never ENOUGH to provide CERTAINTY from ‘the uncertain’ and ‘risk’ (a four letter word). Since, when the game is over, both the king and the pawn go back in the same box, essentially everything is on lease per Leviticus’ (‘this land is mine you are but wayfarers’) (5) That said, spiritual faith & acknowledgment is beyond the scope of this brief exposition.

There is a tool which we have and most fail to acknowledge (hod in Hebrew) let alone have ‘faith in’: our own adaptability and resourcefulness to, in the immortal words of Boker Bob ‘to figure it out.’

Currencies come and go. Thus, the panacea MORE of the ‘current currency’ offers no solution as it too may be devalued tomorrow. And yet, whether it be a have, a have not, a have a little want some more, a have less – each has had trials – and ‘figured it out.’ And yet we give little or no value to the our own adaptability and resourceful asset. In essence, we give little value to faith in ourselves especially those who continue to accumulate when they have more than ENOUGH often sacrificing what they need for what they don’t need.

There is never ENOUGH for one who doesn’t believe it his or her ENOUGHness (adaptability and resourcefulness) to figure it out.

With a foundation of faith in one’s beliefs and oneself, meaning IN one’s life adds perseverance as ‘when one has the WHY’ the HOW is easier such that ENOUGH becomes a connecting tool (da’at for Kabbalah fans)

As for this recovering fee only Jewish Personal Financial Life Planner it faithfullycomes down to this:

In God & Dog I Trust, all others pay cash.

 (“And,” as Rabbi Hillel stated, “ the rest is commentary.”)

CHEWish on This© & Go ‘Figure’ It Out

(Enough to Live On, Enough to Live on)

1. In no way does this exposition devalue ‘keeping one’s word,’ let alone ‘being there’ keeping one’s commitment. Word and Being There goes to authenticity and character of one’s sense of self – which is all we take with us beyond this life.
2. Man plans, God laughs, Dogs pee – Schwartz, professional ‘planner’
3. Underneath in the quest for certainty is the fear of physical extinction as if that is the self – regardless of protestations to the contrary about soul – as in the IMMORTAL words of comedian Timmie Rogers, ‘everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.’
4. TOWARD THE ECONOMICS OF ENOUGH (subtitle)…Judaism’s culture of ENOUGH…Rabbi Meir Tamari Update Preface (2014) to 1998 edition of With All Your Possessions
5. The question of Owning UP to vs Ownership – being the Good Guardian (Shomer Tov) has been dealt with in previous entries.