Good and Bad are Illusions
I was just reading Seth Godin’s blog and came across a post which reminded me of an article I have on my to do list about the illusions we call “Good” and “Bad”.
In his Dancing with entropy Seth writes “There is no good, there is no bad, there’s just what happened.”
This is the theme of a longer article I am working on, and perhaps even a full chapter in my book. Things happen, always, all of the time, forever, and we only hurt ourselves by trying to make them fit into our subjective beliefs of good and bad, or right and wrong.
For instance missing a mortgage payment on the face of it is a bad thing. “Your home is a risk if you don’t keep up repayments.” But in my case it was a good thing.
When I realised half way through the month that come the 30th there simply would not be enough cash in our bank account to cover all the direct debits and standing orders that were due I sat down and cried. Then I picked myself up and did what I had never done before – monthly accounts. I took a long hard look at what money was coming in and what money was going out and started to do what I had until then only paid lip service to. I set a budget and stuck to it.
I have not missed a mortgage payment since and I am slowly chipping away at all my other debts, Car Loans, Credit Card etc. So missing that one payment made me improve my financial life. It gave me the wake up call I needed to actually do something and not just pretend to be addressing the problem.