Staring into the middle

What is financial security?

It is the condition where a person's monetary needs are met for a sufficiently large amount of time despite loss of employment. In the extreme case, it is exemplified by the person never having to work a day in his life and yet being able to pursue his desires. 

For me, securing this elusive condition has been the goal of my life for the past ten years or so. And long before I was consciously pursuing this objective, society in general was unwittingly or deliberately preparing me for that very goal. Being born into a middle class family with limited means, but with enough access to education, put me in a fairly solid platform. The only thing in the way were the other millions of individual with equal or better footing.

While I was in school, I used to compete with other kids simply because of the bragging rights. Well before I even knew what financial security meant, I was taught to be jealous of "that kid" who came first in class. It may even be natural for us to want to be the best, but there was no dearth of social cues and censures to help develop this form of modified "penis-envy". 

Year later, I still find myself drifting into that way of thinking. Grades are replaced by physical assets, pay, rates of returns on investments etc. There was however a moment of epiphany that I experienced several years back. I had competed for years, done things I thoroughly hated, (studying for example) , gotten some rewards, and yet felt exactly the same. Perhaps I did feel some sense of positive accomplishment by the time I was in my mid-twenties, but still I was far from achieving the hallowed goal.

I am now in a place where I find it clearly self defeating to be locked in a struggle to secure the entire remainder of one's life. The present slips away and as you look back you find that there was little your quest for security bought for you.

The recent debates surrounding the fiscal cliff in the US, brought back to memory some rant I had blogged   a few years back. The rant was largely about social class and my grappling with my mediocrity in the larger scheme of things. The legislative choice to burden those earning 450K or more also attributes them with a superlative social tag of the "uber-wealthy". The recognition of that level of wealth and opulence also makes one wonder how they fit in the world around them. In this specific case, of course, there is a sense of relief in the fact that your tax bill is somewhat not affected.  But it is also a reminder that after all these years of struggle, all I have done is secured myself a place in the middle.