Okay, earlier today I answered the desert island question, kind of (see below). Now I pose a question James Lileks’ asked on The Bleat (if you don’t read Lileks’ blog daily you’re missing something) yesterday: You are given a check for a million dollars, tax free. You have to spend it. You cannot use it on bills, or invest it, or just give it away. What would you do with it?
Lileks says he’d make a movie, which is a great idea. I’ve written two screenplays, the second of which I really think could find a market if we could get it made. It might need a bit of tweaking from the professionals but what original screenplay doesn’t? So that’s a possibility. My wife’s immediate response was to buy a house at the beach and I could go for that too. My first response was perhaps an apartment in Manhattan so I could pop up to NYC whenever I wanted. Second response was to set up vacations all over the world for the next decade and beyond, flying first-class, staying at the finest hotels, eating the best food, etc. I’d also buy all the books, music, and DVDs I ever wanted and get a club membership at the best golf course close to my house.
I might also buy a new car, not because I don’t like the one I’m driving now but because what I have now is old and it has a cassette tape player and I’d want something with a CD player and a plug for my IPod. The car itself means not much to me, so long as it’s reliable.
Would I buy a new, bigger, home? No. Neither my wife nor I ever cared about living in a big house. Too much space to keep clean. At this point in our lives if we move we’d probably go smaller, into a condo. Maybe we’d use the money to move into a very nice condo, so long as a weekly visit from the cleaning-lady came with it. I hate housework and so does my baby.
Someone responded in the posts’ comments section with perhaps an even more interesting question, one that may shed more light on your character than the original question: “What if you won a huge lotto? Big enough so you wouldn’t have any worries about money, ever again. Now, it’s two years after you’ve won that. You’ve travelled, you have the RV, the cabin, the remodel, whatever. You wake up and it’s Monday morning. What is your day like?”
Who can say, really? I think that my day would not be so different from what it would be without the money. At least I hope it wouldn’t be. I’m certain that I’d still have the same interests and concerns. I’m in my fifties: I know my likes and dislikes, and I know my own mind. I’ve never longed for splendor, nor for anything that I couldn’t buy with my own hard-earned money. To be honest, I like money, it buys you a bit of freedom and gives you some peace-of-mind, but it’s not a central to my happiness. So long as I have my girl, my family, a few friends, and a few outlets, like music and the theater and trips to New York, with the occasional jaunt over to Europe, then I’m happy.
Someone in the comments answered that they’d build a theater and hire pros to run it, and then sit back and enjoy the people in town seeing great theater. What a grand idea! Put me down for that one too.
Another responded that he’d try to outdo Andrew Carnegie for philanthropy and that too crossed my mind. I’d like to come up with some sort of organization dedicated to a cause that I was certain would benefit my community and/or the world at large. I’d staff it with a few pros whom I respected but mostly with family and a few friends since they would be the only people I fully trusted, at least at the beginning. (I’d have my wife overseeing the books because I could then be certain we weren’t be spending a penny more than was necessary. I love you baby.) Something like that could be highly rewarding.
Okay, enough for today. It’s the weekend and we all need some downtime. If I were infinitely rich I hope I’d still do what I plan to do today as a poor pauper: spend some time with my love and continue reading an astoundingly good book, Gordon Woods’ Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815. If you’re looking for me, I’ll be the very happy guy on the couch.
No comments:
Post a Comment