Ep 118Stop Taking Bitachon Advice from Billionaires
If I made $30 million, I wouldn't move
The real work of all money, discipline, happiness is learning how to fall in love with the present circumstances of your life.
Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin
Stop Taking Bitachon Advice from Billionaires
I don't think the goal is the pursuit of happiness. I think the goal is the discipline of desire.
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Quotes
“Money is a proxy for desire. And you'll never be able to use money effectively unless you understand the mechanics of desire itself.”
“The outrage or any sort of anger towards somebody who has more money than you is actually you are the loser in the conversation.”
“When you have kids growing up and they can name more gevirim than they can gedolim, they're only going to have a certain type of aspiration.”
“The real work of all money, discipline, happiness is learning how to fall in love with the present circumstances of your life.”
“We have a gym every single week from liberating from desire and it's called Shabbos. Take advantage of it.”
“You can spend your entire life trying to afford a better life and miss the one you already have.”
Takeaways
- 1 Money stands in for desire. The Hebrew kesef (money) is tied to kosef (longing). To manage money well, first understand what you actually want.
- 2 Much of what we want is copied from people around us (mimetic desire - Rene Girard; Luke Burgis, "Wanting"). Close communities copy each other faster, so bad spending habits spread fast.
- 3 Separate thin, passing wants (a watch, a status item) from deep, lasting ones (family, purpose, home). Put your time into the lasting ones. It's often not the watch you want, but the feeling of being whole.
- 4 Beware the "if only" trap: braces off, then SATs, then grad school, then the bigger house. Each want gets met and the empty feeling comes back.
- 5 Being obsessed with wealth and hating the wealthy are the same mistake. Jealousy or outrage at others signals something unresolved in you (the Alter of Slabodka story).
- 6 Effort vs. bitachon is a false choice. Ask what your effort is for. Aim at loving the life you have, not an endless wealth target.
- 7 Be careful with bitachon messages from the very wealthy - they can shame people with less.
- 8 Perfection is a future goal, not a lost past: the Talmud places Adam's sin inside creation. Don't tell students "these are the best years of your life" - your best religious years should be ahead of you.
- 9 Pirkei Avos: jealousy, desire and honor take a person "out of the world" - out of your own world. Stop living in "what if" versions of your life.
- 10 Kids already know family beats a yacht; adults forget it. Invest in your marriage and home first.