27 January - Debts & Rebates

I read many articles on how to be happy, what's the most value in life etc, just because papers and magazines are always awash with them. Don't worry, I also read about the damage done by Vedanta bauxite plant in the state of Orissa/India and about cancer research.
They all seem to always suggest that it's good family ties which makes the happiest and that money doesn't buy happiness and that it may all depend on our personal chemical make up and how we cope with it all. I'm inclined to think this is only partly true as for most things that are stated. I may be super odd but I don't care for family one bit. Sure I care for my lover at the time but I don't much care for his family or mine. I care out of duty, conditioning. If they didn't exist I'd be fine (though clearly don't wish their non existance to happen as a sudden wipe out of all of them but more in the 'If they had never existed' sort of way. Since one has to bear them in mind all the time before doing this or that, like running away to join the circus.

As for the money, again, maybe it doesn't make you happier. They say that there's a huge difference between having nothing/not enough and say, 25k a year, but there isn't much above that or 25k to 40k. Things may be very different if you have 1m a year to spend (rather than just be allocated to expenditure needed to fund a proportionally higher version of the lifestyle that you have on 40k).

So tell me why the only news that lately have made me punch the air, put phone down and do a little jig have been news of cash bonanzas. The first one was before xmas, when I friend from whom I had borrowed 5k last year said she didn't want it back (I was informing her I should be able to pay her back by April this year) and morevoer she didn't care what I then would do with it. I was speechless. The fact that she's comparatively massively richer than I am is not the point. This was just a lovely gesture. Of course I will donate some of it to charity. Tithing is a concept I have always liked. I didn't punch the air at that news because it didn't seem right to rejoice (my friend had lost her father a month earlier and she's still very upset).

The other news is altogether different. As part of a transaction I made last January, 4k was being held in escrow at my solicitors. My tenacity in trying to get this amount released back to me as opposed to being paid on to someone who has never remembered to claim it, has paid off. Solicitor said he saw no reason not to pay it back to me and, check this out all ye who hate the legal professionals, he claims not to want any fee from me - I had always said we could do it american style, split what he managed not to pay on. I will donate his estimated fee to charity as above. But I did explode in pure glee. Granted, I then checked myself as cash not in my account yet but let's be hopeful.

So there you go. No love action, no gifts, no sunny beaches in Thailand have elicited this kind of JOY. Only money has done it. Money that's earmarked to pay off other things (apart from buying super excellent dinner at the Ledbury for Toph asap since he dreams of the pheasant dish there) but essentially a bonus. Am beginning to understand those bankers who want to or have moved to Switzerland to safeguard their cash against tax man. If, as they say, they work in banking because it's the pursuit of money that gets them out of bed in the morning and beyond, then money has this effect on them every day. In other words they must be high all the time.