Under the Lemon Tree, it's episode 23.
Hello and welcome back to the Rina 100 show, a show where I, Rina 100, talk about whatever
you want every week. And this week the theme will be something that haunts us all in the
middle of the night. Aren't you excited to hear about that? It is, of course, money.
Money makes the world go round, the world go round. Science has not proven that yet.
In fact, science hasn't proven that money has anything to do with the world going round,
but you already knew that. Money. Wow. How does it affect so much about our lives without
being a real thing? I don't know. Isn't it so interesting that humanity can just decide
to agree upon a shared reality and then suddenly it just impacts everybody in incredibly dramatic
ways? It's almost like us agreeing with each other has immense power and could change everything
if only we could. Why can't we agree about other things? Why can't I ever do an episode
without going into this accent? I don't know. I don't know. But yeah, isn't that interesting
that we all agree that this thing that doesn't... I mean, I guess at one point it sort of did
exist, right? The gold back, green back, green bay packers. Okay, Rena. But yeah, money used
to be a thing. It used to be this much gold or silver or whatever that I guess had value.
But we still gave gold that value because it's shiny. What is that? Why do we love shiny
things? What is that? Why? I mean, I get that they're pretty, but why? Why do we love...
Why do we value shiny things, sparkly things? I mean, the stars are sparkly. No, none of
it makes sense. I don't understand why. But anyway, I guess money used to have intrinsic
value and now, well, no, it only has theoretical value that we've all agreed upon that we've
lost our whole society around, kind of. But yeah, I kind of wish we could also agree upon
some other stuff that could also be very impactful. You know what I mean? But yeah, as much as
money isn't a real thing, it feels incredibly real. Why? Because its effects are real. It
impacts all of our basic needs, housing, food, feeling like we have a real career, Rena.
I had a lot of trouble calling myself a comedian until I actually was making a living at it,
which only happened nine years in, something like that, which is fair because I was pretty
bad at it for the first five or so. And then I had to... It's a journey. It's a trajectory.
You're on a graph. You start at one point and you get to another and you know what I'm
saying. There's a road to go down. But yeah, in the end, it's money. It's getting money
for it that made me finally feel like I could call it a vocation. And in that sense, money
validates. And money is our lifeline. Money is what we depend on to get the food into
our fridges, to get the roof over our head. It just affects so much of us just staying
alive. And that's why it haunts us because for a lot of us, there is no safety net. I
mean, we know we're going to get more. It really represents a lot about what's mysterious
about life, isn't it? Because let's say you're stuck in a bad feeling. You know logically
you're not going to feel that way forever, but it feels like you will. And it's kind
of the same thing when you're broke. It's like you know that you're going to have more
money eventually, somehow. You're going to figure it out, right? But it feels like it's
never going to happen. And it's so scary when you're at the bottom of it all and you're
worried about just keeping your basic needs met. Living paycheck to paycheck is I cannot
express enough how mentally and emotionally taxing that is. And you're just like, why
am I so tired all the time? Why do I feel so bad? Why? Because you have no safety net.
You don't know that you're definitely forever going to have your basic needs met because
you don't have enough money to cover that. So sometimes I pretend in my head like what
it would be like, how I would feel in my body to be really rich and just walk into a building
knowing I could buy and sell it if I wanted to. And well, that's fun sometimes. But so
for those reasons, money deeply affects the way we see ourselves because money is literally
value. It's a numeric value for something. So it's really the only logically measurable
way that we can be like, this is exactly how much value I have in society. Otherwise it's
just vibes. You're just vibing it out thinking about how much value you have. Of course it's
a lie. Money has nothing to do with how valuable you are to society. It's a big fucking lie.
But it's the only way you can actually measure it in numbers in real time. So it messes with
your head and it lies to you and it makes you think, oh, I have this much money. That's
how much I'm worth to society and I'm worth to the world. And it is so difficult to rip
your worth away from that number and just know that you have intrinsic value regardless
of what is in your bank account because it's just so damn quantifiable. But in the end
it's just, it's incredibly arbitrary. Not only does it not fairly represent your value,
it doesn't actually represent anybody's value accurately at all. It is, in my opinion,
100% arbitrary. Who has a lot of money? Who doesn't? I think though it's hard, it's like
our minds need to justify. Our minds have this incredible need for story, for storyline,
story arc, and to justify why things are the way they are. Like our minds can't handle
just chaos and mystery and just mystery without answer, endless mystery, the abyss of the
unknown that is all around us. Our minds can't handle it. So we need some story to justify
our reality because otherwise it's just chaos and meaningless and it's just very hard, very
hard to exist with that. I don't know, why can't we handle that? Why do we need story?
I mean that could be a whole separate thing but I think our brains just need to justify
the amount of money we have in our bank account and that also feeds into why we need to, we
need to tell ourselves this story about how it represents our worth or alternately, alternatively,
whichever word works, you figure it out. If you have a lot of money, you know, some people
feel like, well I just am really good at manifesting, which we all know is privilege and bullshit.
I mean I think, do we all know that? I don't know. I mean there is a thing with vibes,
like you get the vibes you put out. I do think that is true to a certain extent but sometimes
you have hard days and that's fine and you have bad vibes, whatever. But yeah, like I
think our minds need to justify also if we have a lot of money by saying, well I'm just
kind of special, you know, or I'm just kind of superior or I'm just really good at making
sure I feel good all the time so that I get exactly what I want. And that is just also
a huge lie. You didn't create the society. You have a complicity in, you know, participating
in it but you didn't create this. You didn't do this to yourself and it's not your fault
and you're not rich because you're better than other people. And I think deep down you've
got to know that otherwise you wouldn't need to buy all that crap. Yeah, I think money
doesn't make sense to our animal brains because it's not real and it's not found in nature
and it has nothing to do with actually getting things in nature. So there's something about
it that like when we look at the face of money it's like our animal lizard brains just like
will not process its existence. It's just like, meh, meh. I don't know if that happens
to you. All this to say, if getting money is not coming easily for you right now, and
for a lot of us it isn't, I just want you to reach down deep inside and know that that
has nothing to do with your worth in this world. Nothing at all. You are worth it and
money has nothing to do with it. And also you're going to be okay. You're going to get
more money someday. You're going to be okay. You're going to have your needs met. You're
going to know how to put one foot in front of the other and take care of yourself in
this world. And there are people that love you and will help you and just keep going.
It's rough out there. Alright. Love you. Love you? Love you. Okay, bye.