This is a story about being unintelligent...

I like eating in expensive restaurant. I like flying business class. I like staying in luxury hotels. I like not checking my bank balance; not budgeting.

What gives me the right to live so lavishly?

My grip on reality is tenuous. My sanity is questionable. I certainly have no certification to 'prove' my intellect. My curriculum vitae hides the truth of the past 6 years of my life, because I was wily enough to start a company to paper over any cracks, but closer scrutiny would reveal lots of gaps.

I should be penniless scum, abandoned by society and left to rot in the gutter.

Certainly, I've survived the unsurvivable because I'm creditworthy and I've borrowed, in order to maintain a certain standard of living. No grotty bedsit for me. No squat with newspaper covering the windows and a filthy mattress on the floor. If I've decided that I'm going to work hard and attempt to rescue myself from certain bankruptcy and destitution, then I've always demanded to have a nice place to live.

It seems spoiled and entitled.

To me, I simply can't see the point in existing in a miserable state. What's the point of being alive if it's going to be so lacking in dignity? Sure, plenty of people live in dire poverty and they go about their business quietly and without complaint. Good for them. That's not for me.

It seems like an unreasonable expectation. Why should somebody who's so heavily indebted be allowed to never check their bank balance and enjoy a high standard of living? Why should somebody who's had problems with addiction, alcoholism and mental health be allowed to have lovely holidays, live in a big house and generally spend money with gay abandon?

I have complete irreverence for money.

Money answers none of the big philosophical questions, such as: why are we here? Money contributes nothing to our fundamental understanding of the universe. Money does not figure in the big picture. Money is not even a rounding error. Money is simply an absurd transient concept, amongst a transient society of a transient species. Money is nothing in the face of death.

I suppose that's the root of my views on money - that I've faced death so many times that I have no fear of running out of money. Money is simply invented out of thin air, and is something to be laughed at as ridiculous, but death is widely regarded as a permanent and irreversible state. Why should I fear running out of money when I can always go and get some more? I can pluck money out of thin air, because it's just a fabricated human construct. Death however, is something which has certainly proven fatal to more than 100 billion souls thus far, so it deserves a certain amount of respect.

It's because I value life and respect death, that money is an irrelevance. It would have been nice to embed myself in an academic institution, where my mind could have been occupied with silly puzzles and other trivial things. I could have busied myself telling a captive audience of children incorrect things, with an air of authority. Instead I have embedded myself in massive organisations, who remunerate me excessively to compensate for the absurdity of the so-called 'work' they ask me to do. I'm paid to be bored and unfulfilled - living an inauthentic life - so my compensation is to be able to do enviable things and live relatively unconcerned with financial matters.

As you might imagine, recovering from debt, mental illness and addiction is not quick and easy. We are quick to write people off, because of the vast amount of time and money required for a person to recover. We think that junkies - in particular - are no-hopers who will not be able to overcome the adversity they face, in order to return to a normal life.

I don't want a normal life.

I had a good life before and I want to have a good life again. I'm not going to settle for simply being alive. I want it all. I want everything.

Tags: #addiction #homeless #bipolar