From the Brain of Dr. Nicki: The 1%

Everywhere we go these days there’s constant itching, bitching & twitching about the rich. As if they’ve got it all. Got it all together. Got all happiness. Got all ease. It simply isn’t so.

We keep overlooking how hard most of them worked to get what they have, and how they work to keep it. In the past several years more and more I find myself working with the wealthy among us. First, how fabulous they’re seeking counsel; Second, I’ve come away with the solid appreciation that money does certainly not equal happiness.

Now I bet you’re saying: “Uh yeah, let me try it and see!” But really, listen to me: Money…does….not…equal…happiness!

In my immediate world I find these extremely wealthy folks split into two categories: the creative’s who aim their focus most towards creative outflow and while doing so have amassed a fortune; and the wealth-builders who lead with their money, meaning they talk constantly about it. They go on and on about how they use it, what it buys them, and how much it takes to maintain their wealth status. It’s sad really. Because this variety of wealthy folk not knowing they have any real value outside that stack of bucks, wave it around, hoping it will stand for something – will bolster their image – will be enough to make them feel like enough. It isn’t. They don’t.

But the rush to prove we’re enough isn’t, of course, isolated to the rich. We all have our “see me/love me/value me” ways. Why is that? Is it because the world with its rude arrogance keeps draining us of faith? Or is it that we can’t find a way to disconnect from so much early and on-going heartbreak? Or perhaps it’s because we keep noticing how awfully human we are and think something’s wrong with that.

Tiresome isn’t it.

I remember sitting in the office of my first therapist. I was in college and had that ‘smart college kid’ intellectual dramatic-thinking thing going on. To this extraordinary man I sighed loudly and said pompously: “I feel like Sisyphus!” (You know, that’s the mythological fellow pushing the rock up the hill only to have it fall each time to the bottom, where he would again return to it to begin for the millionth time his ascent.)“Oh?” he returned, “like Sisyphus eh! Have you read Albert Camus’ Sisyphus?” “No”, I replied, sheepishly. “Well,” he continued “the point is not that Sisyphus trudged horribly up the hill again and again. No. The point is that every single time he faced that fallen rock at the hill’s bottom he needed to summon up all his courage to one more time roll it upward. You see it’s a story of bravery in the face of horrible odds. So if you feel like Sisyphus that’s says something wonderful about you!”

Everyday I wish to inspire the rich and famous to know this. Everyday I wish to inspire the struggling and desperate to know it also.

For today I shall simply be satisfied to remember it myself. To know I am more than what I have, or think, or do. And so are you.