Wow! I've often thought about how money is destroying our lives, our way of living, our comfort zone, and so much more.
Bob, from the Dover coffee shop, never took those sentiments as believable. He may have thought I am kooky since I have become disabled. I can no longer work to earn good pay as an Engineer. But, I never got to realize that work and income anyhow. I started out poor and I have never gotten away from being poor.
I had just left the US Air Force as a well trained and highly competent Avionics Technician. I suffered a severe brain trauma as a passenger in a single car accident a year later - one year after leaving my enlistment in the Air Force. My life changed tremendously and instantly.
As a first year university student and taking some second year classes, having a full-time / part-time job at a local K-Mart, continuing to exercise in Karate, a lovely girlfriend, practicing to play guitar in a band, and thoroughly enjoying myself, my life was beginning to take a less amorphous shape. It was all coming together.
My age was only 24 years. You can do anything when you are just 24 years old. Becoming a student at Kent State, I hoped to further my engineering training so I could design and create new electronic devices. I had my dreams and my plans. Those were finally coming together.
That was before taking a ride that one cool, dark, and lonely wintry night in late January. I never came back from that ride; someone else did. I still struggle to understand who this person is. We know each other; closer now than before. There is still much to learn.
I think that person liked money. He had many, many things he could do with money. His dreams were my dreams. But, his dreams were taken away from him. I got what was left over, but not even all of them. I have some of what I believe he had extra. I can never know now.
Money makes the world go around. And that is true - in our world as it is currently constructed. Why does it need to be that way? We can exist without work and money. Surely we can if we want. But, this is our lot in life. We are not strong enough to walk away from that ever present idealism of wealth. That makes too many of us happy and willing. As people, we do what we can to survive. As human beings, we may be less than we could be - less than we should be. But, here we are.
