With the 4th of July just behind us, we’ve been reflecting on America’s 250th birthday. What began as an experiment continues today as the world’s preeminent superpower. Ben Franklin, when asked what kind of government we have, replied...

Keep it? That's the challenge. And we have no shortage of challenges, yet we Americans have so much to be thankful for. Things like freedom to work, to choose, to pursue education, to worship as we desire...these all amount to aspects of freedom.

And as we approach mid-summer, America and freedom is the big idea of this issue of Wisdom for the Weekend. Specifically, your freedom, and more specifically keeping your freedom truly free in the most valuable piece of real estate on earth (that space between your ears). Because that's where various thought patterns can sabotage the very freedoms we hold so dear. Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote will help us to explore this issue.

Wisdom for Money

How do we do that? How does the world make us into something other than ourselves? Last summer we reflected on the ancient wisdom of Ecclesiastes and today we return there for timeless wisdom that addresses Emerson's challenge.

Ecclesiastes constantly warns against the common human temptations: pleasure, accumulation and status.¹ The temptations of growing lifestyle creep, the potential harm of wealth and the darkness associated with money are all poetically identified. We are reminded of the ancient proverb that money is a useful tool, but a terrible master.²

Again, this is another place we see that Wisdom for Money contains within it the seeds of Wisdom for all of life. It's wisdom that combines to protect our own freedom to the potential pitfalls of money: the idols of pleasure, accumulation and status. Wisdom shows us a better way.

Wisdom for Life

What's the anecdote? The authors of Wisdom Over Wealth call it the cycle of grateful living. It's identified by the acronym E.A.T.

The narrator of Ecclesiastes tells us to enjoy food and drink with gladness of heart! (my emphasis)

He tells us to accept life's brevity. He tells us to rejoice in the people and the simple things in our life. To embrace our life as it is - not as we'd hoped it to be - and to be at peace with it. And finally...

Rejoice in the toil of life: embrace whatever your hands find to do - and do it with all your might. This final step of the cycle of grateful living is to embrace our work, whether it is traditional employed work or the variety of roles, tasks and responsibilities a retiree may become involved in.

There are three anchoring practices that may be applied to actualize Wisdom over Wealth in our lives. We'll continue to explore such wisdom in the future!

Tim O'Connor

¹ Weekly Wisdom, Rob West, Faith Fi

² Wisdom over Wealth, Faith Fi, Faith and Finance LLC, p.83