There are many types of greed, especially that of wealth, power, or food. While I never really strived for more power in life, nor have I ever cared much to overindulge in food on a regular basis, I did struggle for years with my greed of money.
Up until my father died, I was probably quite similar to many people when it came to money. I worked for a living and scraped by just to pay my bills and had a little left over to spend on some things I enjoyed doing socially. But that all began to change when my father died back in October of 1996. It was then I discovered that he had left me a substantial amount of money from life insurance policies and savings accounts. And that was the precise moment I went from living a life of barely scraping by to one of complete greed.
The definition of greed is stated in the dictionary as an intense and selfish desire for something. In regards to the life I began after my father died, it became one that was filled with an intense and selfish desire for everything I could buy with money.
One of the first things I did buy in cash after my father passed was a brand new vehicle. It was back in 1997 after his estate was settled and my financial pockets were a lot fatter. I remember walking into an Acura dealership and buying a brand new Integra GS-R without really even trying to negotiate for a lower price. Within a few months of owning that vehicle, I became bored with the car and starting doing things to it such as gold plating parts of it and dipping its stock wheels in chrome. Nine months later, I was in a completely different Acura dealership having some standard service work performed on it. And while I was waiting for it to be finished, I saw a brand new vehicle sitting by itself, all bright and shiny white, in the middle of the showroom floor. When I close my eyes today, I can still picture myself back then asking the salesman what it was as I paced around it with my mouth drooling. When he told me it was a limited edition Integra called a Type R and that only a handful were being made, that was all it took for my greed to take over. Within an hour, I had traded in my almost brand new GS-R, losing $10k in the process, just to buy in cash that sole Type R sitting there in the showroom. Sadly, not more than a year or so later, I ended up buying yet another car and placed that Type R in storage where it soon was hardly driven.
I tell you this story because it was only the beginning for me, of many more years to come, where my greed of money took over and had me doing things such as this. I spent years buying this and that, accumulating stockpiles of “stuff” that within a short period of time after acquiring it, it was gathering dust, sold off, or thrown away. Today, just about all of that money and “stuff” is gone and I am having to live more more frugally to get by. Ironically though, I still have that Type R and I think there’s some part of me that holds onto it to remind myself of the days I was completely greedy with every bit of money that ever came my way.
It took me about 15 years after my father died to learn a very important lesson when it came to my greed of money. It’s pretty simple actually. The bottom line is that there was never any amount of money or things I could have ever purchased with it, that would have filled the emptiness I felt within, or satisfied those constant urgings I had to acquire more and more. The day I finally realized this was when I began to turn my entire will and life over to the care of God. It was then that my Higher Power began to fill me up with something a lot better than anything my greed of money could ever buy, and that’s love and light.
If you have the greed of money in any way, shape, or form, don’t let it consume your life like I did. Understand that no amount of money or “things” that money can buy will ever bring you long lasting peace, happiness, and joy. But there is one things that will and that’s a life filled with a Higher Power’s love and light. May you find that to be true as I have.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson