Reevaluation Dr. Juan Harrison

Reevaluation
Does money change people? It’s not so much a question as it is a thought. People spend valuable time filling out entries to the PCH Sweepstakes. They blow two dollars or more a week on lottery tickets. They spend money they can spare, or not, at a neighboring casino. Fifty percent of all lottery winners end up in money trouble. In a number of families, one of the two adults is a gambler; the other is not. Like drinking, drugs, smoking and other risky habits, sometimes one of the two spouses may influence the partner to take up one of these habits that can hurt both of them. The Bible tells us to not be unequally yoked. Sadly, in longer marriages sometimes the older version of one of the two may have on the tip of a tongue some reference to wishing they knew then what they do now. Many just accept their error in judgment in their youth and try to make the best of a tough situation.
Life happens; somebody’s remaining parent passes, and somebody reads the will. A general rule on inheriting stuff is that what people do with a windfall pretty much falls in line with how they’ve lived up till now. I’ve often heard that if all the money in the world was gathered up and dropped from an airplane, the money would pretty much end up back in the hands of the original owner in three months’ time.
We look around and know that money and property cannot ensure happiness and may actually lead to unhappiness as in the lives of 50% of lottery winners. Wise, grounded people will likely manage any windfall as they have for their entire married lives. We can all think of a thing or two we could use—a newer car or improvements on the homestead. What’s sad is watching careless people blowing through their newly acquired pot of gold to end up in the same or worse financial shape than before. That’s followed by buckets of regret and the passing around of the blame game.
What’s done cannot easily be undone. Prosperity in the wrong hands can result in bad things happening to family members, sometimes fatally. Some lottery winners have ended up with family security issues, even necessitating the hiring of security personnel and safety issues having to be addressed at home.
We’re reminded to be careful what we wish for. Sometimes new wealth attracts temporary friends or causes people to lose old ones. Truly valuable things like peace and security once taken for granted may have gone out the back door when new wealth and its attending illusions entered the front. We might actually end up with more happiness and peace of mind if we focused more on the valuable blessings we’ve been given and less on what we don’t have. Sometimes a person doesn’t realize how rich they really are.
By Dr. Juan Harrison