The Ability to HAVE Nice Stuff Despite Growing Up in a Cornfield (Or Elsewhere)

Say theoretically, that you grew up in the middle of a cornfield with a barn and chicken shed, and a metal antennae streaming two and a half fuzzy channels. Say your small agricultural town didn’t have a Wal-Mart until years into the future, and your McDonald’s so regularly flooded that it eventually closed entirely.

Say as a girl you were the width of a popsicle stick, but you wore the hand-me-downs of your much older sisters, aka: you looked like Harpo Marx with oversized clothes, and had the goofy crooked grin to match.

Basically, you grew up somewhere very humble, but there isn’t anything wrong with that…

As much as you hate to admit it:

You’re the product of where and when* you grew up.

(Also called: whence. Grammar ftw.)

Some good things came from my corn town beginnings, like not keeping up with Kardashians (not even once). Nor ever getting caught up in the consumeristic circus called Black Friday (crowds? Ugh).

And you never caught little ol' me lining up outside an Apple store for the next iphone’s debut (is the next one REALLY that much better than the super computer I already have?! Calm down, people.).  

Factually, one of the things my boyfriend loves most about me is that I grew up in a small town in middle America… and I’m also a mean cook. (Hint: the way to a man’s heart is definitely through chicken. Lots of chicken, protein, all day everyday.)

So many things I appreciate about myself about being from a place that didn’t care too much what you drove, or if you were getting botox every 3 months. I love that I'm humble, and also beautiful fabulous perfect and extraordinary. ;-)

Alas, as the spins around the sun have occurred, I’ve noticed one thing about being from a tiny town that’s been a liiiiittle hard to avoid— kind of like the rooster who lived under our back porch and stalked us for a year, chasing us down the driveway (in a scary way, not a cute way. Roosters are vicious, and that's the entire message of this blog.). 

I’m talking about this:

During my upbringing, THE most celebrated virtue was frugality. 

Maybe your mom bought many of your groceries on sale, and you were never allowed to buy ANYTHING (or die) from the check-out lane racks full of bubble gums lined with comic strips. 

The attitude where I’m from? Rich people = crummy.

Most of our lives, we drove cars about ten years too old, which was a big body difference between a car made in 1982 from 1992.

Nothing wrong with being fiscally responsible. Naturally, being smart with money yields, well, more money... 

But a lot of the extra frugal behaviors which permeated much of my childhood weren’t necessarily, always done out of monetary necessity, but a way of thinking that translated into:

Having nice things is somehow wrong. 

No matter if you grew up in a place where corn silos replaced skyscrapers or not, maybe today you still feel wrong— decades away from your childhood— for wanting, or even having, nice things. 

Maybe you’ve been able to disregard a lot of that old thinking (soooo easy to do, right?!)… but maybe you haven’t totally, and the thing is:

You’re aware that maybe it’s holding you back a little bit from moving more UP. 

Funny thing for me is— fast forward 37 years— I ended up with a man who was raised with LITERALLY THE OPPOSITE attitude. Which has been interesting.

My upbringing was like SAVE, you never know when you’ll need money. The Great Depression could happen AGAIN. Any second, in fact! Save your receipts in a shoebox in the attic because the Great Depression happened only decades agoooooo.

His upbringing was SPEND, you have the ability to create more money. 

“Don’t be frivolous,” said my corn town. 

His life: “Reach for the stars! I’ve seen Star Wars, there’s more beyond the stars anyway, like ewoks. Do you want an ewok? We can buy one.”

Nothing like dating someone affluent beyond anything you’ve ever experienced to introduce and model this great ability, which is really the point of all these words on a page: 

The ability to HAVE. 

And I didn’t mis-write it: it IS an ability. 

By actual X-ray,* my Sri Lankan boyfriend has gold flakes running through his veins, kind of like Goldschläger, except not disgusting. 

*Lying.

He wipes his tush with $10 bills (jk, I use those). He pays someone to clean his cars for him instead of rolling out the house vacuum to the curb with an extension cord to stick his butt straight in the air for the entire neighborhood to see as you sweat through your tits sucking out every meal’s remnants from the car. What can I say? I'm a hottie.  

His attitude about money:

There’s always more, and it’s meant for enjoying! 

What?? It’s not meant for guilt? Or hoarding in a savings account at .0000001% growth? 

Turns out, nope! 

Money is for creating and using. 

The Boyfriend is literally SO unstuck to money, with 0% neurosis about it. It comes, it goes! Wee! Who cares! Monneyyyyyyyyyy!!!

Now if you’re thinking that this boyfriend of mine must certainly just sit on a couch all day playing video games whilst I toil away in an office cubicle, and that’s why he thinks money’s no big deal, you're mistaken in this case.

The Boyfriend makes excellent money, largely because he works 360 days per year, taking off holidays (sometimes). 

No, he’s not a hyper-stressed stock broker who works 100-hour work weeks, coming home slightly drunk from "happy hour" to beat me, upset about his job. He’s honestly just competent with money, both logistically and mentally. He loves what he does, so working in some fashion every day (even if just to keep his emails flowing) isn’t punishment to him. 

I’ve never met anyone before so free–flowing with money. 

For a lot of us, money is a monstrous deal, not just from a tangible perspective but a mental one. 

It’s not to say that The Boyfriend doesn’t get stressed about money, and it’s not to say we don’t have limitations, too. I mean, I recently asked him for a private island, and he said NO, so obviously I’m in an abusive relationship... 

I’d bet that 98% of the people in the world do not have my boyfriend’s ability because most of us were brought into the world with quite a bit of guilt or scarcity around money. Right? 

Learning how to have can be like learning a language, aka, it can take time, practice, and actually traveling TO Italy to eat gelato and ice cream for no less than 6 months. That’s the important part. 

He and I have been together for over 4 years (with 2 kids, 1 dog, 3 cross-country moves, 3 cats perished, 2 cats alive currently who hopefully won't be dying soon, many cars), and it’s taken me THAT amount of time and STUFF and LIFE to finally get using to HAVING nice stuff. Yeesh.

I still find my butthole twitching in angst when I see that something on Amazon is more expensive than the dollar store, but then I have to remind myself that I’m no longer living in a 300-square foot studio apartment driving a 1997 Honda Accord, living paycheck to paycheck and even racking up stupid kinds of credit card debt on clothes at Ross. 

My body has arrived at a different point in life… 

But I’m still getting my mind to catch up sometimes.

Getting over your poverty mindset requires living life, seeing things, doing mental push-ups on the basis of IT’S OKAY (and not treasonous) to spend a little more on things that provide more convenience, luxury (gasp!), or ya know what? 

Maybe I just downright WANT it. 

I've had to learn that it's okay if the only reason there is for buying something is, I want it.

No reason at all. I deserve it because I'm not a serial killer, and I do eat salad from time to time. And I. Shall. Have. It! (Spoken like a British judge laying down a gavel.) 

If you find that your knee jerk reaction to lustrous people, gorgeous jewelry, Rolls Royces, red-bottomed heels registers as “screw those snobby people,” then your ability to have could need some inspection.  

Sure, we know that many people who are loaded are rollin’ in it because they work for Monsanto or pharmaceutical giants, drugging people only for profits. We know that conglomerates exist because they ditch humanity, instead opting for soulless work that translates into electro-convulsive shock therapy on people against their will (yes, that still exists). We know those urchins exist… but I’m not talking about those drug-pushers in today’s article. 

I’m talking about having higher quality things because it’s not wrong. 

Plus, you don’t have to do something special, or sacrifice any more, to deserve nice things for yourself. 

You can unlearn self-abnegation with this realization: 

Feeling little isn’t righteous. 

Haven’t a lot of us been lectured that it’s more honorable to be a little slovenly, a little pulled back— whether in communication, or maybe in our physical presentation to society? 

I know I had, and it happened by accident. No one oppressed me heavily—

Just had ideas passed down to me, which weren't applicable to forever and all times.  

BUT GUESS WHAT, LITTLE CHICKEN:

The world doesn’t win when you’re shrunken in. And you need support (clothes, healthy food, facilities, adornments, feel-good stuff) to perform your best in life. Maybe you even some $50 lip gloss from Nordstrom! Or a new bra, it's probably about time for one of those.

The ONLY way the world wins— stepping up on my podium now— is when YOU are winning.

Because the people doing excellent work and achieving happiness in their own spheres, their families, communities and regions at large? Are the ones affluent enough in mind, body, and spirit to actually do it.