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You are not the sum of your liabilites and assets: Man kills family over debt
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My very Southern father used to say to me, "you are not the sum of your liabilities and assets." Or around Christmas when he 
spent more than we had, he would say "It's" only money." Of course the horrific story of the man who shot his wife and three children over four hundred and sixty thousand dollars in debt and a vacation home he couldn't' sell is beyond horrific. It is our Puritan work ethic gone bad. Let me say it loud and clear--IT IS ONLY MONEY. Middle class people take it very hard when they can't pay their bills. In fact they become suicidal. We are now hearing of other people distraught over debt who have taken their lives. What a waste.
Money is for one thing and one thing only--to pay your bills. It has nothing to do with self worth. But in America we have held the almighty dollar up as this shining vision of nothing less than salvation. It isn't. It's only money. As Mr. Bernstein said in the movie, Citizen Kane....'anyone can make a lot of money if all you want to do is make a lot of money. And where is that beatific happiness that shines down on us when we make it to the promised land of riches. Read the tabloids, now there are some happy people. Not. It seems humans do a funny thing when they strike it rich. They find other things to fall apart over. They become drunkards or drug addicts or they lose as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "their immaculate sense of purpose."
But to kill yourself because you lost your job or you can't pay your bills is tragic. Americans are not kings. We are a hard scrabble people a few centuries out from indentured servants. Even if you built yourself a kingdom and then you become a pauper you are still the same person. Wish it were not ,but as Scrooge protested, "but I am mortal." So we are. So no amount of mammon will ever get you off the hook. If you find yourself on the long end of a short pier then take a deep breath and go the other way. As a writer I have fallen off the horse so many times I have lost count. The only thing I know how to do is get up and try something else.
So yes it is hard when you can't your bills. Yes it is depressing and stressful, but we do not have a debtors prison. There is bankruptcy and foreclosure. There are safety nets. No one will starve. And more than that, being broke is not a comment on who you are. Rich or poor we are the same. We came in naked and we will go out the same way. But this American obsession with money has got to go. It has caused more problems than it is worth. The famous last scene of Citizen Kane speaks volumes. The final utterance of the fabulously rich Kane before he died is Rosebud--the name of his sled from when he was a boy. When he was truly happy.
William Hazelgrove is a novelist who writes in Ernest Hemingway's attic. His latest book is Rocket Man--the story of a man fighting to keep his home.
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