I have no clue what this is about

True, like it is said, a man toils all day just to be able to eat his food, sleep securely and give his family all that they ask of him. That is the reason a man, or a woman for that matter, wakes up everyday early, prepares breakfast for the kids, cleans the house, gulps down coffee without noticing the taste, gets ready in a hurry, looks into the mirror not to look cherish the existence of oneself but to ensure that nothing is out of place, hurries to the bus stop, stands in an overcrowded bus stuck in traffic jams, and walks hurriedly into the office he hates. All through the journey, the man does not notice the world around him, nothing either beautiful or morose, but his thoughts linger on the need of his kids, in his will to fulfill their every need. And the teenage kids stay out all night, cuss their parents, hate being home and yell for not being pampered enough. The man hates his job but feels insecure about losing it, the woman denies herself every little whim to ensure that the kids get the best of everything and they take the family out to a restaurant where the self-proclaimed 'grown-up kids' mutter all the way home for not letting them go out with friends.

And to argue that a man works for his food and shelter. In fact, fear is what drives all these people, the fear of sleeping hungry, of being homeless, of being proclaimed as bad parents and the fear of rejection from the children. Of being turned away and down by the society, friends, falling down from the higher pedestal. These are all important factors, true, but the most unrealized factor that creates a happy man is the feeling of importance, of self-respect. A man works, truly works, not because of all these but because he wants to be able to earn his food, to be worth the soil that he's eaten and the earth he's sleeping on. It is a feeling of extreme confidence and security when a man realizes that he's earned his place to live here, to borrow this piece of land until it is time for him to leave. When people say hard earned money stays long, they don't mean money figuratively. What they mean is that the ability to earn money has been learnt, that means a man who's tasted the sweetness of his sweated out, hard earned food, knows that nothing can beat it. And if you think people who do not know how hard it is to earn, waste money, then the people who've earned money, those who really deserve it, would throw it away much easily. If, the clause here, the man understands that he's not earned money but the ability to earn it. Its actually magical, because when one knows how to get something, he can conjure it up whenever he needs it. That will not be the driving force of his life anymore. It would just be a commodity. Its like people would not have wanted money if it didn't buy them anything. Money here is not the prize. It is what money can buy. But for wizards here, it is what money cannot buy that is more important.

Money is just a metaphor for self-respect. And that is probably why people are so insecure nowadays because there's a lot of easy money and that is what exactly self-respect is turning into, a cheap commodity. I once read a story about an old man who never ate until he had worked that day so as to earn his food. Money is not worth anything. Its those things that money affects, unconsciously, that are really worth it. Earning money is an art. Just because you ain't pursuing now doesn't mean you wouldn't know how to do it later. But until you do it everyday, you wouldn't have created anything that only you could have created. Money is work that you would procrastinate unless you had an incentive. That is why it is important to earn it because then you would be going out of your way, expanding further, opening newer horizons, becoming more complete. Playing the same delivery over and over again will take you nowhere. Not test your grey cells. And that in turn would lead to your slumped self-esteem. You want to earn the food you eat, wake up and earn it. Because food is not what is important here, living a new moment every moment is.