Two recent experiences got me thinking. The first involves an online Emotional Support Group I participate in. One of our members is going through a gruelling grieving process and has reached out to the group. Another member, who has professional training in counselling, offered his services, for renumeration, after having spent some productive and much appreciated time with him pro bono. Unfortunately, this greatly upset the member who is grieving, leading him to complain on the group chat, going so far as suggesting the other member should be expelled from the group. How DARE he ask for money from a person at their most vulnerable?
The second incident concerns my own personal experience at an art exhibition I held. I was, and am, very pleased with the work I showed and consider the show to be a success in that regard. However, the sales were disappointing, and as the show wore on I found myself feeling some uncomfortable emotions toward guests, such as feeling frustrated that they dithered about purchasing, at times seeing them more as ‘marks’ to persuade rather than as friends who had come to support my creative endeavor. I am guessing that many people who show at galleries can relate to these feelings, which can be very uncomfortable and demoralizing. We like ourselves less when we reduce people, particularly friends, to revenue sources.

At the heart of both incidents is what I call ‘the awkward dance of commerce’. It’s a dance all of us do. The human species is, as far as I know, the only species that engages in commerce. We are the only species that uses money, or anything like it. We’re a total outlier in this regard. Exchanges in the wild are of a much more immediate nature; ‘nature’ being the operative word. It is of the natural order to exchange energy within and among species, but in the wild it tends to follow simple patterns such as ‘I am stronger and faster than you so you get to be my meal’ or ‘I birthed you so I am responsible for your well being until its time to kick you out of the nest’. Perhaps the activity most nearly approaching commerce in the natural kingdom is mating rituals, which are a type of negotiation and ‘sales pitch’, but they are not as mult-layered as commerce, meaning they don’t have the same potential for misunderstandings and discomfort that resulted from the two situations above that I referred to. Homo sapiens is an animal species, by estimates between 2 to 300,000 years old, which means that we too, like all other animals, evolved to engage in immediate, non-commercial, exchanges of energy with one another and with other species. We see this in the tribal cultures that still exist today. They may engage in commerce with outsiders, but within the tribe or village they behave as they have for millennia, exchanging experiences WITHOUT trading money.
Engaging in commerce, as we modern humans do, places us al by ourselves atop a sort of tightrope that we have to tread very carefully. We deal with doubts and insecurities, internal and external negotiations that often end up making us feel a variety of negative emotions such as jealousy, disappointment, concern about losing friends, resentment, and that most commerce-y emotion of all: FOMO.
And yet, our modern society, being commercial to its very core, tends to gloss over all that, rather marking such insecurity as a personal hang-up. And that increases our discomfort, as we come to feel that we are outsiders who don’t fit in with society. At the extreme, we come to think that we are afflicted with ‘poverty consciousness’, a disorder that traps us in a miserable condition of lack; something we need to cure ourselves of in order to claim the gifts that life offers. If commercial exchanges often cause us to feel uncomfortable, that is OUR problem, not society’s. That is the message we come to internalize.

The heroes of our commerce-centered world appear completely unburdened with any such personal failings. Affluent achievers, they see commerce as perfectly wonderful! Confident in all that they have to offer, they joyfully demand high monetary compensation, which makes its way to them as if on a red carpet. Such is the relationship with money we are encouraged to aspire to, a relationship borne out of knowing our own value, and then translating that into financial abundance with ease, radiating a magnetic pull upon money that draws massive amounts of it to us. This, by such reasoning, is the ‘natural’ way for money to flow around the world, with us in its mainstream, and only our own doubts and discomfort (probably conditioned through childhood experiences of lack), in other words our personal failings, preventing it.

I think it might be a good idea to place this concept under a bit of scrutiny. I think we may find the whole notion of commerce to be not so ‘natural’ after all, and our own feelings of discomfort with it to be more natural than we thought, less the result of personal flaws and more the result of intuiting that we didn’t actually evolve for this.

Consider that, in our earliest and most formative years, commerce is not a part of our lives at all. Meals appear as if by magic. We might complain about them but we never stop to think about their price. Treats like ice cream might have to be negotiated for, but not bought. Play, rest, meals, sleep, exploration, story time; all the key elements of a child’s life unfold day to day without commercial considerations entering into our heads. Adults provide for us, as they provide for household pets, without asking for anything in return.
As we mature, commerce makes its way into our lives, while we still hold onto our more ‘natural’ way of being in certain situations, such as helping a sibling or a close friend move, watching a sibling’s child for a night so he or she can have a movie night with their spouse, volunteering, helping some kids get a ball or a kite out of a tree, bringing a meal over to a grieving neigbor, helping someone look for a runaway pet, and on and on. We do these things without even thinking about their monetary value. And, as noted earlier, in tribal communities ALL activities are done this way. Children are raised, food is shared, roofs are repaired, medical treatment is provided and so on. The tribe inherently recognizes that what is done for one is done for all, and the tribe needs each member to be whole.

We might stop to consider that perhaps commerce is very similar to writing. All human groups have language, as did Neanderthals, as do many other species of animals in one form or another. However, not all groups of people have had written language, which is a relatively recent addition, perhaps a mere 5 or 6000 years old. It isn’t natural, as evidenced by the many millennia we survived without it. We invented it, somewhere around the 11th hour. Its usefulness has made it ubiquitous, so we teach it to our children, painstakingly, whereas verbal communication they pick right up early on. Children are born primed to talk, but not to write. Some people take to it beautifully, while others don’t. A lot of similarities with commerce there; wouldn’t you say?
In fact, in most cases, children begin learning the ‘unnatural’ practice of writing well before they learn the ‘unnatural’ practice of charging for their labor. Previous to that, they engage in a world of non-commercial exchanges. They trade things; kids love trading things. They play together. They help each other. It doesn’t occur to them to charge for these exhcanges. This is not to say that children are saints; of course they aren’t! For most children, getting is much more important than giving. Selfishness and immaturity go together, and it takes a long time, and good guidance, to turn a ‘give me’ child into a ‘give you’ adult. But that’s the same in tribal communities as it is in our modern world. It doesn’t really have anything to do with commerce. It’s simple human development, moving from immaturity to maturity, ideally with proper tutelage.

Despite all of this, commerce has completely taken over our world, our lives, and a good portion of our mental space. A rent free apartment might be a dream, but commerce takes up a lot of rent-free space in our brains. It can make us feel guilty, cheated, arrogant, amateurish, afraid, insecure, clueless, stupid, vengeful, incompetent, frustrated, indignant, unworthy, suspicious, underappreciated and secretive. Probably all of us have felt at least some of these at times. So, what are the good things it makes us feel? Seriously, I think that’s worth asking, given that it can induce so many negative thoughts and feelings. Well, it can make us feel proud and satisfied, there is no doubt about that. And those are good things. But…I think…. those are the only things, right? Just those two. And we only manage to feel either of those two when we judge that we have danced the dance more or less skillfully. We negotiated a fair price for ourselves, we asked what we were worth, we achieved a win win situation, etc.

Could we not have felt those things WITHOUT commerce? Of course we could. Pride and satisfaction are as familiar among tribal peoples as ‘modern’ ones. We don’t need commerce to develop useful skills, cultivate talents, increase our knowledge about things that interest us..yet we are caught up in the delusion that in fact we do. Most of us think, deep down, that the carrot of financial reward and the stick of poverty are what motivates us to advance on both personal levels and collectively. Champions of capitalism are fully convinced of that. But it behooves us to ask, is that true? Is commerce a necessary ingredient of progress, and is the progress brought about by transactional exchanges always the right, or best, kind of progress?

There are people who LOVE commerce, who feel totally in their element with it. You see them in the first two sections of the airplanes, the one with the oversized seats. That’s fine. There are also people who LOVE writing, who feel totally in their element with it. You’ll find them, or their work anyway, in novels, plays, articles, advertisements, movies and so on. But there is an obvious difference. For people who aren’t particularly suited to a life of the written word, copious alternatives exist. Writing occupations are a tiny portion of the overall job pool. Not so with commerce. We’ve made it the only game in town, and what’s more, we’ve done everything we can to convince ourselves that it SHOULD be the only game in town. It ‘makes the world go ‘round’, it leads to innovations and improvements, it helps us clarify our goals and refine our skills. If we don’t ‘do’ commerce particularly well, we are made to perceive this as a personal failing that we need to do something about, because there is no Plan B. Not a good writer? No problem, be a nurse, be a fisherman, be a basketball coach, be a chef. Not good at commerce? Fix that or be a loser.

I’m personally of the belief that NO ONE should be made to feel like a loser simply because they don’t take naturally to a certain endeavor. Different people have different talents and proclivities, and that makes this an interesting world to live in. It is tragic how much unhappiness results from people feeling they don’t know how to play the game of life right, the make or break game; the only one that really matters. The game of commerce, in other words.

So, what do we do about this? We’re not going to erase commerce from society, switch to a barter economy or anything of that nature. So we have to begin by adjusting our personal attitudes, and perhaps gradually moving from there to a wider movement. The first thing to know is this: there is nothing wrong with you if commerce makes you uncomfortable. It is not wrong to hesitate and feel a but queasy about charging for your work, worrying if you are asking too much or too little, sometimes wishing that people would simply share with you something beneficial rather than insisting that you pay more than you have. It is not wrong of you to feel a little big skeptical when you hear that oft circulated trope, ‘if you don’t pay for it you won’t take it seriously and receive its benefits’, a self serving statement that some people feel like phonies even pronouncing, while others don’t. None of the people involved in the two stories I began with were ‘wrong’, simply because they were uncomfortable. They were doing the awkward dance of commerce, something that humans didn’t evolve for and that some people simply don’t take to.
Forgive yourself, and forgive everyone else who feels like they are doing this dance with two left feet. The problem doesn’t lie with them. It is true that significant rewards flow to those who take to the dance naturally. It is also true that similar financial rewards make their way to those who work to overcome their discomfort and develop more confidence navigating the world of commerce. But let’s not convince ourselves that it is a game of winners and losers, or that losing in this one aspect of life by extension bleeds out into all other aspects of life, diminishing ones chances of being happy and fulfilled. It doesn’t have to be like that. We can find fulfillment in so many non-commercial ways, so what we need to do is increase the value that we place on them and revmove those nagging thoughts about how they are less important than the overriding need to make money.

Most people know it, but try not to think too much about it: money is a religion. It is the biggest, most widely accepted, and most devoutly followed religion in the world today, and probably in history. Think of the sacrifices people make for it. Think of the importance they place on it. Think of the sense of self worth, or self shame, they get from it. Like any religion, it has its sacraments, its doctrines, its saints and sinners, its mythology. The greatest trick money ever played on the world is convincing people it ISN’T a religion, when it IS! If we recognize it for what it is, then we can begin to ask ourselves how devoted we really want to be to it. There are people for whom money is god, and that works for them. They get jobs on Wall Street, or make a killing with their stock portfolios. But if that’s not you, then it doesn’t have to be you. You don’t have to be a Money theist anymore than you have to be a monotheist! You can, to paraphrase the great Sufi saying, be IN the world of money without being OF the world of money. You don’t need to make it more important to you than your gut tells you it is. You won’t be left behind. Rather, you will have more awareness and confidence and wisdom to devote to exploring the areas of life that DO matter most to you. It isn’t one size fits all. 
This world has lots of joys that nobody charges anybody for. Glorious flowers don’t exact a price from you, nor do soaring birds. Sunshine dappling on a body of water is there for rich and poor and everyone in between. Breezes soothe, thunderstorms invigorate, babies shine their beautiful faces, the sun changes colors when it sets. All free, all completely outside our world of commerce, and its awkward dance. And may all ever remain so.

So, don’t tell yourself that you have to vibe with commerce and the whole world of money; that you need to change YOU and fix yourself should you find yourself wishing it was less important, its power less pervasive, and so on. You probably already have the right attitude about money, whatever that happens to be, whether that means loving it or, deep down, wishing it would disappear and we could all live happily without it, sharing our gifts freely and never going without. It’s the many different perspectives people have on things that makes this an interesting world with limitless things to learn, ways to express, joys to experience, and that includes commerce. You don’t have to change yourself in order to conform to our commerce-based world. Rather, by starting from loving and accepting yourself, it is far more likely that you will find a way for IT to fit YOU.