Before money, there was trade.
A fish for a warm cloak.
A story for a place to sleep.
A carved bowl for a secret you’d been carrying too long.
A song for silence.
A hand on your back for a place at the fire.
No metrics. No ledgers. No shame.
Just the quiet grammar of giving and receiving —
Not tit for tat, but ebb and return.
You gave what you had,
and trusted the return would come —
not as a dollar, but as a dinner,
a favor,
a witness.
Then came the placeholder.
Coins, notes, stamped faces.
Then came the myth:
that this symbol is survival.
That numbers mean security.
That more numbers mean more worth.
And somewhere along the way, we forgot.
We began calling net worth value.
We began putting stickers on souls —
pricing hours, attention, aliveness.
We began speaking of “earning a living”
as if life were something handed out
in exchange for obedience.
But money is not food.
Not safety.
Not kinship.
Not awe.
Money is a tool — not a truth.
A knife can prepare a feast
or slice a wound.
Same steel.
Different hand.
Yes — money can support a life.
It can buy time, access, warmth.
But it can also become a muzzle.
A mirage.
A maze you forget you’re inside.
You are not your income.
You are not your rate.
You are not an investment to be maximized.
You are not a product.
Not a pitch deck.
Not a brand.
You are a phenomenon.
So what if you held money loosely —
not with fear, but with clarity?
Not as your weight, but as your wind?
What if you asked instead:
What is the cleanest trade I can offer?
What do I have that isn’t monetizable, but still sacred?
What does my presence return to the commons?
This isn’t about rejecting money.
This is about breaking its spell.
This is about remembering:
Money is a symbol.
Not a savior.
And you —
You were always the value.
Coinskin (n.)
The outer persona crafted for economic safety.
“He shed his coinskin the day he cried in public.”
Unpricedness (n.)
The sacred state of being beyond valuation.
“There’s an unpricedness to a baby’s laugh, to dusk, to grief.”
Ratemyth (n.)
The belief that your time has a singular, fixed dollar value.
“She burned the ratemyth and started asking for what felt right.”
If this hit home — write me. I’m listening.