Can we put some respect on our money? Yes please!

Let’s talk about money from a different dimension. ”Confirmative amnesia is a disease whereby the person you send money to doesn’t call you back to confirm whether they received it. They wait for you to call and enquire. Doctors say it’s commonly found in relatives and close family members, mainly in Africa.”

Someone posted the above in one of the WhatsApp groups I am in and it caused a lot of motion and laughter from the members. I guess it is because they related to it. I don’t know how to go around this topic without making it personal and without catching feelings. Well, this blog is a personal one and is based on my experiences and perspectives. So let’s see how emotional I get. I wonder how many people out there have gone through the same. If you are reading this I would love to hear your sentiments on this in the comment section if you don’t mind.

Well, it is a habit I have seen around me, and sadly from people I highly think of. I have had conversations with people narrating their frustrations about the above named confirmative amnesia. The question we ask a lot is, how can someone afford the means to ask/borrow/loan money from someone and once granted they suddenly lose the means to confirm the reception? The lender has to go the extra mile to follow up if the person received an amount sent.

You could say there is some entitlement of gratitude in play here. Yes and of course there is nothing wrong with that when it has to do with something as delicate. If you help someone and they call you back or write to you a simple thank you, it does boost you to continue doing good. No? Or are we supposed to take absolutely anything and always live by „Tenda mema nenda zako?“ (Do good and leave/let it be) It is a good way to live and if you have mastered that, good for you. On the other hand, if you completely rely on people thanking you for every little help you give, then you might never do anything good. That is just how it is.

If I send you lets say 10K from the goodness of my heart, I like to think the natural response should be you make some form of contact with me to let me at least know you received the money. That is important because how else should I know if the money got lost in the waves or not. Right? It isn’t plainly because I‘m dying to hear your gratitude and that for some reason I want you to massage my ego. Because I think this is what many people think. You didn’t have that 10K, to begin with. Take a 100 bob from it and use it to send me a confirmation of some sort and then we are good. Just don’t wait for me to ask you a month later if you received what I sent you. Or even worse don’t wait for the next time you will be in need to say something. It honestly shouldn’t work that way. Do we agree?

I feel like it is morally incorrect to be entitled to peoples help and in this case to peoples money. That element of entitlement eminently shows when there is a lack of gratitude and when elements of blackmail begin to come in play. People are blackmailing each other left right and center into sending money just whenever because the most famous reason being „blood ties“ How I‘m I obliged to save another person from poverty when the ground is shaking beneath my feet? That is one question we fail to ask ourselves that leads us to be enslaved into ideologies that clearly wear us down. We don’t realize how much we contribute to the poverty mentality that we keep growing and find hard to break out of.

No money is earned easily. Not even drug money. We all pay a price for the money we have. Just think about what you have had to sweat to get that little or that much money you have. Just think about the sacrifices you make to send someone else money. As a receiver, just think for a while the sacrifice that that person who sent you money might have had to make so they could send you part of it. How much do you appreciate that effort? How much respect do you give that money?

There is some sort of fulfillment in helping because you can and want to as opposed to when it feels like an obligation. It is a shame that we are sometimes blackmailed over and over again by loved ones into helping. It is a shame that we are deceived into aimlessly sending money and never breaking through because we always find ourselves going back a step behind. It is sad that we knowingly and unknowingly trap and enslave ourselves in the poverty mentality. It is sad that we shy away from unapologetically taking full accountability and usage of our money and let others have an upper hand to it.

I wish we can just begin to respect our money a bit more. I wish we can respect the money we receive from others as help, even in the form of loans. Throw that entitlement out the window because we all want to interact in love and live in harmony. We all want to help when we can. And money being a sensitive topic, it does find a way to come in between our relationships. We have enough broken relationships in the name of money But it isn’t the money, it is us. It is how we handle it when dealing with each other. It is finding the gut to approach me first when you have difficulties in paying me back a loan given informally and based purely on trust and no official document to prove it, and letting me know you are still planning to pay it.

Can we put some respect for our money? Define what that means to you and do it. Take charge!