I also learned an important lesson about how money changes everyone in the end.

Sad but true. Isn't it funny how people can be so transformed and take so seriously something that only really exists as a symbolic concept?

A rich man needs to eat, drink, shit, and sleep every bit as much as the poor man does. A rich man will starve to death just as easily as a poor man if they don't eat. A rich man naked in a snowstorm is going to succumb to exposure just as easily as the poor man. And so on.

And this isn't to say that I don't understand the importance of money in a capitalist system, as much as I wish it were otherwise. I don't like the thought of being poor and homeless or not having enough funds to pay for my insulin. But I also know that the actual fact of whether I have money or not makes zero difference in regards to my actual physiological needs. My body could care less whether I buy my food, grow my own, or steal it from somewhere, as long as it gets food period.

I have to make allowances given the society I choose to live in, but to a very large degree, it is a choice i consciously make.