Mr & Mrs Moneybags

We all have those dreams about getting rich quick, perhaps by winning the lottery or maybe via a generous benefactor. But have you ever really thought about what you would do with all that money if you had it?

At the top of the list for a lot of people would be buying property, palatial homes and holidays houses on sun-drenched islands. Or, hell, why not just buy the island? Then there are all modes of transport, luxury cars, boats, helicopters, a Lear jet. Or a trip to the moon, for the truly outrageous billionaire.

Others would look for an influential indulgence, perhaps buying a business like a television network or a publishing company, a diamond mine or a hotel. Then they’d be responsible for other people and other people would be dependent on them, just to stroke the billionaire ego. Perhaps later, you could run for mayor or kick start your nascent acting career.

Or would you be the type of moneybags who would travel the world first class (or, never short a flight, on your own airline for one)? Seven-star accommodation, complete privacy, a bath of champagne and peeled grapes picked by twelve virgins at the stroke of midnight on a full moon?

Perhaps you’d throw a huge, lavish party, invite your 200 closest friends and have an ice sculpture or yourself as the centrepiece. Or maybe you’re the sly, suspicious type who would hoard it all and surround yourself with bodyguards to keep away from the greedy public - and don’t forget the personal assistant to throw away pleading letters from charities.

Would you really? Have you ever considered it thoroughly? If you loved your job, would you leave it? Would the money make a difference to your happiness or merely solve some financial problems and create new ones? Would you feel guilty and overcompensate with generous donations to friends, family and charity projects?

I like to play a game where I consider scenarios corresponding to winning different amounts of money. What would I want to do with $1000 as opposed to $1 million? The difference is a weekend-long party for my friends and starting my own business. But hey, if all this came to me on a platter, I would take it as a prize. A million dollars doesn’t mean anything sitting in a bank (other than ‘I have a million dollars’). A million dollar business, on the other hand...

Eccentric Fools

Have you ever noticed that for the obscenely rich and/or famous, any legal eccentricity is more or less overlooked? Take, for example, Donald Trump’s comb-over. Surely the man is rich enough to shell out for some hair replacement therapy, and yet we all seem to skim over the obviously badly placed follicles. If the same look were adopted by a homeless man on the street, you’d probably conclude that he was too poor for a proper haircut but there’s no such explanation for Trump’s er, hairstyle. Except for the possibility that he’s completely deluded into thinking he has an abundance of hair and no one will dare tell him otherwise. Or he’s completely sane and he just wants to test the limits of where his wealth might take him in terms of people unable to say anything.

It’s a strange paradox, our concept of fame and fortune. The famous, the important and the fortunate are the most criticised people on the planet, and yet in a lot of cases, the most adored. Fashion trends that look ridiculous on the catwalk are adopted by the masses within weeks simply because this model or that actress was seen in it. The difference is, in many ways, that they can afford to look ridiculous.

With models, it’s a matter of wearing their client’s garments, no matter what the effect. That’s what they’re paid to do. In the case of actors and actresses topping the worst dressed list, the only job at stake is possibly their stylist’s. Sure, the right frock can increase your brownie points in the fame game, but if you have talent behind the image, a terrible choice of wardrobe off the set is hardly going to take your next paycheck down a million. In the real world, however, unless you’re a libertine, looking odd affects everything from your social life to your chances of being employed. You can’t afford to be eccentric because you drive people away.

Similarly, hobbies get the same treatment. An earl with a penchant for toy trains is endearing - your dad’s obsession just means there’s less room in the attic. Oddly, we seem to equate copious amounts of money or a life lived in a public fishbowl as reason enough for strange behaviour; everything from exchanging vials of blood, weird tattoos and naming your child after a fruit to shoplifting or exposing oneself in a public lavatory. If it were you, you’d be considered creepy.

I only have one theory for why we tolerate the eccentricities of the rich and famous - it’s entertainment. One kooky story about a starlet’s backstage demands, listing scattered rose petals, pink cupcakes and bottled water at exactly 15¢ªC, is a moment’s amusement on the commute to work. But if we had to live with these people, if you were the unfortunate production assistant who had to ensure that the water stayed at 15¢ªC, then it isn’t so funny. So our distance from wealth and fame allows us to see these follies for what they are but tolerate them, but if such a thing happened here on earth, we’d tell the foolish to get real.

The Crystal Ball

If you had the opportunity to look into the future, would you take it? Whether you believe that future gazing is possible is not the question. Your attitude to fortune-telling may say a lot about who you are; from the unscrupulous who would memorise tomorrow night’s Lotto numbers to the anxious who are waiting to see if their loved one recovers from a serious accident.

Why do people subscribe to predictions about their lives? Every major newspaper carries a horoscope column tucked in somewhere between sport and the comics and clairvoyant phone numbers adorn the classifieds section. Women’s interest magazines employ palm readers, numerologists and psychics as regular columnists and popular TV shows feature occupations such as forensic psychics. I can only conclude that we really want to know what’s going to happen to us.

Examining a few questions submitted to said women’s magazines, it seems that most of all, we want to know whether everything will be all right. This is fortune telling at its best. The answers will vary from the “you will find him within six months” type to the “you are driving potential suitors away with your desperation” sort. It isn’t so much that we are curious about what the future holds, although there is that element, but the yearning for a feeling that we will have a fulfilling life to look forward to, whether we currently have a perceived impasse to deal with or even if we are cruising along happily already.

Most people, I would wager, would be happy if they were told that they were going to have a good life, even if they weren’t able to harvest any details. It’s almost like assessing a book or a movie and taking a guess at whether it has a happy ending, subsequently making a judgement about whether you want to read it based on the possibilities. But living a life is not like reading a book; you can’t choose whether to live it.

Therein lies the danger of fortune telling - misfortune-telling. Many people shy away from horoscopes and clairvoyants, fearing that they may be told some bad news. But ask any clairvoyant - or psychologist, for that matter - and they will tell you that foretelling hardship does not necessarily mean it will happen because destiny is in your hands. Consider this: if the ill-fated event has been foretold by taking into account your current behaviour, then changing your behaviour may change the outcome of the event. And while you may not be able to change the death of a loved one, you might be able to prepare for it.

The problem is context. Your horoscope may indicate financial troubles ahead but assuming this prediction comes true, does this mean you’ll lose $10 or lose the house? Even clairvoyants would be hard-pressed to fully understand what something means to you, though they may see it in their mind, clear as day. They will have had to live your life to place the significance of people or symbols that they see, which means it may be their translation that becomes the most important part of the reading.

Believe what you will, but if you do end up at the wrong end of a fortune told, remember that all predictions have their weaknesses. So whether you choose a medium, numbers or the stars as your guide, realise that investing in the future via this method is only as sound as the tools that you use. Or maybe you’re one of those people who don’t want to know how the story ends until you get there.