The Abuse of Stillness: When Money Stops Flowing

What isn’t used is abused:

This is a profound truth that we often miss. This principle vibrates through life, from our bodies to our time, and most critically, to the very lifeblood of our society: money. To see it, we need only look at our banks.

People keep putting money in the bank, more money, and then even more. What happens? That money is locked away. The bank, in turn, loans it to multiple individuals, making money on your money. So, what is the ultimate use of your savings? It becomes a tool for making money for the bank, not for you. As you hold money, and then hold more, you are systematically taking it out of circulation. The result is a paradox where everyone is struggling to earn, yet simultaneously locking their earnings away. This collective act of hoarding creates a strange scarcity amidst plenty.

Locking money away is like buying batteries only to store them in a warehouse. You buy a battery to use its energy, to power something. If I hoard batteries, I remove that energy from circulation. Energy out of circulation is useless. It is rendered inert. This is the first abuse: taking vitality and imprisoning it. It is akin to hiring a doctor, declaring "you work for me," and then locking that doctor in a jail cell. If you lock away hundreds of doctors, they cannot serve you or anyone. They suffer in confinement, and you commit an abuse. Hoarded money is like those jailed doctors: full of potential, yet prevented from fulfilling its purpose of service and exchange.

The second, and greater, abuse is that money meant to serve you, to make your life good, is now generating returns for someone else in a distorted way. Not only that, it is losing its value. When money is locked inside, it stagnates and decays. Consider that one root cause of inflation is this very abuse: money that is locked up, money that people are trying to "save" from taxes or future purchases, sitting idle. This hoarding mentality fuels a contradictory demand: we want things for a very, very low price.

And here we arrive at a tragic irony. Why is employment becoming a problem? Why will our children soon struggle to find work? The reason is directly tied to our demand for cheap goods. If you want everything for cheap, corporations cannot afford to hire workers. They are compelled to automate everything. We blame automation, but we fail to see that the necessity for automation is born from our own greed. We want cheap goods and a job for our son. How can both be possible? Either we get cheap goods and our son remains unemployed, or we let our son work, let him contribute to the economy, and accept paying a little more for goods because, in essence, we are paying his salary. The contradiction is plain: I do not want to pay anybody else's son's salary, but I desperately want my own son to be hired. Yet, whenever you buy goods, you are paying somebody else's son's salary. Our collective insistence on cheapness strangles the very cycle that creates livelihood.

The final abuse is the abuse of rot. Too much unused money, like too much sugar syrup left standing, will ferment. It becomes toxic, attracting ants, insects, bacteria, and fungi. In the same way, too much money, simply kept and not used, begins to stagnate and turn poisonous. It corrupts from within, fostering inequality, resentment, and a sick economy.

So, the saying holds devastating truth: if it is not used, it is abused. Most of us end up as abusers, because we take money out of its natural flow. Water that is not in circulation becomes stagnant, abused water. A body that is not put to use grows rusty and sick; disease finds its home in inactivity. Time that is not used well breeds laziness and despair.

Money is energy. Its health, like the health of a river, a body, or a mind, depends on movement. To save is not to imprison. To have is to steward. True wealth is not in the lonely heap, but in the current that powers the world, that pays the doctor, that employs the son, and that, in its generous flow, returns to enrich the source from which it came. Let us stop abusing our wealth by letting it be still. Let us put it to use.