And the rich get richer…

There's a saying, right - something like: Life is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

Well, fine. I know what that saying is saying… but I think that life, from the point of perspective, is 99% inspiration and 1% perspiration. This is not to say that you don't have to work to keep perspective - but that in keeping a positive perspective (inspiration), you can be a lot happier without having to quantitatively change anything…

Example.

I do a lot of stupid shit. I don't even know where to begin talking about what kinds of stupid shit I do - but I feel like I do a lot… all the time. Take the case of forgetting to pay a bill and getting slammed with a $35 late fee for a $10 balance.

Now. Someone with the wrong perspective might be really upset by this… thinking - How the hell is it right that my bill should increase by 350% just because I was late paying it? And that someone would be mad.

I, on the other hand, prefer to take this in stride and say: that was my stupid tax. I should have paid my bill, but I didn't because I'm stupid. So life taxed me.

And because I'm socially liberal and believe in the good of all people, even at the expense of the individual, I always gladly pay taxes. So this is no problem.

Another example.

On a date last year at an outdoor bar in Union Square, I was sitting across from this girl, drinking margaritas. She was soooo pretty. Soooo pretty, I just let her talk. And talk and talk and talk… and it didn't matter. I was just stoked that she was talking at me. And she was talking at me. I was mesmerized by soft, red, lips, and intoxicated (literally) by tequila. And I can vaguely remember hearing, in the heat of the moment, something clatter near my feet… but didn't think much of it. I didn't want to break my own trance…

Anyway - she closed the place down, and, after walking her home (not even getting a kiss goodnight!), I made my way to the subway… and reached for my iPod, which normally hangs from around my neck.

And realized just what that clattering was…

Long story short - I went back to where we had had drinks, jumped the fence (because it was closed) had a run in with a cop who seemed dubious that I was just looking for an iPod… and, after some fast-talking and earnest pleas, went home in-and-with silence.

The next day, I bought myself a new iPod for a couple hundred dollars, and chalked it up to my being-a-boy tax. And… if I am to believe what all my female friends say about boys - this is the same as, yes, a stupid tax.

Anyway.

Now that I have moved up in society to my swanky Wall Street abode, I would be happy to pay a graduated stupid-tax. And sometimes I do. I bought some jeans the other day, for example, because they were on sale for $30. I then brought those jeans into the local tailor, and when I picked them up, was asked for the $40 hem fee…

Next time I'll just buy the jeans that fit in the first place, even if they are twice as much. I'll still come out ahead, and it will probably be more stylish(!)…

But the tax isn't actually graduated, outside of a few isolated examples, like the one recounted above - because within the warm walls of 63 Wall Street, I am "safe." Whereas I've forgotten countless things around New York, returning minutes later to find them gone… here on Wall Street nothing is ever taken by lucky opportunists. Laundry cards with $50 on them can routinely be found sticking out of the machines they were last used in - and people just leave them for the rightful owner to retrieve at their convenience.

I left my iPod in our building's gym this morning ALL DAY, and came back to find it still at the same machine I had used earlier… By all means, I felt like I should be buying myself one of the new nano-chromatics. But instead I can use that money on margaritas.

In the laundry room, I was loading in a machine, when an older woman came up to me and asked if it was safe to leave the laundry in the machine and come back when it was done, or if she should wait while it went. I kind of laughed and told her no one was going to take anything. She shook her head and said, "This is so weird. I am visiting my daughter, so I don't know these systems - but where I am from, there is no way I could just leave something."

I just smiled, patted her on the back, and said, "Welcome to Wall Street, where the rich get richer, and no one pays stupid-taxes."