Member-only story
I’m not Santa Claus, am I
How old money stories can hold us back
When I was young, there was a children’s song called ‘Ik ben toch zeker Sinterklaas niet’ in Dutch, which roughly translates as ‘I’m not Santa Claus, am I’. I think you can guess what it’s about: a father proclaiming he doesn’t have all the money in the world to buy all the presents his children put on their wish lists.
Should you want to hear it, there’s a YouTube link to it.
For so many of us, sentences like this were said often when we were young. Maybe even up till now.
Money doesn’t grow on trees.
You have to work hard for your money.
We can’t afford that.
Sometimes this story about money being scarce and hard to come by was illustrated by a mother going to 4 different super markets to get the best bargains for the groceries, or fathers going off to work moaning and sighing but buckling through because they had to ‘bring home the bacon’.
As a child, you don’t doubt these stories. It’s reality, simply the way it is. The stories get woven into your identity and how you see the world, without you even noticing.
