Week 225 started off with a Vegas-themed episode of Angel. Fred, Gunn and Angel head to Las Vegas to ask Lorne for help with Cordelia. All is not well on the Strip. Lorne’s act is more popular than ever, but something is wrong…. It’s a good episode and fun to see the lights of Las Vegas. Fred and Gunn are in fine form and seeing Amy Acker dressed as a demonette was great. Wesley continues to be an enigma. I wonder what the season holds for him?
I love the premise of this episode — a crooked stage magician finds a way to steal people’s destinies. He then sells them to the highest bidder. You were destined to be the junior senator from Utah? Not if this guy gets a chance to steal that future from you! He uses Lorne’s ability to ID the right people to steal from. Not that Lorne is happy about this of course.
The episode made me think about destiny and the future. I mean, we’re chugging along paying off this debt and was that always my destiny? When I was counting out pennies to pay the rent back in grad school, was I already destined to be wealthy? How much of my current and future life is some nebulous concept like destiny and how much is plain old determination? I think back to my early 20s. Someone gave me a copy of Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill. I tried to read it. I wanted very much to think and grow rich. But I couldn’t get through it. The writing or the concepts, something stopped me. I tried other similar books — The Science of Getting Rich and Rich Dad, Poor Dad — to name a few, and nothing made sense to me. It all seemed so out of touch for me. Real estate? Investing? I was doing good to have a couple of dollars for a pitcher of beer. Forget about mutual funds.
Over time, as we made more money and of course, spent more money, the idea of getting a handle on money management became more important. The stakes got higher, if you will, because suddenly we have a house and careers and then, after we hit 40, we realized we want to be doing something else sooner rather than later, so let’s figure out this money thing. It’s been a long journey and it is hard to say an exact turning point. Listening to a Think and Grow Rich audio version helped a lot. I’d recommend it to anyone struggling with the language or the concepts. I mean think about it, the book is almost a hundred years old! Of course the language and some of the words are stilted. The concepts are still very valuable and the publishers have done a great job of keeping it in print and available. And now you can get a Think and Grow Rich pdf, if you don’t want to read a paperback version of the book.
So, to swing back to Angel, I guess I think we make our own destinies. I fully think that we could have stayed on that same paycheck-to-paycheck cycle for the rest of our lives. I mean who knows? Maybe I’m wrong about that. Maybe destiny wants to meet you half-way. Now that’s an idea.
