Elon Musk is the world’s first trillionaire.

A trillion dollars. Can you imagine that? That number is so large that it barely means anything anymore. I mean, let’s imagine some other values and their measure:

• A million seconds is about eleven days.
• A billion seconds is about thirty-one years.
• A trillion seconds is more than thirty-one thousand years.
• A trillion dollars is wealth on a scale the human brain was never designed to comprehend.

Yet what fascinates me isn’t the money. It’s the possibility that a person could possess more wealth than dozens of families could spend across dozens of lifetimes and still wake up wanting more. Not because Elon Musk is uniquely flawed. He may well be very satisfied and happy and the money just keeps flowing.

Elon is, however, the most visible expression of something America and American Christianity has spent generations teaching all of us:

Enough is never enough.

The Gospel of ‘Not Yet’ and ‘Someday’

We are a civilization permanently staring at the horizon. We have become addicted to the arrival at one of life’s “finish lines,” only to find the finish line only led to the start of the next race to get to our next of life’s finish lines. Somehow, we simply never arrive at THE finish line. Why.

Our culture speaks in many different voices in pointing towards the never-ending cadre of finish lines:

• Capitalism.
• Politics.
• Religion.
• Productivity (i.e., do more) culture.

But underneath them all is often the same message – Not yet or Someday. The messages span the litany of accomplishments we long for in life of not successful enough, or attractive enough, or productive enough. We’ve even harkened back to the ideas of old that being poor somehow means you’ve committed some sin that makes the (capitalism) gods not like you.

Not wealthy enough.

And if you’re not “wealthy enough” it’s because you haven’t been productive enough, or smart enough, or attractive enough, or – let’s face it, the real American bottom – not good enough.

Where are those bootstraps to pull up when you need them?

So, we say to ourselves “someday I will get there.” But then we arrive at “there” and find that finish line is just the starting line of the next race. “Now I have to get to THAT finish line. The finish line keeps moving. The reward is always somewhere over the next hill disguising itself as the next promotion. The next relationship. The degree. The next hundred thousand dollars. The bigger house. The first million. The next trillion.

“If I can only get to the next finish line, life will be good.”

We spend our lives chasing horizons that recede as quickly as we approach them. And because the destination never arrives, neither does contentment.

The Billionaire and the Burned-Out Parent

The strange thing is that the billionaire and the exhausted working parent are often trapped in the same psychological system. All have a belief in what will make them happy. Money. Physical fitness. a loving relationship. Kids, family, house.

Different numbers. Different circumstances. Same story. Same capitalism. Same GPS. They must keep chasing finish lines that span the psychosocioeconomic spectrum. Even the poorest person can have a fixation on the destination. And they can miss the scenery, too.

The Cult of More

This is not an argument against ambition. Human beings are builders, creators, dreamers. and explorers. The problem isn’t striving. The problem is believing that our lives are waiting for us at the finish line. Because America doesn’t merely reward accumulation, it romanticizes it. It marks it as a mark of character and value. If you don’t have enough money, it’s because you’re not valuable enough to the machine of American capitalism to deserve to have enough.

We take the New Testament verse that “A man who doesn’t work, doesn’t eat” and twist it into a judgment of:

If you don’t have money to eat, then you must not be working hard enough.

Ah, yes. The good ol’ “‘Merican Bible Translation.” Gotta love it. Thus, the person with one house dreams of two. The person with two dreams of five. The company that earns a billion dollars must somehow earn two billion. The stock market must always grow. The economy must always expand. The graph must always rise.

More.

More.

More.

More!

We have transformed “enough” into a kind of cultural heresy. To be satisfied is to be lazy. To rest is treated as weakness. To stop climbing is treated as failure.

The endless pursuit of “more” isn’t evidence of a healthy drive; it’s evidence of the unhealthy shortcoming of a vacuous soul, always needing the next “fix” of wealth. What if the actual finish line – the finish line with peace and joy and love and beauty – is “enough.”

Missing the Scenery

Imagine driving through some of the most breathtaking scenery on Earth. Mountains rise in the distance. Wildflowers blur along the roadside. The sky burns blue above you. But your eyes never leave the GPS.

You are completely consumed by your estimated time of arrival. You are so focused on getting there that you never notice where you are. This is how many of us move through life. We postpone joy. We postpone rest. We postpone wonder, aliveness, humanness.

Until the next promotion. The next purchase that makes our neighbor jealous. Our next achievement that is lauded by others.

Meanwhile, life quietly unfolds all around us. A child laughing from another room. A dog asleep at our feet. Sunlight moving across the floor. A friend calling at exactly the right moment. A cool breeze through an open window.

I often ask my clients in session to name the most beautiful thing they saw this week. One of my clients said it was seeing his son come to him and ask if he could give some of his chicken nuggets and juice to the unhoused man sitting outside the front door. To the child, that man wasn’t lazy, he was a human worthy of the gift of excess had by someone else.

The very things that make a life beautiful are often the things we stop noticing while chasing the future.

The Wealthiest Poverty

Perhaps the saddest thing about the prospect of a trillionaire is not the inequality. Though the inequality is staggering. Perhaps the saddest thing is what it reveals about us. If someone can possess more wealth than entire generations could spend and still need more, then the problem was never money. The problem was the story.

The story that says fulfillment lives somewhere else. That says arrival is just one milestone away. The idea that never allows us to inhabit the present because real life is waiting in the future.

That story doesn’t only trap billionaires.It traps all of us.

And maybe the great tragedy of our age is not that some people have too little. It might well be the greatest tragedy are those who have everything yet they’ve been taught by American capitalism that they yet do not have enough.

And that internal hole tells us all – I can’t give an extra nugget to a homeless man – he should get his own chicken nuggets. Because not only do I need all the nuggets I have, but I never, EVER stop needing more.