song for theme #45B: Work Hard, Pay As You Go

“Pay As You Go” by Stephen P. Cook

to be sung to the tune of “Stand By Your Man” by Billy Sherrill / Tammy Wynette

 Don’t give in to borrowing money

Digging a financial hole for yourself

Get with working hard

Make do best you can

Lose obligation

Step up to wealth

Don’t give in to wanting it all now¹

Losing peace of mind with unpaid bills

Instead be patient

Work hard to get ahead

And someday you’ll have your thrills

Pay as you go

Test out your constitution

Find creative solution²

When times are tough³

Pay as you go

Don’t discount the future⁴

Don’t let guilt⁵ lay you low

Pay as you go

Pay as you go

Don’t discount the future

Don’t let debt lay you low

Pay as you go

SONG—NOTES / COMMENTS

1—Some would argue wanting it all now is an aberrant desire: a combination of greedy acquisitivity and childish instant

     gratification. Others would say it’s just human nature!

2—Many people feel that finding solutions to problems is at the heart of what being human is about!

3—As famed UCLA basketball coach John Wooden liked to say, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”  The getting

     going here means working to make money that might otherwise be borrowed or using one’s own labor in lieu of paying

     someone else to provide the service that your labor can provide.

4— Discounting the future involves doing or having (consuming) something now, rather than waiting, or rather than investing the

     money you would have spent and getting a high return on the investment.

5—Guilt and money is a complicated subject! While in affluent countries the rich may feel guilt over their good fortune, that isn’t

     what is alluded to here. Rather, the reference is to agonizing over the inability to pay debts and reneging on the promise

     originally made to repay. Religious folks interpret biblical verses (like Romans 13:3 “Owe no man anything” or Psalms 37:21

     “The wicked borrow and do not repay”) as not connecting borrowing money with sin, but rather linking sin with breaking the

     promise and failing to repay. 

 Comment: To the extent that this theme represents self restraint (see theme #29A comment), it may signal some emotional maturity. It has value as emotional armor.  As the song suggests, it can provide a defense against feelings of guilt. In this regard, also see note 5 above. Before the “pay as you go” can happen though, you need to “work hard.”  Losing yourself in hard work is one strategy for escaping other stresses and having to confront unpleasant grim realities about yourself and your situation.  If that work hard  è money and facilitates pay as you go, it’s probably inappropriate to label the hard work as a maladaptive coping strategy!