Money, meaning & despair.

I opened Mensa Netherlands’ annual weekend as keynote speaker. The theme? Money. ‘What do you know about money?’ my inner critic asked while I prepared.

More importantly: how do you hold the attention of a room filled with the top two percent of the Netherlands’ smartest people for over an hour, speaking about something you know little about? You may know this kind of despair when you have to produce something creative—a work of self-expression that you know will be judged, in this case rather publicly.

I am not an economist, and I know little about money.I do know something about meaning.

I opened the evening with that confession. What followed was an interactive hour about the dark triangle of money, power, and advertising; our collective addiction to the future; money as an anesthetic; and how money logically ought to serve meaning, yet in practice often alienates us from it.

The beautiful thing about meaning is that almost anything can be viewed through its lens: work, relationships, happiness, love. That examination quickly brings you to a connecting story that concerns everyone. It worked for money too.

Not long afterward, I was invited to speak about AI’s effect on the quality of relationships in healthcare. I knew two things: preparation would include a moment of despair, and the result would be a story that mattered to people—because my stories concern what makes people human.