Becoming a Guide

The young man across from me has the look. I recognize it immediately—the tightness around the eyes, the way he checks his phone between sentences, calculating something that can't be calculated. He's twenty-six, makes decent money, and can't sleep.

I just need to hit six figures," he says. "Then I'll relax.

I don't laugh. I remember saying those exact words to someone who probably wanted to laugh too.

Instead, I lean forward. "What happens at ninety-nine thousand?

He pauses. The question catches him sideways. He's been thinking in round numbers, clean thresholds, the mythology of arrival. He hasn't considered the absurdity—that a single dollar separates anxiety from peace.

I don't know," he admits. "I guess I just... I'd feel like I made it.

There it is. The confession beneath every financial goal: *I'd feel like I made it.* Not that he'd have made it. That he'd feel like it. The feeling is what he's chasing. The feeling is what's for sale.

This is what it means to become a guide. Not to fix people, but to ask the questions they haven't learned to ask themselves.

Jean Valjean understood this in the streets of Montreuil-sur-Mer.

After his transformation—after the bishop's silver candlesticks bought his soul for God—Valjean could have disappeared into comfortable anonymity. He had money now, stolen and then sanctified. He could have lived quietly, hurt no one, helped no one, maintained the careful distance between himself and a world that had shown him only cruelty.

Instead, he built a factory.

Not from altruism, though that came. From recognition. Walking those streets, he saw versions of himself everywhere: the desperate, the hungry, the ones society had written off. He saw what he had been—a man so cornered by circumstances that stealing bread seemed reasonable. A man the world had decided wasn't worth saving.

The factory made jet beads, a process Valjean had learned in prison. Simple work, but steady. Within months, he employed half the town. Wages that fed families. Purpose that rebuilt dignity. The transformation wasn't just economic. When people have work that matters, when they can provide for those they love, something fundamental shifts. The town changed because one man recognized his own story in everyone else's struggle.

Valjean became the mayor not because he sought power, but because wealth had taught him something crucial: money is a tool for recognition. It reveals who you are when you have choices. It shows what you value when you can afford to value anything.

He chose to see himself in others. He chose to build rather than hoard. The factory wasn't charity—it was autobiography. Every job he created, every wage he paid, every family that moved from desperation to dignity was Valjean rewriting the story he thought money would tell about him.

Hugo places those words in Valjean's mouth as he dies. But he learned the truth earlier, in the factory, in the mayor's office, in every moment he chose to see his own face in another's need. The wealth gave him freedom. The freedom let him choose. He chose love.

This is the deeper mathematics of money. Not what you can accumulate, but what you can circulate. Not what you can buy, but what you can build. The factory didn't just employ people—it employed Valjean's conscience. It gave his wealth meaning beyond the having of it.

You've made it this far into the book because something about money troubles you. Maybe it's the gap between what you have and what you think you need. Maybe it's the way anxiety creeps in at 3am despite a healthy bank account. Maybe it's watching people you care about destroy themselves chasing numbers that keep moving.

Whatever brought you here, you now know something most people don't: the mechanics of the trap.

You understand that the number never arrives because it isn't designed to arrive. You've seen how contentment acts as satisfaction's enemy, how progress becomes its own obstacle, how the very thing that promises to solve your problems becomes the problem itself.

This knowledge creates an obligation.

Not to preach. God knows we have enough financial evangelists already, enough gurus promising shortcuts through the maze. The obligation is simpler and harder: to ask better questions.

When someone tells you about their financial goals, resist the urge to offer solutions. Ask about the wound instead. What does that number represent? What would change inside them if they reached it? What voice are they trying to silence?

When your daughter comes home from college worried about career choices, don't lecture about practical majors. Ask what she's afraid of. What does security mean to her? Where did she learn to measure worth in dollars?

When your friend complains about feeling behind, about everyone else having more, don't point out what they should be grateful for. Ask what "enough" looks like. Ask when they first felt like they weren't enough. Ask what they're really comparing.

The questions matter more than the answers. Questions interrupt the machinery. They create space between impulse and action, between fear and decision. They remind people that they have choices they didn't know they had.

This is the wealth you can give that costs nothing: attention. Curiosity. The gift of being truly seen by someone who understands the game they're playing because you've played it too.

The young man with the six-figure dreams calls me a month later. He's been thinking about our conversation, specifically about that single dollar separating anxiety from peace.

I realized something," he says. "If ninety-nine thousand isn't enough, then neither is a hundred thousand. If a hundred thousand isn't enough, then neither is two hundred thousand. The problem isn't the number.

Exactly. He's discovered what Valjean knew, what every guide eventually learns: the problem was never the money. The problem was believing that money could solve the real problem.

So what is the real problem?" I ask.

I don't think I'm worth what I'm asking for. At work, in relationships, anywhere. I'm trying to build external proof of something I don't believe internally.

The conversation goes deeper from there. We talk about where that belief came from, how it operates, what it costs him beyond money. We talk about the difference between proving your worth and knowing it. We talk about what changes when you stop trying to earn something you already have.

A year later, he makes six figures. He calls to tell me, laughing. "You know what's funny? I barely noticed when it happened. I was too busy working on stuff that actually mattered.

This is what guides do. We don't give people fish or teach them to fish. We help them remember they were never starving.

Valjean died surrounded by the people he'd saved—Cosette, Marius, a room full of love his wealth had made possible. Not because he bought their affection, but because his money had revealed what was always true about him: he was someone worth loving.

The factory closed after his death. The workers mourned him genuinely. The town named a street after him. But the real monument was subtler: dozens of families who learned that work could have dignity, that they could provide for those they loved, that they were worth more than the world had told them.

Valjean's wealth multiplied not through interest or investment, but through recognition. Every person he helped see their own worth became capable of helping others see theirs. The factory was just the beginning. The real product was hope.

You carry that same capacity now. Every conversation about money is a chance to interrupt the machinery, to ask the questions that create space, to help someone see the game they're playing clearly enough to choose whether to keep playing.

The wealth paradox resolves not when you have enough money, but when you understand that the question itself is flawed. You become a guide not by escaping the trap, but by learning to recognize it so clearly that you can help others see the exit signs.

The young man who called about six figures texted me yesterday: "Helped my sister think through some money stuff. Asked her your question—what happens at the number minus one? She laughed and said she'd never thought about it. Good stuff.

The wealth spreads. Not the money—the awareness. The understanding that we were never actually trapped, just convinced we were. The recognition that the door was always open; we just weren't looking at the right wall.

This is what Valjean knew, what every guide learns eventually: the greatest wealth you can accumulate is the ability to help others discover they were rich all along.