I don't like to get very crazy with how I think about it so the way to think about for me is just the simple "Money is a tool" philosophy. You need it to do anything. If your tools have been left in a bucket of salt water do you expect them to remain durable over time?

I prefer to have good quality tools that I know will be durable over time.

I like money as communication of value. On Nostr quite small amounts of currency are being sent but they communicate something more. In services businesses one sets their rate to communicate the quality of their work or to tell the buyer that they shouldn't be tasked with simple stuff or to deal with idiots. Buyers communicate by observing that you get what you pay for, haggling or not.

The massive increase in value of Bitcoin over the years has thrown a wrench into this communication as people may conflate a small gift with the value it eventually obtained. Or depending on how much you think 1 btc = 1 btc, that the value of your time has collapsed versus what it once was. Heavy stuff, so ya know, just have a good time and try not to think about what could've been.

A proxy for time.

Money is energy

Money is a medium of exchange. It's whatever is used by a particular group of people to exchange within an economy; whether that's for goods, services, labor, or anything else.

I think money can be divided in easy and hard money. The hard money

The money as energy analogy may be useful, but it's ultimately a variant of the Labor Theory of Value.

The money you hold represents something like the net value you've added to society and entitles you to use that much of the available scarce resources.