The Rich and The Poor
It is easy for a man who has much to criticize the habits of one who has little, and easy for a poor man to criticize the wealthy for the usage of what he has. It is not common to hear the poor criticizing the poor, or the rich the rich, but true gain might be achieved were each to critique himself. In the west, there is usually much folly to be found in poverty, and finding it surrounded by wealth is equally common. Everywhere, above and below, can be found sheets and layers of foolishness and waste. Rather than shunning poverty or excess, it would be better to learn to see and flee from folly, as the sprout from which each grows.
The poor man looks to the rich with a mixture of admiration and hatred; with one side of his mouth he begs advice on how to become rich himself, with the other he curses their greed as the imagined source of all of his troubles. The rich man looks to the poor with a mixture of sympathy and disdain; with one side of his mouth he pities the circumstances that led to their shallow resources, and with the other he denounces their sloth and waste. How much better it would be for each to seek the folly in his own ways, and attack their own foolishness instead of one another.
True wealth is found not where a man has all he desires, but where a man desires what he has. Where a man has learned to hate folly in his desires, you will find that he has whittled them down to the nub, and now desires very little. Desires breed in the swamp of unhappiness, each one a mosquito waiting to be hatched and suck the blood of contentment. The happiest of men has not found success in quenching the thirst of his wants, for this thirst arises again tomorrow, and tomorrow. Where there is a man who has learned that foolish desire itself is the enemy, and has engaged himself in battle with it, you will find many mosquitos dead and the man’s contentment alive and pumping blood.
The Parent and Child
The parent derides the child for expending a dollar as soon as he gains it, on a piece of candy or a cheap plastic toy. The following day, the child finds that he has gained no dollar at all. The candy is eaten and gone, the cheap toy scarcely enjoyed for half an hour before it is broken or forgotten. It now lies in the clutter and trash of the house, while the child complains of nothing to do. The parent sees great folly here, and chides the child hoping to inspire greater wisdom in the future. All the while, he ignores the many instances in which he is committing the same folly at scale, with twenty dollars here and forty there to momentarily quench a fleeting thirst. He buys a bottle of sugar when water flows freely in his home, and another new game when he does not have the time to play those he already owns. Then he seeks advice or help from the friend who always seems to have enough when inevitable need arises. This is great folly.
“But!” says the opponent, “It is also great folly to pass through life without enjoying it. The man who continually scrimps for an unknown future cheats himself of pleasure in the day.” Ah, true in a way, but rethink. The man who has learned to hate folly begins to take revulsion rather than pleasure from these same frivolities. This man attacks and kills foolish desires, and his pleasure is now situated differently; looking down in satisfied glee over the mass of dead mosquitoes at his feet. This man desires what he has already, and does not chase the ecclesiastical wind. When the wind of trivial pleasure blows his way, he enjoys it, but his happiness is not situated there. It is nothing but a thing that happened to him.
One day soon, this man will find that he no longer works to gain money for leisure, but that working is equally as pleasant as leisure. He has learned to find joy in what and who he is before his Maker, not in what his Maker does or doesn’t cause to happen to him. This is bliss.
The Unwarranted Pride of Wealth
Yet neither parent nor child, rich nor poor, can claim wealth as their own. To the deserving and the undeserving, wealth or poverty may come. A man is intelligent and wise, and works incessantly to produce a growing bundle. His accumulation is far overshadowed by another man, who strings filthy and arrogant words together to an electronic beat. This is a great evil under the sun, says Solomon. Both are ruined by a mere change in the weather, and as the hurricane or wildfire burns everything they’ve worked for, they scream at the heavens as if ownership is real. It is not. All belongs to the Maker, He gives, He takes away, He redistributes as He sees fit. Great folly lies in attempts to force or stay His hand.
The wise man does not desire the Maker to do what he wills, he alters his will to that of the Maker, and is never disappointed.
The Uncertainty of Tomorrow
The deserving and undeserving fail to wield absolute control over their wealth, and fortunes are made and lost at the divine whim. Uncertainty being the only constant, the man in pursuit of wisdom arrives at one conclusion: that embracing uncertainty is the path to peace. With this scroll in his hands and bound to his heart, he then ventures bravely into the unknown, bent on his own input and leaving all outcomes to God. A yet wiser man sets out to discover, by what means he can, the usage of his meager wealth that is likely to please the divine in whose hands it truly lies. Wealth used in any other manner arrives at nothing on the death bed. Not so for the expenditures of the man aligned with the divine. His losses, his gains, his expenditures and restraints, echo long after his death, carrying with resonance into the lives of his progeny and into the afterlife. In the time-value of money, alignment with divine purpose is the only true investment. In this pursuit alone can true fortune be made.
Call to Action
My primary audience is my own soul. I needed this reminder today more than I want to admit. If you needed it too, pay it forward.
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