It Has Nothing To Do With Money: What Actually Makes People Rich

It’s funny how things sometimes turn out. People chase money their entire lives, dreaming and wishing to one day be rich, only to wake up one morning and realize that they’re as poor as ever.

They either have no money and are miserable or have a bunch of money and are miserable nonetheless -- like I said, they find themselves poorer than poor.

Unfortunately, you can’t really blame them for being in such a situation. Well… you certainly can, but they’re already down. Best not kick them too much.

Every person in the world is born with the same incredible gift: the gift of making decisions for yourself. There isn’t a person in this world who is not capable of making a decision on his or her own.

True, when growing up, we rely on our parents for the decision-making, and that often leads us to continue relying on them for a lengthy time, making it difficult for us to lead our own lives ourselves once we’re adults.

But at the very same time, choosing not to make a decision is a decision in itself. So you’re really just making the wrong decisions over and over again. And deluding yourself while you’re at it.

If you really wanted to make and follow through with a decision, you could. But you don’t, so you clearly don’t want to. And that’s fine. It’s your life; ruin it as you please.

But realize that by choosing not to make decisions yourself, you’re leaving everything to chance -- your life is not something you should gamble with.

What you can do, however, is gamble with your money. Money is both wonderful and imaginary. Sure, we have dollar bills and coins, but thanks to the digital age, it’s easy to see money for what it really is.

Soon, money will be nothing more than a couple of pixels on your smartphone, representing the idea of how wealthy or poor you are.

All those living in first world countries measure wealth one way and one way only: the size of their wallets. We let an imaginary concept rule over our entire lives. We believe that having money makes us successful, accomplished and intelligent.

We believe that not having it makes us useless, stupid and lazy. The reality is that both the rich and the poor are mostly composed of idiots. Even idiots can make buttloads of money.

But that doesn’t make them rich. If you’re stupid, then you are poor and will forever be poor. I don’t mean stupid as "It takes me much longer to learn something than the average person" kind of stupid.

I mean stupid as "I don’t understand what matters in life and refuse to explore my reality because I’m certain that eventually I’ll stumble upon happiness" kind of stupid. This kind of stupid is smart enough to learn, but just chooses to only spend their mental energy on trivial things. Like money.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Money is great. It’s fun. Making it gives us a sense of accomplishment. To be honest, I f*cking love money. But I don’t think it’s what’s important in life -- or at least, not most important.

We need money to live comfortably. We need money to help us fulfill some of our hopes and dreams -- whether or not those hopes and dreams are honorable is another question. We need money to secure our children’s future.

We need money in order to attain the things in life that will make us happy. Thankfully, a lot less money is needed for this to be achieved than most people think.

As long as you can afford to be healthy, to be comfortable, to be safe, to be financially stable and to not have to worry about money, then you have plenty of it. This is the “richest” any of us needs to be. Everything else is superfluous.

Unless, of course, you need that money to do something that can potentially benefit a much larger group of people and not just yourself. Only then is having millions and billions of dollars justifiable.

Sure, many of us want those sports cars, expensive clothing, yachts, toys, jewelry -- and that’s fine as long as it’s in moderation, but if you have more money than you need, then you should be using the majority of it to help those who don’t have enough to be healthy, to be comfortable, to be safe.

If you don’t need it, then spend it on someone who does. Why hoard it? Why sit on it and do nothing with it until the day you die. We’re not in Ancient Egypt -- you can’t take it with you! Oh… you want to be rich. Idiots. Having money doesn’t make you rich.

Imaginary things cannot make you rich. What makes you rich are the things you have that money can’t buy. Those things and those people are the most valuable things in the world because no matter how much money you have, you’ll never have enough to purchase them.

The knowledge you have. The strength -- both physical and mental. The memories, friends, family, the laughs, the tears, the scarring from the horribly glorious pain that made you the individual you are today -- these things are the things that have value in life.

Only life and what life is capable of accomplishing matters. Everything else is excess. It’s pointless and wasteful. You can have all the money in the world and still be the poorest bastard to walk the face of the earth. I’m pretty sure that would also make you the dumbest.

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