Its an age old issue, how and what do you gauge as success? For some success is being able to walk 3 metres to the next hand-rail, for others its securing a multi-million pound deal, it can be your first new car or the holiday of a lifetime, but for most of us success is gauged by what we own in a materialistic sense.
It seems so strange that we are humbled when we meet celebrities with million dollar bank accounts yet turn our noses up at a raggedy man in the street begging. The reality is both rely on us to eat, so why do we see the tramp as much less a human being? That is an easy question to answer, we see success with the super star celebrity and all his trappings, they are after all, who we aspire to be, on the other hand who ever aspired to be a tramp? The fact is the tramp may be there because a life changing situation occurred that he had no control over, but because we see wealth as the only goal we strive for and material goods a sign of success, we see the tramp as a failure. How sad.
I have been well off and I have been poor, self-employment is a risky business and going into business even tougher. When I have been wealthy I have found it easy to have lots of friends around me, yet when the money has been harder to come by, true friends have been in short supply. I am a strange individual in some respects in that I don't value money, I am not the best guardian of it and I can never seem to make it last, but with or without it my mind is never closed to those who are rich or poor, in my eyes we are all equal, money is just another false God, yet those who practise it's teachings seldom find true enlightenment or fulfilment, indeed how ironic it is that the tramp would be just as excited and elated to find ten dollars on the side walk as the celebrity would be to be chosen for a leading role in a new blockbuster, they are equally as happy as each other albeit at the opposite ends of the scale. True wealth is in the spirit and the mind, it is no coincidence that wealth and health are very similar sounding words, for without health you're money is as irrelevant as your views that society programmes you to make. Health is the real wealth.
It seems so strange that we are humbled when we meet celebrities with million dollar bank accounts yet turn our noses up at a raggedy man in the street begging. The reality is both rely on us to eat, so why do we see the tramp as much less a human being? That is an easy question to answer, we see success with the super star celebrity and all his trappings, they are after all, who we aspire to be, on the other hand who ever aspired to be a tramp? The fact is the tramp may be there because a life changing situation occurred that he had no control over, but because we see wealth as the only goal we strive for and material goods a sign of success, we see the tramp as a failure. How sad.
I have been well off and I have been poor, self-employment is a risky business and going into business even tougher. When I have been wealthy I have found it easy to have lots of friends around me, yet when the money has been harder to come by, true friends have been in short supply. I am a strange individual in some respects in that I don't value money, I am not the best guardian of it and I can never seem to make it last, but with or without it my mind is never closed to those who are rich or poor, in my eyes we are all equal, money is just another false God, yet those who practise it's teachings seldom find true enlightenment or fulfilment, indeed how ironic it is that the tramp would be just as excited and elated to find ten dollars on the side walk as the celebrity would be to be chosen for a leading role in a new blockbuster, they are equally as happy as each other albeit at the opposite ends of the scale. True wealth is in the spirit and the mind, it is no coincidence that wealth and health are very similar sounding words, for without health you're money is as irrelevant as your views that society programmes you to make. Health is the real wealth.
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