Two kinds of richness.

There are two kinds of richness. If you do not know by the end of this article you would know. Let's start with one and easy one first. There is slogan which goes like this.

"There were two buffaloes on the field.

One with a tail and other without.

One with the tail chased away the flies, the other one suffered through it

Poverty is like the buffalo without a tail."

This is the first kind of richness. And everyone knows about it. But there is still something we need to understand. When you have a million or billion dollars in the bank and you are free to spend it. It essentially gives you the potential to do anything you wish. You can travel to places you have never been before. Taste foods you have never tasted before. 😋 Even you can do a little bit of charity to ease out the guilt of spending at the expense of others who paid with their sweat to earn that billon dollars for you. Or save some kids in rural Africa with few dollars which you did not expend on shoes. Or you might choose to invest and grow richer. But the fact is we fail to examine the broad picture about the life. We forget that we are buffaloes trying to grow more and more fat tails, to chase away the constant threat of files.

Buffaloe

Let's examine flies.

Flies are numerous. They come in different forms. And we call them different names. But essential thing about these flies is that they do not let us be. They will make us itch scratch or roll over. If you do not have the tail of richness you're indeed have to suffer. I think flies deserve more explanation. Let's look at that.

Flies can be,

Hunger

Thirst

Pain from a cut

Loneliness

Need to grow

Greediness

They can be named as needs, or problems of life that constantly keep coming back no matter how many times you chase them away. The best example for this process is trying to make a group of camels asleep. Problem with the problems of life is they keep coming back. But with a good bushy tail someone can chase away the flies better. And feel satisfied 😌 just for a brief moment before they come back again. So, this wagging the tail at the flies is just like being rich and spending money on your needs. Don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong in it, wag your tail as much as you need. Infact I am also trying to grow a big fat tail despite knowing that's all temporary. But let's look at the second type of richness.

The man with a wound. - Other Kind of richness

Rich

Imagine you wake up tomorrow. And you see a big wound on your leg. You start treatment immediately. Meet your GP who refer you to a vascular surgeon and following detailed work up you end up having a bypass surgery. Your wound gets better in few months, and you feel better, happy and alive! I am sure you will be triumphed.

Let's compare this with an alternate universe where you wake up and see no wound. You carry on your ordinary work. And nothing happens. In this universe you are not triumphed at all in 3 months. Because you never had the wound in the first place, no challenge, no problem, no risk. But you are not happy also, not to the level where you did have a wound and came out of that. There were no flies biting you to wag the tail. But you never understood this as a 🙂 happiness. As we are so used to flies and wagging our tails at them, we have forgotten that there is an alternate universe where all these troubles or flies are not there.

Since the day we were born, we had a wound called hunger, thirst and pain. We are trying to constantly satisfy ourselves like Sisyphus without knowing it would never end. So, the second type of richness is finding the solution to the problem of problems of life. And in this aspect the growth is the path of a true seeker. Hope you are brave enough to do that.