Of Wealth and Pride

The state of abundance is a curious thing. Material blessings can bring out both the good and the bad in those who have it. Wealth can make people kind and generous – it can also make them vain and self-important; it can breed arrogance.

For instance, many people become something else the moment they have money. They become high-handed, even towards their friends. They lose their manners, becoming brash where they used to be polite and gracious.

It’s probably the feeling of power – economic power – that makes rich people easily throw their manners away. When you are powerful, you feel you are not bound by any rules – you make the rules!  And that’s an ugly attitude to have.

People with money, although not all, feel that they own other people just because they do the “lesser” ones certain favors every once in a while. They think that their occasional generosity entitles them to full ownership of other people’s time and servitude, even other people’s lives. This explains why many rich people behave the way they do towards the lowly others.

Truth is, a person is not necessarily more knowledgeable or wiser or better just because he has more money. It may be only money he has more of – not knowledge or wisdom or character. Unless, of course, he works hard on these aspects of himself, too. Or if, in the first place, these were the very factors that brought him his good luck. 

By and large, it doesn’t follow that when a person has more he is more, also. Yet so many moneyed people act like they’re superior to others in everything; and like they know everything, from skinning a cat to attaining eternal life. They will even make light of the ideas of the real experts, especially those that don’t exhibit the sheen of their (the experts’) impressive backgrounds.    

We do not condemn rich people for having much wealth. In fact, some of them are truly deserving of their standing in life. Some of them remain humble despite their vast possessions. They are very kind and compassionate towards the less fortunate. And, interestingly, they seem to receive more as they give more and more.

“Caretakers, not owners,” they’d say, these rich people who have not been corrupted by their wealth. This mindset prompts them to generously share their blessings. They don’t think that whatever they’re in possession of is theirs by right; but that it’s only temporarily put in their trust, to be distributed to others.

The same feeling is shared by the other rich people – those whose wealth is not money but skills, knowledge, or wisdom. They make time for training the unskilled and teaching the uneducated. Mostly working for free, they find great fulfillment in helping others.

Rich people – in whatever form their riches may be – should be grateful, not boastful of their advantage in life. Ostentatious display of one’s good fortune will only emphasize others’ lack. And that’s being so inconsiderate and unkind.

Haughtiness, including even the type that grows from the success of one’s earnest labors, does not take one anywhere. Except perhaps deeper into the pit of his own desolation. In this world, nothing lasts. It is unwise, therefore, to rest one’s self-worth on something that can go away as quickly as it comes, like money or material wealth.