How to Live the Difference Between Money & Wealth
Picture credit: Dott Infographics
When you consider how many people seem to have money, they aren't the same as the people who are wealthy. The distinction is worth considering. Money is a symbol, often an empty one. Weapons, pornography, and gambling will always make money, because greed, fear, and sex are permanent. Wealth, on the other hand, is based on values. If you can fulfill a value as it arises from society, the opportunity for wealth is made possible.
Wealth circulates, keeping a society vital and alive. After Spain plundered the New World, it captured an enormous horde of gold and silver, but within a century its economy collapsed. Greed and inflation were a deadly combination, but at heart the habit of hoarding seems to have been the real culprit. A monied economy never turned into a wealthy one. In the Great Depression and the recent Great Recession, vast sums of money sat on the sidelines, doing nothing to invest, renew the economy, or aid the unemployed. As a result, even though the world was awash in money, people felt insecure and hopeless - they lived by the psychology of poverty, not wealth.
I'm not preaching the evils of money - symbols can be interpreted any way one chooses. They are essentially empty on their own. But a psychology of wealth needs to be present for success to truly matter. You are in a wealth mode when any of the following are present:
You fulfill a worthy need.
You are the steward of money, not its slave or master.
You deliver the greatest good to the greatest number.
You add to the meaning and purpose of life, both your life and the life of others.
You benefit the planet rather than despoil it.
You raise the level of consciousness in society.
You have a vision that will live on after you are no longer here.
Wealth gives us a reason to forgive the wrongs inflicted by callous, greedy money. I realize that this is a tall order. The wounds suffered by ordinary people at the hands of monied people are grievous. The widening gap between the haves and have nots isn't value neutral, although various factions would like to portray it that way. To be on the right side of a value system is a mark of wealth, which is one reason benefactors are honored long after the greedy are forgotten.
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