How rich are you?

As far as our collective memories go, we, as a race, have been obsessed with how much wealth one possessed. What was measured in rocks became livestock, then farms, then certain metals, and is now pieces of printed paper; and continues to define our wealth and how rich we are.

Let us for a moment assume that there is an abundance of the said possession with one individual, that  makes him rich in it, and one is said to have ‘abundantly’ when he has all he will ever need and does not need any more of it. Such a person would not want any more because he does not care about holding on to that possession that he cannot use and therefore, is willing to give the excess away. Then, we can safely conclude that a truly rich person is one who gives away the most.

How rich are we then truly? And more importantly, we can decide how rich we can be in any given situation. Like in giving alms or helping somebody who is less fortunate than we are, we can choose to be truly magnanimous or to be poor.

The question then is how rich are you really?