Why Everybody Can’t Become Rich?
Before digging deep, it would not be pointless to ponder over a more sensible and pertinent question:
“Does anybody or everybody really need to become rich?” as so-called inventors of “Get-Rich” or rather “Get-Rich-Quick” schemes would keep preaching and enticing ceaselessly.
Knowing the answer to this question is more important than going madly in pursuit of material wealth that is just one of many other forms of wealth; for instance, wealth of wisdom, wealth of health, wealth of courage, wealth of love, wealth of knowledge, wealth of contentment, wealth of freedom etc. However, wealth of wisdom is the most fundamental and important of them all and without it there would be hardly any other wealth. When King Solomon, who was also a prophet and messenger of God and was renowned for his wealth and wisdom was asked by God what he wanted most, his reply was not wealth but wisdom to assist him as he ruled the nation. God, it is said, was so pleased with response that he not only granted him wisdom but also riches and glory and long life that he didn’t ask for. What this story tells between the lines is that wealth and glory automatically come with wisdom. He became ruler in approximately 967 B.C.E. and his kingdom extended from the Euphrates River in the north to Egypt in the south and he ruled as king for 40 years — the best years in all of Israel’s history — 40 years of peace and prosperity .
Thus when one has wisdom then one can do very much with as little resources as possible. But if one has money but no wisdom, most of money will go down the drain because of poor decision making skills. Moreover, One cannot buy a solution to save oneself in utter emergency situations. One has to have a knowledge to deal with it. Money is just a tool and not an end. While wisdom is tool as well as an end. For instance, if you suddenly fall into a river and don’t know how to swim, you and all the money in your pocket will immediately sink in the waters below. Thus wisdom is like a swimming skill that can get you out of troubled waters without a fuss. Similarly, in 497BC Plato wrote of the wealthy: “They fill themselves with that which is not substantial and the part of themselves which they fill is also unsubstantial and incontinent.”
Here enters the concept of Subjective well-being. Subjective well-being refers to how you feel about your life and is often used as a measure of happiness. Many studies prove that Subjective Well Being (SWB) is less affected by the adverse life circumstances. In particular, studies further reveal, wisdom might provide people with a sense of mastery and purpose that enhance their SWB and prevent the sense of deprivation and frustration.
Regardless, still most of the people (if not all) in the world not only want to be rich, but also, famous, clever, smart, happy, perfect, intelligent and so on. However, the problem is that not all the people on earth can become rich, famous, smart, intelligent, wise, happy, perfect,and so on. Neither all the people in the world can be Poor, Fool, Stupid, Ugly, Boring and so on.
There will always be diversity and it doesn’t mean that some people with apparent success or approval are more valuable than others. As Ralph Waldo Emerson proposes, society represents the opposite of self-reliance. Society demands that people behave in the same way and give up their personal freedoms in order to maintain order. Instead of creativity, society values conformity.
In spite of these facts, it will be wrong to assume that nobody makes an effort to become rich, smart, intelligent, healthy, famous et cetra. It is because nobody is willing to learn from the mistakes of others. Thus nearly everybody keeps making efforts to become successful according to their own capacities, abilities and perceptions. If this were not the case then the books like “How to Become Rich Fast”, “HOW to Lose Weight Within Days”, “How to Become Famous Overnight”, “Countless Secrets of Happiness”. “ How to Become CEO of APPLE” and products like “ Fair and Lovely”, “Best Bronzer”, “Triple Action Masacra”, “How to Become Tall and Smart” etc. would have stopped selling like hot cakes. Thus the lure of becoming rich and important/confident is not going to fade away until the end of times.
Now the question arises in the mind if everybody makes an effort then why everyone is not smart, intelligent, rich, healthy, and wise? There are more than one answers to this question:
I) If everyone is billionaire then nobody would be rich or poor. Rich are rich when they compare themselves to the people of lesser luck. If there is no poor there would be no rich. The same is true for smart, healthy, intelligent, famous and so on. If everyone becomes famous then who would be unknown?
II) The people who become rich are not those who buy the ideas like “How to become rich overnight”, but on the contrary who cunningly sell these ideas and thus become rich by deluding the millions of gullible idiots in the world. And what these idiots get after reading these books? They lose more time and money and become wise. One very striking example is that of famous Mark Twain’s own real life money making adventures. He was 19th century’s American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer most known for his “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” It is said that he would engage in business schemes which promised quick and substantial rewards but usually suffered heavy financial reverses. It was, perhaps, poverty during his childhood that, to some extent, explains his obsession with becoming rich overnight. It is said that “He had suffered poverty as a boy and near poverty as an adult.” However, on the other hand his use of get-quick-rich projects in his novels and short stories was consistently successful. Thus he was a great author — but a stupendously incompetent businessman.
Here is also a joke to further elaborate the point:
A man was selling fish by claiming that anyone who ate the fish will become wiser than before. Believing the man’s words, a passerby thought of giving a try. Thus he bought the fish for the exorbitant price of $10 and went home to eat after cooking. However, soon he returned with the complaint that fish tasted very bad and that it wasn’t even worth a dollar. To this the seller immediately quipped: “Haven’t you become wiser after eating just one fish?”
However, remember that a if a poor man and rich man have same mindset they are equal and not unequal. This has been beautifully illustrated by W.C. Fields (an American actor, comedian, juggler, and writer who died in 1946) in following words:
“A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.”
Moreover, a non-sense rich man is even worse than poor man who has a positive attitude and a sense of direction.
And this view has been also corroborated by another more ironical of apparently paradoxical quote “Some people are so poor, all they have is money” that has been attributed to Patrick Meagher (a Canadian journalist and author), Bob Marley (the famous reggae singer) and others.
What this quote seems to convey is that those are “poor because all they have is money” typically sacrificed family, health, and/or even moral values to achieve their monetary wealth.
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References:
i) https://www.thebluntbeancounter.com/2021/11/some-people-are-so-poor-all-they-have.html
ii) https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/selfreliance.html
iii) https://www.careerindia.com/features/is-knowledge-a-better-treasure-than-money-008799.html?story=1
iv) The Republic ( a Socratic dialogue, authored by Plato around 375 BCE.)
v) R. Stewart, Mark Twain’s Get-Rich-Quick Schemes: A Balance Sheet, https://www.jstor.org/stable/42656589
