2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Do you know a really rich person? [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)And the majority of them lived on trust fund money and were very, shall we say, unreliable.
But some were nice people.
I've had a very strange, strange, strange life.
I am not at all rich. I just happen to have known some very rich people.
But then, I live in Los Angeles, and there are quite a few very rich people here.
Reading some of the posts, I remembered that I knew some very, very rich people when i was a child. They served on the board of my dad's (a pastor) community center. They were really, really rich and if I told you the name, you would recognize it immediately.
They could arrange anything like making sure their granddaughter had the room next to yours at a state university at which you were a scholarship student (not me but someone in my family). The granddaughter threw away her underwear rather than wash it. Very, very, very rich. A household word.
But also very, very religious.
And at the same time extremely right-wing. They were very confused people.
I like a middle class lifestyle. I want goals to work for. I don't want to have to be obsessed with protecting my money. I want to be able to socialize with people, to help people, to be with people, to smile at anyone on the street without asking myself whether they want my money, my fortune.
I want my children to have the joy of working for and achieving their own goals including modest amounts of property in their lives.
I do not envy the very rich. I envy all who have the spiritual basis in their lives to work hard and share and love others.
So it really isn't so much about hating the rich or thinking they are all evil, it's more about the wonderful feeling of being one with others and sharing (not just helping others but sharing with them).
I would like to see our country as one country without so many divisions.
We have come a long way with regard to race although we still have a long way to go. Same with gender and sexual preferences.
It's a spiritual thing with me. If you saw me and knew my lifestyle, you would not perhaps recognize how much I love people. I have compassion for people, rich and poor. But I don't think that wealth is always much of a gift.
Spiritual wealth and intelligence are the gifts, the legacy for which I am so grateful to my ancestors. Also health. Good health runs in my family.
I wish that more people could enjoy the spiritual wealth and the wealth that comes from loving learning.
Having a lot of money is, from what I have seen (and I have barely made a living in my life) not what it is put up to be.