What really being Rich means?

The dynamics of this world plays a very paradoxical game. 99.9 % of world population spent their whole life in dreaming or striving for becoming rich. And there are few who treads a different path like Gautam Buddha who had it all – kingdom, wife, son but left all to get wealth of different kind - the inner wealth and then to give to the world.

In our daily life in newspaper or in news channels we often see that a lot of politicians or businessman always taking wrong paths to fulfil their greed of becoming rich. Though they have it all, but they are never satisfied. They keep hoarding and hoarding and the hunger never ends.

There are exceptions who earns and give to society for the betterment of mankind.

Often a naïve mind asks what is the definition of becoming rich?

I met Raju at office campus. Raju works on beautiful gardens of the campus and maintains them along with his colleagues. They all fall under low income group, meeting daily needs might often a struggle for them.

Raju can’t speak and hear, so we both used to communicate with symbols and gestures. We developed good rapport within few days. Whenever we used to see each other in campus, we would stop and exchanged non-verbal communications like smile and saying that all well in our personal life.

Often vendors put their stalls within the campus. One day there were a couple of stalls put up by cloth merchants. After finishing my lunch at food court, I was crossing though the passage where stalls were put up. Suddenly I noticed Raju standing in the center of those stalls & looking at colorful clothes with amazement. His eyes were shining very bright with colors. I went to him, gave him smile and asked him politely with gestures, do you need any clothes. I'll be happy to gift you. Can you choose 2-3 items?

I saw he felt little ashamed and politely declined my offer. At the same time, he made sure to make me comfortable as he was declining my offer. I agreed as his self-respect was more important. I left the place with much more respect for him. I couldn't resist pondering how could he overcome the temptation of getting few new clothe items from me which I was trying to offer him free.

My mind asked - who is really rich – businessman/people who get rich and hoards money by exploiting others or Raju - who are contended with their little but full of Self-respect?

Might be we need more better education and coaching on real meaning of being rich in life. Definitely not encouraging being poor, we must strive to be financially strong but mental richness is much more needed.

Time to ponder - What really being rich means?