It’s day #4 of Personal Finance Week at the NDD
If you are going to build financial wealth for yourself and your family, it’s just as important to build character wealth. Without building your character, in particular how you will deal with whatever wealth you get, then your upcoming wealth could very easily overwhelm you. It could overwhelm your sense of right and wrong, your sense of empathy, compassion, understanding, humility and more.
And, as the napkin illustrates, it could easily completely warp your understanding of death. What is there to understand about death that could change based on your wealth? After all, we all do know we are going to die, right? RIGHT? Well, maybe not.
If you have a lot of anything; money, stuff, followers, then the idea of losing all those things focuses your attention on the thing that could take it all away. If, in addition to that, your wealth has led to an gargantuan increase in your ego and power, then you might be fooled into thinking you can escape death somehow. I don’t mean you really, truly believe that, but you rationalize the fantasy in your head to the point where you might actually convince yourself. What leads to that rationalization need? Fear of death because you have so much to lose.
But guess what? All the ego, money, power and fantasy won’t change the reality of death. You will not take one single iota of money or of stuff with you. So, perhaps you can regroup and retrain yourself to see your wealth, not as something to hoard and fear losing, but something you gather for the express purpose of dispersing to others. I don’t mean charity alone. I mean dispersing to companies, to adventures, to worthy causes, to family as well. But the idea is to know that it is passing by and you only have the power to decide where it goes and when, not whether you get to keep it.
Drawing and commentary © 2021 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com