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At an early age I was fortunate enough to know what I wanted out of life; what I wanted was to never be like them. “YOUR WEALTH CAN ONLY BE MEASURED BY THOSE WHO HOLD YOU DEAR TO THEIR HEART"
Ask anybody you know how many synonyms they can think of for the word “wealth.” I’m betting they can give you a few dozen words or ideas off the tops of their heads. Much more probable is they can’t even count them on both their hands there’s so many. Some will say “happiness”, others “number of homes owned”, and undoubtedly many will say “by how much money you have!” Now take that same question and ask any kid you know. Most likely you will be pleasantly surprised to find out that they can’t even give you one. Not one! What do you expect they’re only kids right? Well it’s not what they don’t know, for they have no concept of what defines wealth at such an early age. Rather, it’s what you’ve forgotten that is the answer to your own question.
Thirty long but not forgotten years have passed since I too held the golden keys to El Dorado as any child does now. And thirty years have passed since an old man asked me what I now propose to ask you. So as to save some time I’ll just say that I came from a Paradise Lost where primal ambition alone was the only exemption allocated to not being a venal sin or minor peccadillo. Where I came from being too ambitious was a dangerous characteristic that instilled fear in the laity. It’s where laziness and complaisance were held in reserve for all who held the office of blind mediocrity and its station in life. Unlike many of the kids who I went to school with who spent their weekends at the amusement park or riding their bicycles I was sent out to work each day to sell restaurant supplies at the age of twelve. This, “for my own good” of course, was for the sole purpose of ingraining me with a diligent work ethic and helping the family eat steak once a week. Till this day I loathe the word and hesitate ordering it on any menu. Nothing to laborious or taxing for a youngster, however, I would no longer clutch the illusions of someday being the next Terry Bradshaw or Larry Byrd. 
Sadly enough, though, I couldn’t play football or basketball to save my life anyhow. Determined was it now by reason of necessity and survival during the early ‘80s recession, was what would soon drain my mother of all her beauty and ability to laugh, would in turn drive me to one day “Make it! And make it at all costs!” As time would betide it, like every person experiences here came my pubescent teens and all the wonderful illusions of the young and naive. As I curiously assailed every thing in my sight, my mid teens were soon proving to be prodigiously wasteful and alarmingly schizophrenic. And as my days and nights slowly turned into one long continuous blur I found myself spending more and more time somnambulating from bar to bar in effort to stay awake so to be at my next class or on the look out for my next lick. All the while looking like I just stepped off the set of “Revenge of The Nerds.” In doing so, there was a man I would regularly see from time to time here and there. As a matter of fact I would go out of my way doing my best not to seem to recognize him when I did see him in this bar or that bar. He was that man that no one was home waiting for, nor had anywhere to go anymore. The one that had no reason for getting up early the next morning anymore in order to be somewhere in his life. The man that you laugh at and make fun of secretly hoping your life will never turn out like his did. He was the man that no one bothered listening to in bars, or the one you and your friends mocked and laughed at only to easily dismiss your guilt afterwards by buying him a drink as if you were doing him a favor. And he was the man that had been on this earth 50 years longer than you had but knew nothing. And he’s the one that changed my life forever.
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I would see him everywhere much to my annoyance as my life probably paralleled his own without my knowing it. We knew each other only by sight and in accordance to my vanity I would have rather been caught dead than caught knowing him on any personal level. As a defense system bred out of being alone and not being able to make friends easily due to the crippling shyness I was afflicted with in my youth, I allowed myself the luxury of having no intimate relationships or friendships with anyone other than women much less the company of some broken down old man that the world had forgotten about. As I was saying, it was just much easier for me to go it alone without being held back or having someone to answer to. However insulated I may have thought myself to be, on this given night the old man caught me unawares and uncharacteristically off guard. As he was without a doubt probably a master at sparking a conversation with those who wished otherwise, the old man left me no room for escape when he most sincerely asked, “What is it you want to be when you grow up Son? What do you want to do I mean?” Annoyed by his invasion of my private suffering and tiring aspirations, I pretended not to hear him lest I be forced to pay attention to him if even momentarily out of mere civility. After all, he wasn’t the only one in the room who knew what sheer loneliness and isolation felt like. I just hid it behind a look of arrogance and distrust, but somehow looking back on it, I think he knew this. Interested or not, he didn’t seem like a man to be put off by my evasiveness. I’m sure he had cracked harder nuts than me is what I mean. Though I would have never admitted it back then, I now think back on it only to remember that I think he was asking me only out of pity at the time as he had probably seen a thousand Me’s in his lifetime end up with a bottle for company and a body prematurely worn out on menial labor like his. He resembled that of a proletariat whose only joy in life was drinking a cold 40oz. once the 5 o’clock whistle sounded each day at the jobsite. “I want to be the richest man in the world like you! What do you think!!! I sardonically snapped at him angrily while trying to balance the chip on my shoulder that was about to fall off. “Never use money to measure wealth Son!” he sympathetically replied. As I growled with disgust, his Old Soul eyes gently admonished me with a voice that spoke from a tired and scarred heart which I saw stitched and sewn on his sleeve. “I’m not your son Old Man and use caution if you’re going to continue to take liberties with me!!!” I arrogantly snorted back at him with an air of superiority. My remark was filled with venomous resentment I’m in no doubt he perceived, not only for what my life ostensibly portrayed on my face but resentment for him believing we had anything in common. Resentment more so after his willingness to share with me all the scars and wrinkles his own physiognomy silently revealed. I have very few regrets in my life I’ll have you know but one of them I will tell you is the way I spoke to that old man that night. So much in fact that as I was just about to apologize to the old man his smile of instant forgiveness infuriated me the more I stared at his unconditional and brutally honest eyes. Throwing the pool stick on the table, I walked out of there so thoroughly and painfully embarrassed that I swore I would never allow someone the opportunity to decipher my thoughts or affect my emotions again the same way he did that night. Months passed as I had purposely avoided frequenting the bars I was sure I would see him at. In spite of my painful embarrassment and the fact that I so very much wanted to go up to him and apologize, my stubborn pride and misbegotten vanity prevented me from doing so I suppose. Not that I thought him not worth it at the time, it was I who felt not worthy enough so insecure was I at the time and at that age. If hindsight is 20/20 then farsightedness is myopic to say the least. There’s not a day that hasn’t gone by lately that I don’t regret sitting down with that old man as a soccer mom does with a fortune teller to learn what the future would surely hurl against me as the mysteries it held for me he was sure to have seen and battled. And to go back and have listened to him whilst he educate me on what I was desperately going to need in the years to come I offer wonder what he would have offered in terms of advice and wisdom. Thirty years ago and till this day he’s the only man that ever helped me or had a kind word for me, and I didn’t even know him. I didn’t even know his name I tell you. Ironically, he did much more for me than my own father did whose only purpose I served was to remind him of his shortcomings and failures. How could he ever teach me anything if criticism alone were his only way to assuage and appease his self loathing and lack of self worth for having given up in life. For having not gotten back up on the horse again. But I didn’t care I was very much my mother’s son. Time soon passed and with it the memories of yesterday. 
I had given up drinking and acting like an irresponsible teenager to focus on the brass ring, and I continued on my way to becoming a self made millionaire unimpeded by anyone or any memories. Rarely did I ever stop and look back in my life as I believed looking back would only hinder me or hold me back with sentimentality and second guessing. I had soon forgotten him until one day in my mid 30’s his voice came back to haunt me with the self assuredness he’d had in his demeanor that day.
At an early age I was fortunate enough to know what I wanted out of life, where I wanted to go, and how I wanted to get there. Truth is, I never wanted to be like them. Any of them! I wanted to be financially independent so I didn’t have to swim in the same sea as everybody else. So I didn’t have to talk or associate with any of them. I wanted to escape where I had come from at all costs. It wasn’t any bit of a mystery to me, or how to attain this either. All it was going to take was sacrifice and hard work. I suppose I thought this way simply because I was instilled with a good work ethic and discipline as a kid. Not passed down by heredity but buy my mother’s disapproving glances that would cut me to the quick in a heartbeat. In those days all I ever did was seek my mother’s approval in order to make her life somewhat easier. With her in mind, all it was going to take was hard work and I knew it. Hard work every day, all day, all night, and every night would get me what I wanted. There wasn’t a special formula or rules to success that I had learned in school or anything like that. No get rich quick schemes or motivational books I read to do it either, but just by “rolling up your sleeves” as my mother always put it. Basically, while my friends were out finger banging their cheerleader girlfriends and getting high with the math teacher I was working after school. While everybody was falling in love and having kids I was at my night job working and saving every dime. After dropping out of high school and ignoring all the illusions of youth, I set my adolescent sights on “making it”. Everything kind of just fell in place for me. Soon after, followed by all the objects of my desire, I had arrived. I had become what I’d always worked and dreamed for, and that was to be a self made liquid millionaire. Regardless of any obstacle and without paying heed to any repercussion or price and at all costs I did it. I had not, however, paid any attention to the ride. And the journey, as I was soon to find out, was not available anywhere to be found for sale…the reason behind making it is for the journey…I skip ahead now some many years.
I was now thirty-three years old and surrounded by all my own barricades I had put into place to keep me safe in my self made material world of denial and loneliness. So fragile was it that a whisper could shatter it and bring it crashing down on me. More than that, the thought that I could lose all the businesses, the houses, the cars, the women, the $1000 dollar dinners every night, and the fancy clothes, never crossed my mind. That how’s confident I was. Arrogant or cocky I’ll have you know I favored no more than gratitude and I had none. Never cocky, no, you see, being arrogant I had come to realize was the stamp of an uncertain man who’s not sure how he’ll handle the day that inevitably comes each and every morning. I had it all under control with nothing but unequalled and incommensurable wealth and confidence ahead of me. Then one day, almost as soon as I had opened my eyes to the brightest dawn of my life, the blackest day arose and what soon followed with it were many changes to come in my life.
It was all gone! Everything…yes, all of it. Without boring you with the many details and twist of fate that caused my demise, I’ll just tell you how I landed instead. And it wasn’t on my feet. So hard on my back was I lying supine that the only direction I could look…was up. But there was no up at this moment, only the view of a vortiginous spire. When I say I lost everything, I mean I lost everything. My girlfriend of four years had left me since I had no more money to spend on her. My friends all left me since the dinners and the parties had to be halted. And I lost all my businesses, cars, and most valued possessions. I didn’t even have a home or property to live in. They!!! Were all gone! But that was neither here nor there, for I knew all that could be replaced easily. No, what I really lost was my self confidence, my self worth, and what very little of whatever else I had at the time, even that, I had come to lose. I lost my dignity, my self respect, and my responsibilities to myself. There was a reckoning to deal with I would soon find out and I was in no way ready or equipped to handle it. In so much that I had been independent and in total control of everything and everybody around me for so long, once I lost control, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do or how to do it. I just could not for the life of me figure it out! Literally for the life of me, and I became totally useless the more I tried to keep my head above water. And for seven long years I tried to rebuild my business, my self worth and respect, and more importantly my life. But something had changed in or outside of me that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I couldn’t tell you if I was coming or going much less what day, month, or year we were living in. It wasn’t until one day while I was in one of my deepest darkest hours I came to realize I had also lost my ambition. My ambition! The pulse and the blood that had coursed through my veins for so long that give me my life’s source, and my body breath. Everything had changed for me in the sense that everything that was once of value to me, of relevance and importance, everything that had spurred me on each day had now ceased to be worth anything anymore. It wasn’t enough for me, though, just to recognize the fact that there was nothing and no one I wanted. No more houses, no more dinners, no more money, and no more women. This last one was the hardest for me to believe since I had long ago replaced any addictions of the medicinal kind with that of my propensity and addiction to the varying scents of many women. This too, or the ambition henceforth, was gone now! I was coming to realize with stubborn reluctance on my part that I didn’t want to again become the man I had been my entire life. And it was here where the old man’s question kept popping up in my head like a gift that was heaven sent, although how deserving of it I was I’m uncertain. I was not just broke and shirtless, I was so desolate and destitute in a land so barren, Jobe himself wouldn’t have lasted one minute in. 
Alone and isolated at the bottom of the mountain, it was in this barren desert that I found myself with no love for anything, nor spirit, nor beliefs, nor self-prescribed rules, and principles to live by and guide me in a life I found not worth living for. Checking my bank account one morning, I finally realized that I was spiritually and psychologically bankrupt.
It was here, now in my late thirties that I began to understand what the old man had told me. What was I? I asked myself. Not “who was I”, as I had always thought I had a clear definition of, but “what was I”. Since I was no longer the successful and wealthy guy with all the right tools, the big house, and the most expensive brand name items money could buy, I felt like nobody. Everything that had defined me I now abhorred. Not just with the loss of the wealth specifically, but also with the loss of identity I found myself at odds with. All I was left with was the question of “what I was.” Even this I did not own or have any part of ownership in. I was soon beginning to realize that if I were to measure my wealth, life, and legacy strictly by how much money I had, and assets I’d accumulated, it wouldn’t measure an inch nor amount to anything. In essence, when a man looks back on his life, at the end of it all, a man is still only left with what he is inside him and what he’s made of, everything else is just not that important is it. What was the reason I chased it for so many years I wondered. What was the purpose of accumulating all this wealth I tried to answer in vain. What was it that I was trying to fix or forget or acquire by doing so. This was all I knew you see, this was all I understood up until now. I knew nothing about me, nor what I was made of. Sure, I overcame a few big obstacles in my life but the reckoning with my mortality and what it’s all meant to me led me no closer to that El Dorado I spoke of. I was in such a hurry my whole life to get to the end that life and all its profound joys had passed me up. Like I had imagined the old man upon my first impression of him, I too had no experiences or memories with anybody that I could share them with. I had no relationships with anybody of real substance other than in business type relationships that were on a superficial surface. I had no use or love for the arts. I had no interest in music or people, not that I was atypical or antisocial, I just had never put any value in it. I had never stopped to see a sunset rise or fall. All the little things in life that I had ignored now came back for their revenge on me. All the things that you take for granted each day I’d never experienced. The caress and scent of a woman, making love, watching children play, appreciating a craftsmen’s craftsmanship, or the joy of a good conversation on a Sunday afternoon with a good friend who appreciates “what” you are and not “who you are”. This was the wealth the old man was speaking about, this was true wealth. Twenty billion dollars couldn’t compare to this unimaginable wealth. As we speak, you’re saying to yourself, “I can buy it with one billion, who needs twenty billion”, right? Yeah you think you can, but can you? Contentment, perhaps, convenience and comfort, sure, happiness on a miniscule level, probably. But the money is nothing if you have never experienced the abovementioned. You have to have something to compare it to! Other wise its just dirty paper. Ah, how true the old question, “Who knows more, the twenty year old genius or the sixty year old imbecile?”
In the past few years I’ve began to rebuild my wealth. A few nuggets here some gold dust there. By living a good clean life for the sole purpose of life itself and by slowing down and not being in such a hurry to get old and hide in a mansion like some crazed recluse. It’s about living! Of course I know that to enjoy life to it’s fullest, it takes the means to do so, and for me to pretend to be naïve would show to be true my ignorance, but it doesn’t take any means at all to enjoy the time you have here with your family and friends. Speaking about friends, I’ve also made a few for the first time in my life. Easily enough, I did it by not being so distrustful of everyone, including myself. For something as inexpensive and priceless as to be kind and humble in the company of others costs us nothing. Take it from me when I tell you that it takes the same amount of energy to be nice to someone as it does to be rude to them. And to have a kind word or a smile for someone who is either down trodden and homeless or rich by any monetary terms. Considerate to others, and generous if possible, your road to self achievement and accomplishment will reveal places to you you’d never thought you’d see. The pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of your own legacy is your business and as an American your right, but the lack of respect for yourself and others is not. It’s this lack of respect and value that I along with the rest of the world seem to have lost in the past few years. I blame myself as well as others for this but I’m trying my hardest to make up for lost time. Thirty years of lost time to be frank. That’s what life is to me and how I’ve come to measure my wealth. How about you? Which way do the scales tip for you? How wealthy are you! Will you not be so quick to judge me as I did the old man as just another hypocritical moralizer? I hope not. Rather I’d wish you learn from my mistakes so as not to go through the same misery. But I understand should you want to find out on your own. After all, I didn’t say I possessed all these qualities and characteristics but cut me some slack for my honest attempt to ambitiously strive to acquire them. Good luck. You’re going to need it!
