Thanks to theenchantedlabyrinth’s comments I’ve started to think about how we’re seeing material things as signs of how important someone is in society. Apparently, the more money and possessions someone has, the more important that person is. I believe we got this all wrong.
It is true that most successful and important people have lots of money and lots of possessions and that’s what we see about them, but we’re missing something and that something is value. These people are successful because they brought value to other people. The money is just a consequence. Picture it this way: every fire has a smoke. The fire is the value that person brings into society and the smoke is the money. The money is nothing else than a reward for the value those people bring. And we all do this. Whenever we go to a restaurant and we love how the waiter serves us, we leave a big tip. No one is asking us for this, but we do it as a form of appreciation for the service we received.
That’s what successful people do. They find ways to serve us and the better we’re served, the more tips we want to leave. The bigger the fire is, the more smoke it creates. Whenever we want to get warm, our goal is to create a fire, not the smoke. Sometimes the smoke is quite annoying (ok, I don’t think they find money annoying, but still… you get my point).
The problem with people is that they only see the tips, the smoke. They don’t see the actual work and the value those people bring so the chase is for the smoke, not for the fire. We usually categorize someone as successful by the amount of money that person has, not by the value that person brings and it’s not quite right.
What value would you like to bring in other people’s lives?