“If my riches leave me, they will carry away with them nothing except themselves.”             – Seneca

Wealth on its own is not a bad thing. Being afraid of losing our wealth, or being obsessed with attaining more of it that we risk compromising our integrity. The best way to view our wealth, like many things in life, is to look at it as a set of things we can control and things we can not control.

We might have some control over how much money we make, but not as much as we would like to think. Even if we are working for ourselves, the money comes from other people, they have to have some desire to spend it with us. And people are fickle.

We have control over what we spend to a higher degree but still we have needs and our lives have fixed costs. There will always be money that could be wealth being sent out the door instead. Always.

We have the most control over how we think about our wealth. We control how much we allow it to affect our day to day. This is a good place for us to practice the art of detachment. We can pull back from our own lives and look at them from the outside. We can ask ourselves if our needs are being met, if our lives are comfortable, and if we are afforded some luxury in life. If the answer to these questions is yes, we have no reason to allow wealth to occupy any portion of our minds. We can enjoy what life gives us.

And most of us can do that starting now.

virtus fortis vocat