"It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich." -- Henry Ward Beecher I was just perusing through quotes as I often do and I came across this one. Its an interesting concept because to be rich, we generally think of ourselves as gaining something. Whether it be monetary gain or some form of spiritual or emotional gain is dependent on your perception of what rich is. This quote supposes that we give something up, something that we had that we gave away to become wealthy. I think it is saying that to be trully rich because we know what to give up. This supposes that we have some sort of concept of value because if we know whats worth giving away, we know what is worth keeping. Perhaps we all could be rich in this respect if we could just know what it is that we have that we don't need and get rid of it. I suppose it could be said that to become monetarily rich we just have to give up our poverty. In this respect, I think, it doesn't make it any easier to become rich. However, if you believe wealthiness is based on emotional value, you simply have to give up your sadness to become wealthy because without sadness, you will be happy. If you believe that wealthiness is determined by something spiritual, you just have to give up your doubt because if you no longer doubt your god, you have complete faith in this god. Some of the more extreme atheists might suppose that in order to get this sort of wealthiness you must also give up reason. I, personally, believe that wealthiness is emotional because I believe that you can feel wealthy if you simply choose to feel that way. It is quite obvious that such a wealth is not necessarily so easy to attain because if it were that simple, we would all simply choose to be happpy and, thus, rich. I, as many people do, put emotional wealth as more valuable than monetary. However, there is something to be said about the absolute faith that comes with spiritual wealth. If one could attain absolute faith, one would fear nothing, one would never worry, and one would never be sad because they would have determined that all that matters is devotion and they would be completely happy. I dunno, maybe I'm completely off base. I think I write too much. I think I think to much. Ahh well, c'est la vie. "If you had the chance you should have let us know. If you had the chance you should have told us so."