Carol is not rich, but she is wealthy

If you could feel this way, how much money would you need?

Grateful hearts truly love. Grateful hands reach out. Grateful eyes see generations. Grateful minds imagine big ideas like justice, peace, and health. Our world needs no less than grateful living. - Katie Steedly Curling

I cannot tell you anything that, in a few minutes, will tell you how to be rich. But I can tell you how to feel rich, which is far better, let me tell you firsthand, than being rich. Be grateful. . . . It's the only totally reliable get-rich-quick scheme. - Ben Stein

Part 1: “Needing less comes from living more”¹

I got this email last week from my friend Carol Spangler. Carol is a retired schoolteacher in rural Kansas on a farm, far away from the hubbub of city life.

Good morning, Douglas,
Thank you for your thoughtful writings regarding satisfaction and appreciation without “adding unto”. It has been my experience that needing less comes from living more. By that, I mean focusing on awareness in the moment. As I prepare to start this gift of a day with a time of gratitude in meditation and appreciation, a new layer of living surfaces.
Here’s what I hear right now: a grackle, a red winged blackbird and a robin. I only hear them when I listen, yet they are there whether I listen to hear or simply non-register the sound. Then I am poor in spirit, thinking materially rather than being.  The gifts of nature, of being beckon us to love being good stewards of earth’s resources. To pray for and to respect the trees, the plants, the animals, the insects, the air, the earth through and through, the cosmos, the soil, the rain, the ground water, the stones, our brothers and sisters, ourselves... The unknowable holy presence that is us is gratefulness connected.
It is that final line that circles back to the title “i am through you so i” in the poem of ee cummings.  The piece of the holy living within all things thrives when simply and wholly connected and rooted together. The flow goes every direction and back.
Grace and joy for this day, Douglas.
Time to be...

If you could feel this way, how much money would you need?

Part 2: Carol is not rich, but she is wealthy

Contrast Carol’s story to the Collaborative Fund piece about the Vanderbilt family, their $300 billion fortune gone in 50 years:

In 1875 an op-ed said socialites “devote themselves to pleasure regardless of expense.” A Vanderbilt responded that actually they “devote themselves to expense regardless of pleasure.” It was a game that couldn’t be won, so everyone lost…

Rich means you have cash to buy stuff. Wealth means you have unspent savings and investments that provide some level of intangible and lasting pleasure – independence, autonomy, controlling your time, and doing what you want to do, when you want to do it, with whom you want to do it with, for as long as you want to do it for…

The Vanderbilts are an extreme example, but I think they were just a magnified version of what so many regular people deal with today. Average household incomes adjusted for inflation have more than doubled in the last 70 years, but it doesn’t feel that way because expectations have more than doubled.²

A grateful person is wealthier than a person who has everything else. Consider what I wrote last week, it’s not only our individual sense of well-being at stake. We’re eating up the planet with our dissatisfaction. The world needs no less than our grateful living.

The delight Carol has to the ordinariness of the world is available to us too. It takes no money, we only have to awaken to it. So here’s a homework challenge I got from my amazing friend Will Fain, who got it from the amazing comics teacher Sarah Mirk, who got it from cartoonist Lynda Barry (who I don’t know haha):

HOMEWORK CHALLENGE: Take 20 minutes to write in your diary 10 things you did, 10 things you saw, a question, and an overheard quote.

The English mystic Evelyn Underhill wrote: “For want of attention a thousand forms of loveliness escape is everyday.” How we direct our attention is our experience of the world. The act of simple noticing this life, this moment, without wanting anything more, is the easiest and greatest wealth we have.

A DEEPER PRACTICE GRATEFUL LIVING: I developed a twelve day gratitude practice, delivered to your inbox each morning. Each practice takes a few minutes, or (if you want) all day. It’s free, because my life’s mission is to help people participate in grace. Would you share it with others too, maybe do it with a friend or loved one? Info is here: https://theappreciationeffect.com/gratitude-dojo-emails

Thank you for the inspiration, Carol!

1. “Most of us live half-unborn.” - Stephen Levine

2. Not to disturb the story with own thoughts:

• For the riches of this country, how many people are actually wealthy like Carol? The world needs more Carols than Vanderbilts.

• “Expectation reduces the joy in life” - Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Mistaking a desire for a need is a type of poverty, one we have in America

• Value is proportional to the attention you give to it. In America, we don’t lack for anything than attention to the things we have.