Spiderman
Veteran Member
There are poor, despised, homeless lepers that like being alive, and I know of two beautiful supermodel actresses, who starred in the same show together, in India's Charlie's Angels, both hung themselves while young, famous, and successful, which is an example of them being more poor, empty, and starving, than many of the poorest of the poor in that country, India, where people are starving to death in the streets.
It is also an example of fortune, fame, and good looks, being the envy of others, cannot stop you from feeling so empty and tortured , you feel suicide is the answer.
Which leads me to conclude that wealthy, successful, famous people , who are very unhappy or hating their lives, they are not exactly rich, but they could be very poor. They are starving sometimes worse than the impoverished, they just are not starving for food.
I guess from a Christian perspective, Jesus was the most rich and successful man, but he was born in a barn, and declared that the greatest Prophet was John the Baptist, who was homeless, unemployed, ate locusts and wild honey in the wilderness (a diet people would resort to in a disaster where they could starve to death), and died in prison, never even doing anything people would call impressive, like work miracles, or coming up with ingenious contributions or solutions to societies problems.
John the Baptist, his diet and lifestyle resembled an animal and a crazy person, not healthy, but if Jesus was Divine, and was right about him being the greatest Prophet, it means in God's eyes, he was the most wealthy and successful man up until then, that isn't Divine. Yet if someone lived like that today, we would think he belonged in a psyche ward, and people would find a guy whose only possessions are one pair of camel hair clothing and sandles, who eats locusts and wild honey, who has no job, no roof, people would find him frightening, insane, madman.
Yet he was said to be God's most favored of the Prophets, meaning being an extremely gifted, rich, happy, favored person, living the dream, being the most happy , important, privileged people, with a life that feels most meaningful, it can actually have the appearance of being the opposite: folly, madness, and greatest poverty (from a Biblical perspective).
And maybe if God wanted his favorite Prophet to live like that, it shows God is by human standards crazy.
But I think the human condition comes with a poverty and a feeling of hungering and starving, emptiness, loneliness, desperation, darkness, feeling like something is missing. And good looks, a dream career, being a billionaire, being famous, it has proven that all those things cannot make that human poverty, hunger, emptiness, thirst, and human misery go away, to the point people who have all that , and seem to have it all, they kill themselves, die of drug overdoses, or have killed others.
I think another thing is to surrender to and accept human poverty and human misery, as something that afflicts the rich and poor, is very common, and try to find out what is really going to make a person rich and happy. Chasing fortune and fame, is a rat race that you will realize wasn't what you thought it would be when you get there.
There are people who don't know where their next meal will come from, who are happy, and people who are wealthy, famous, and good looking, who are tortured in so much agony, to the point their will to live is less than many starving abused people in concentration camps.
The former strike me as being far more rich, and the other being the poorest of the poor. You can also have a lot of friends and aquaintences, and feel very lonely, because it is all a very shallow relationship and superficial, where you cannot be yourself around them, and they don't feel like true friends.
But anyway, rich happy people , might very well often be the people that the vast majority of people would not envy.
Saint Francis of Assisi wore a beggars robe, lived in leper colonies, hugged lepers, hung out with people no one else did, was a barefoot beggar who often slept outside, and during the crusades he passed enemy lines to preach to the Muslims doctrines that should have gotten him killed, but his courage was admired enough they let him live.
The amount of people he influenced is huge, his courage and willingness to sacrifice and suffer, his love for those no one else loves, makes him seem extremely rich to me. Yet he was another who appeared most poor and crazy like John the Baptist.
Do you have any thoughts about what makes people rich?
It is also an example of fortune, fame, and good looks, being the envy of others, cannot stop you from feeling so empty and tortured , you feel suicide is the answer.
Which leads me to conclude that wealthy, successful, famous people , who are very unhappy or hating their lives, they are not exactly rich, but they could be very poor. They are starving sometimes worse than the impoverished, they just are not starving for food.
I guess from a Christian perspective, Jesus was the most rich and successful man, but he was born in a barn, and declared that the greatest Prophet was John the Baptist, who was homeless, unemployed, ate locusts and wild honey in the wilderness (a diet people would resort to in a disaster where they could starve to death), and died in prison, never even doing anything people would call impressive, like work miracles, or coming up with ingenious contributions or solutions to societies problems.
John the Baptist, his diet and lifestyle resembled an animal and a crazy person, not healthy, but if Jesus was Divine, and was right about him being the greatest Prophet, it means in God's eyes, he was the most wealthy and successful man up until then, that isn't Divine. Yet if someone lived like that today, we would think he belonged in a psyche ward, and people would find a guy whose only possessions are one pair of camel hair clothing and sandles, who eats locusts and wild honey, who has no job, no roof, people would find him frightening, insane, madman.
Yet he was said to be God's most favored of the Prophets, meaning being an extremely gifted, rich, happy, favored person, living the dream, being the most happy , important, privileged people, with a life that feels most meaningful, it can actually have the appearance of being the opposite: folly, madness, and greatest poverty (from a Biblical perspective).
And maybe if God wanted his favorite Prophet to live like that, it shows God is by human standards crazy.
But I think the human condition comes with a poverty and a feeling of hungering and starving, emptiness, loneliness, desperation, darkness, feeling like something is missing. And good looks, a dream career, being a billionaire, being famous, it has proven that all those things cannot make that human poverty, hunger, emptiness, thirst, and human misery go away, to the point people who have all that , and seem to have it all, they kill themselves, die of drug overdoses, or have killed others.
I think another thing is to surrender to and accept human poverty and human misery, as something that afflicts the rich and poor, is very common, and try to find out what is really going to make a person rich and happy. Chasing fortune and fame, is a rat race that you will realize wasn't what you thought it would be when you get there.
There are people who don't know where their next meal will come from, who are happy, and people who are wealthy, famous, and good looking, who are tortured in so much agony, to the point their will to live is less than many starving abused people in concentration camps.
The former strike me as being far more rich, and the other being the poorest of the poor. You can also have a lot of friends and aquaintences, and feel very lonely, because it is all a very shallow relationship and superficial, where you cannot be yourself around them, and they don't feel like true friends.
But anyway, rich happy people , might very well often be the people that the vast majority of people would not envy.
Saint Francis of Assisi wore a beggars robe, lived in leper colonies, hugged lepers, hung out with people no one else did, was a barefoot beggar who often slept outside, and during the crusades he passed enemy lines to preach to the Muslims doctrines that should have gotten him killed, but his courage was admired enough they let him live.
The amount of people he influenced is huge, his courage and willingness to sacrifice and suffer, his love for those no one else loves, makes him seem extremely rich to me. Yet he was another who appeared most poor and crazy like John the Baptist.
Do you have any thoughts about what makes people rich?
