Poverty among the rich

I have been left with some remarks tonight as I stumbled across another person. As for the interaction, I was handed a passport - his passport to be precise. He asked me to flip through the pages, saying "I doubt you have ever seen anything like it".
So I did, and I was blown away - as promised. Every page was covered with six or more stamps. Covering all possible spaces within. Naturally, the story began with a simple question: "who do you work for?"
He responded by saying film distribution. I wondered - based on his young age - if he meant adult films, but he corrected my guess by expanding the thought to movies and movie studios.

Since the age of 25, he had traveled for work. I could only imagine the places and the type of people he would have met in such a lucrative market. He commented that he had since quit due to personal issues - which I shall guard for his privacy. The stamps included countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, Dubai, Turkey, Australia, to name a few. He mentioned that it would have been a lot more stamps though many of the countries he visits - as they are part of the EU Schengen zone - do not even stamp his passport.

He mentioned that in the course of a day, he would have breakfast in Dubai, lunch in Istanbul, dinner in London and breakfast one again in Argentina. Perhaps it would help to mention he was being paid around $35,000 USD per MONTH for this job! I know what you are thinking, what a life right! well, not exactly. We like to believe that such a job would be a dream come true but as he so elegantly put it: "It was sickening".
I laughed and said to him that he must have seen some shit, based on my own experiences of being around similar people. He responded by saying "one would not even be able to imagine". I replied, "I don't know what you went through but surely we can agree that it is a dirty world, that all the bullshit they teach you in university never matches your reality". He agreed.

He said, "It's not all that its made to be". I responded by saying, "I know, I have analysed and sat across the table with many people like him and the people he describes, and rarely if ever felt that they were healthy, happy or satisfied, that mostly I see kids pretending to be adults". Unfortunately, people have been trained since a young age to praise and look up to such people. As another story describes:

"He believes that the more money he possesses,
the more free he would be from all constraints,
as though ownership and freedom went hand in hand.
But freedom is the asceticism that comes from self-control,
from the desire and will to act; to be and not to have."

This is where the wisdom of the experience began to pour out. He started telling me how he got there. "It could have been anyone doing that job, was just a matter of being at the right place at the right time". He said,
"it has no value, that having someone to love and love you back has true value, the best things in life are for free. Having a family or raising one has true value. It does not matter if you are a millionaire or not, you will see the same sunset. You just have to do what makes you happy".

It reminded of this song by Mumford & Sons I was listening to earlier that evening, the lyrics are as suitable as any for this story:

"Where you invest your love, you invest your life".

The name of the song is called 'Awake My Soul', such golden wisdom! ☯️ He was upset that he could earn such amounts of money while people were starving, people worked like slaves to earn 1% of that. While travelling he said that rarely do people pay attention to the place they are visiting, because they are too busy getting drunk, sitting at the beach or partying. Too busy or ignorant to notice the poverty, the culture, the people.

So what can we learn from this story? Unfortunately, many people dedicate their precious lives chasing money, status and materials instead of wisdom, truth and the things that are priceless, like self-actualisation. I have seen many people graduate, then start crying and feeling depressed as they do not what to do with their lives thereafter. Universities and our educators fail to enlighten individuals to fulfill their personal destiny, to gain a holistic view and instead make a specialised component to be used in a lifeless machine. Many people continue to do a masters course just for the sake of it, placing themselves in even a greater debt.

So many do not even know what "being happy" means for them, as it is a confronting question that they have never taken the time or been given the opportunity to truly understand. Imagine if instead of paying someone for 4 years to learn information that becomes obsolete soon after it is taught, we were told to put that same money, dedication and time towards an entrepreneurship idea of our own or help build upon other projects. Something to help us find our passion and path to self-fulfillment, both internally and externally.

As the famed writer Esther Pauline known by the pen name Ann Landers, once said:
"Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them."

or the famous quote by Carl Jung:
“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

I hope this story helps someone, somewhere learn something of value and if not, i hope it can inspire you to look at the world with the goal of wanting to be satisfied with your decisions and life. 🐾

One love xoxo
evok3d