Being Poor

                The world has clearly identified what poverty means and what wealth of affluence means. We instantly know what a poor man looks like and what a rich man looks like by being told how much money they have in the bank or what they own. Wealth is individual! Or so it seems. Let us look at the subject matter a little closer and you will see that the term self-made does not go beyond the individual; self-made does not exist. A better thing is always built on the efforts of more than one man or woman, people along the lines have played pivotal roles to the arrival of such individuals. So what do the rich know that the poor do not? It is simply this, keep the bond of wealth strong; investors, family wealth, alliances, team-work, common goals or enemies, community. Poor nations may or may not have once been wealthy but not everyone has always been poor or rich, everyone was born with a chance to choose. Choose to make the world better than you meet it or choose to survive in it while you live. It is said that only the strong survive but not just the strong inherit the earth otherwise all military personnel, body builders and strength trainers would be the wealthy while the ones without physical strength would be the poor. As we can clearly see, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates look like they have never thrown a punch in their whole lives but here we are: two of the wealthiest men alive.

                  Years, many years ago, these men were just men, simple me just like everyone else. We are told they were men with dreams and strength enough to believe in that dream but is that what truly made them wealthy today? The answer is no. The community of people made them who they are. The poor nations need to know this. Being wealthy is not just a state of mind, it is a status and this comes with a strong chain of leverages. For a nation or an individual to become wealthy, he or she must have a foundation of other people. In ancient civilizations, kings were not wealthy simply because they were the smartest people or were born with royal bloodlines, as much as we would like to believe this to be true, people chose their families to lead or their family subdued others into making them the leaders. Either this or that is not the point, the point is that for a person to be wealthy, there is always a community of people ensuring that they stay wealthy either directly or indirectly hence the phrase; the rich keep getting richer and the poor, poorer.

                You want to be rich! your country wants to be rich too. So maybe you don’t care that much about your country’s wealth or aspirations to be known and respected as a rich nation but you want to be rich. How do you get out of poverty? There are many ways and very many more books have been written about this but I will show you the most effective way proven throughout history. Find common ground with a group of people and build. Just about anything can be built. There is nothing like the perfect idea because the world never knows what it wants. With your group or community, you stand a better chance than finding it on your own. What does this mean for entrepreneurship or leadership? It means that there is no entrepreneur without people to engage his or her idea and without engagement there is no growth and without growth no sustainability and without sustainability, Death. For leadership to thrive, it needs a group of people to lead and without this community of people, leadership does not exist. All the poor nations of the earth seem to be poor by design but we know this is not how they were made. All men were created equal, to breathe, eat, live, hope, dream and defend the life that they know to be their own. What changed?

                  What changed began with value. Value was appropriated to certain things that was owned in some lands and not found in others. An illustration could be explained as follows: If in my land we have an excess of gold and we value our gold simply as what we have and enjoy the variety of uses it can provide but in your land you have coal, when we see your coal, it suddenly would mean much more to us and vice versa. In today’s world we know that gold certainly has more value than coal but why? Who created this system of worship? While it is irrelevant to focus on who created what, it is relevant to see clearly what was created. If one group of people come in contact with another and cannot stand firm in their beliefs, confident in their way of life and the struggle for the identity of their people, they will bow to a nation or group of people that do. In clearer terms, if our gold does not strongly satisfy us, we will gladly give it away in exchange for coal even though our gold has more value. This is the curse of the poor nations. It is not that they do not have resources or skill, it is that they believe what they are told more than what they have known. When what you know is obsolete, you evolve and grow, this is the natural order of things and only by working together can a group of people evolve beyond the capability or skill of one man/woman.

                Being poor is not a curse, it is a state of mind, a believing which is mostly self-dominating. It destroys hope for a better future, dreams for a better day and life for a better world. So if being poor is an enemy to the human experience, does that mean being rich is a blessing? The answer is no, being rich is an identity: It is in knowing who you are, why and for what purpose. It is knowing what you have, how to use it and valuing it above things that hold no value to your culture, not ignoring the things you do not own but using what you have to get what you need. The rich know this, and this is why they thrive. They thrive because of identity and nothing less. They are not held down by systems or rules; they create systems and rules out of the evolution of their bodies, minds and communities.

‘Look unto the ants you sluggard’!

                In closing, I would like anyone who reads this to know that you are either poor or rich; there is no middle class, at least not in the context of basic human life.  There is only leader and follower, entrepreneur and consumer base, King/Queen and subjects; no one is greater than the other, just a variety of communal responsibilities for the good of them all. You are what you say you are and if you truly are rich, you will begin to do things in a way that shows what you value and how you begin to build upon what you have. I wish you well on your journey through life.