I woke up with that phrase in my head.

“Quietly amassed a great fortune”.

Sounds good to me.

Another phrase that popped through shortly afterwards was “secretly gave away millions”.

Make it to use and to give away….what a plan.

Money has never been a big motivator for me.

Now that I have a family, though, the utility of money is a lot more obvious….

Money is a good thing.

Having some money is OK in my book.

I like it when it happens.

Now, to some degree at least, money is a ghost.

It’s not real….really real, at least.

It’s a concept that we all accept. It’s a system that costs money to perpetuate. It’s a quantifier that would fall apart if we decided that it wasn’t something we had any interest in continuing.

Who’d want money if everybody decided that money was kind of stupid?

We all have to buy into the thought if the thought is going to continue to work….right?

This is veering a little, but….I drive around a lot for my job.

I drive to many different areas in my town…..rich areas….poor areas….and it hit me the other day that …(often), I’ll see a ratty trailer or dilapidated house that is surrounded by some really beautiful trees or flowers.

That’s a distraction.

What are these “poor people” doing with something so beautiful in their lives?

How’d it happen that beauty quietly worked its way around the concept of wealth?

The most beautiful things in the world don’t really cost….not in the sense of “money cost”, at least.

You can’t own a sunset…even though we’ll buy the expensive beach house to watch it from.

Maybe that’s the frustrating part about real beauty….you can’t figure out how to get enough money to corral the beautiful and put your very own brand on it.

Maybe that’s why we work so hard at advertising?

You can’t own real beauty, so why not figure out a way to distract yourself from that insufficiency and just buy, buy, buy….until you’re so exhausted that you stop noticing all the impotent effort you put out chasing after the beauty that’s free to you as long as you don’t try to grab it and make it “yours and yours alone”?

I don’t have a lot of money.

I have quietly amassed a great fortune.

I may never have a lot of money….but I’m pretty darn rich.