Money Grows on Trees…

Money grows on trees. So you decide to pack up some belongings, say goodbye to your family and friends, and head off to build your house in a forest. In this forest, you are surrounded by trees with pound notes growing from it, as opposed to leaves. Everyday, you wake up and collect each pound note; saving it, treasuring it and dreaming of building an empire when you return home. One day, you realise that, just like leaves, your pound notes begin to shrivel and wither. They become useless to you. So, you begin again to collect and collect, unable to break from the vicious cycle.

After some years, you receive an unexpected visit from a Lumber Jack, who informs you that the entire forest will be cut down. Your money is all shrivelled. Your trees are all gone. You are living on empty land that resembles your empty life. You are left with nothing.

It is now when you realise that you left everything for money, and now money has left you, you have nothing. Therefore, it is an important life lesson to understand that money can produce greed, selfishness and emptiness. Money can produce pride, vanity and insanity. Just as it is easily sought, it is easily lost.

Rather than learning this lesson the hard way, just remember that if money did grow on trees, it does not make a life. What defines a person is not the amount of money they have, or the amount of material possessions they own, but how much good they are able to do with what they have. There is always someone less fortunate than you out there, so don’t take money for granted, and do good deeds with it.

What makes a wealthy life is one filled with love and happiness, because money can be lost or stolen, and is left behind in the world. But the love and happiness within us, and which we share with the world, live on forever.