MOVING
There are people who buy and sell houses and get a kick out of it. There are people who read about the stock market and love making their choices and getting rich. I have a colleague on the same salary as me who found figuring out the stock market and getting rich was endlessly stimulating. He died a millionaire several times over and I am just scraping by. But getting rich simply doesn’t turn me on, though I wouldn’t mind being a little richer.
But just by stumbling along, being born where I was and with the parents I have, I have turned out to be rich in spite of myself. I feel this intensely every time I visit India and connect with people who live in tiny houses with no bathroom, a mud stove in the corner of the room, no cupboards and few clothes to put them in and only a charpoy, a stringed bed, to sleep on and use as a couch during the day. I realize how intensely rich I am. There is no discernible gap between me and my millionaire colleague but there is between me and these people.
And I feel especially rich right now when this house that I paid $66,000 for 30 years ago is going to be worth many times that much in spite of my cluelessness in how to sell it. I did nothing to cause this and don’t deserve it. And yet I will take whatever comes in spite of myself.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 