The true meaning of Wealth

A little story I wrote a while back hope you enjoy it and get the meaning behind it.

Sam looked at the advert on Facebook and saw the guy in standing in front of his huge house and his black Bugatti sports car and wondered what the hell has gone wrong with his life?

‘It seems so easy for these people’, he thought; ‘What on Earth has happened in the 4 years since he left a full time job to become an entrepreneur?’

“I have done everything they told me, I applied all I learned, and then why am I struggling to even afford to pay for my home and my cheap ten year old car payments?”

It came to a head 4 years ago as Sam sat in rush hour traffic on the way to a job he loathed when, he looked out and saw some guy in the car next to his, having an animated argument over the phone:

‘It’s like 0645 in the morning, who’d be arguing at this time? At least I have all my fights at night!’ He pondered further, about what an elderly sagacious friend had once told him:

‘There are only three things couples argue over: money, sex and kids!’

So after a very long chat with Anne his adoring wife, they both agreed they had enough saved to give it about 4 years, thereafter they would be destitute. Sam would be his own boss running an affiliate program on the Internet selling designer T shirts through his blog, not a massive shift from being a sales rep for a multi-national fashion house, so things should not be so hard.

Sam was a disciple of ‘The Secret’ and the law of attraction meant everything to him. He went on four Tony Robbins seminars, met Jack Canfield, read over 100 books had umpteen motivational CD’s in his car. Yet four years later he found himself looking at ads in the paper for sales reps jobs he would have to eventually take.

‘Where’s the money??’ He screamed to himself. ‘I am such a failure!’

That afternoon after his depressing hour on Facebook, he went to the shops in what felt his last time his freedom would be available to him, and just as he was passing the fruit stall at the market he saw an advert posted on the wall.

“Today only! Betsy the Romany Gypsy; Find out what’s holding you back! Only $5.00 for 30 minutes we are open now corner of 4^th and 3^rd street”

Sam chuckled to himself; ‘Hocus Pokus!’ Then he thought further; ‘What do you have to lose but five bucks? Maybe, just maybe, she’ll have the answer.’ 

Sam dashed along and soon enough without much more thought, he found himself sat inside a makeshift wigwam style kids tent, (he was sure he’d seen one of these before in his neighbors garden) in front of a lady with an olive complexion, he was surprised at her appearance, he expected her to be much older, she was: ‘Perhaps 25 if that, what life experience has she had?’ he muttered to himself; ‘That’s a wig, and where’s the Crystal ball?’

“We don’t have any crystal balls, that’s in the stories to fool people, to mislead and add a sense of theatre to the otherwise uneducated”

Sam looked up surprised she could hear his thoughts, ‘Then again she probably gets asked that all the time!’ He chuckled to himself.

She had a veil over her face so it was hard to make her out fully. She began to examine his hands:“Mid-forties, last job 4 years ago, stunningly beautiful wife, very lucky, went on your own, struggling hmmm” she massaged his hands smiled, and looked deep into the lines. Sam kept quiet, but’ impressed’ was written all over his face.

“I will give you a spell to give you what it is you really need and find the true wealth you seek!”

She threw some beads on the table and started some Eastern language incantations and strangely enough a small breeze ripped through the tent and then all of a sudden a man appeared.

“Betsy I told you already my Sergeant’s going be here in 5 please, I cannot tell you again, move along! And within minutes Betsy, the small tent on the corner of a main street, and the police man and car were gone, as if they had vanished.

Sam though;‘Oh well what positives can you take out of that then? How about: A fool is born every minute’

Sam wandered back to the market and on the way there was the same poor beggar lady sat on the floor with her child as she had been for what seemed like years, and without thinking Sam dropped a ten dollar bill in her hat!

Sam stopped abruptly in his tracks, about 3 yards away from the lady and wondered what on Earth that was all about? Why had he given her ten valuable dollars? He turned around to find an even more surprised  impoverished lady, who had seen Sam almost every day for as long as she could remember and he had never given her as much as an acknowledgement!

Sam shrugged his shoulders and carried on back home with the vegetables

Sam started cooking as he thought Anne would be home later, he toiled all afternoon in the kitchen and later when Sam heard the door he rushed to open it untying his apron as he ran.

“Good evening darling” he said, handing her a glass of her favourite wine.

Anne gave him a look that was of total bemusement but delighted at the same time “OK what’s her name?”

“Whatever are you talking about?” he replied as innocent as a Priest

“Come on Mr Williams the last time you cooked me supper, Boys to Men were No. 1 in the charts what have you done wrong?”

Sam tried to remember what had happened that afternoon and he could not even remember cooking. They both sat down to amazing Spaghetti and Sam told Anne about the fortune teller, the beggar woman, and apologized for being so stupid and careless with fifteen bucks.

“Well seems she had some effect on you and a positive one at that!” She leaned closed and gave him a really heartfelt kiss that ignited something in him he had not felt for a long time, Anne was really receptive and they spent a passionate evening laughing and caressing each other till dawn.

Over breakfast the next morning still giggling like school kids on a sleep over, Sam’s brother called by and mentioned that he was in a pickle at work because they need to get more sales in and without any forethought Sam said:

“I have some experience on web design and social media Jack; perhaps I can swing by later and help you out”

Anne looked at her brother in law startled, and you could hear a pin drop.

“What? Come on, not like I have never wanted to help before,” piped up Sam. “it’s just was never good timing for me, well now is good timing” As Sam said the words , but could not help the feeling like someone else is controlling him from inside, changing his feelings and saying stuff he would not naturally say.

Sam and Jack spent the afternoon in his office fixing his website and doing some S.E.O. for him and 5 hours later Jack Sam’s younger and impressionable  brother hugged him for the first time in years and was so grateful.

Later that night Sam and Anne were preparing for bed and Anne said “This; ‘new you,’ is very endearing sweetheart, do you think the gypsy’s spell worked?”

Sam thought about it and then slightly annoyed retorted;

“Damn her! If she has put a spell on me it is to make us more destitute, all I have done since I met her is help others and not us!”

Anne smiled and climbed in bed over the top of Sam in his favourite lingerie and said “Well I like it regardless, and I would be happy being destitute with you, we can share our cardboard home together”

Sam sighed and thought he had better make the best of this because soon they will take his house, home and dignity, but screw them all for tonight.

Next day Sam was adding new T shirts to his site and blogging about fashion and what is cool to wear right now, then adding to his Facebook page and tweeting the post, still glum about the forthcoming foreclosure of his business, marriage, life etc.

Suddenly he received an email from a company asking for bloggers to help with their new site to write about fashion as they sold hats and jackets. ‘Damn spam’ Sam’s initial thoughts were, and suddenly he looked back at the screen and there was an email written from him:

“Dear Groovy hats co Ltd

I would be very happy to supply you with a number of blogs written from my own PC for you to put on your site here is my first one attached and I truly wish your business all the success I can

Yours

 Sam Williams”

Sam rubbed his eyes twice, got up looked out the window, and wondered what kind of trickery is this? He did not remember even writing the email, not one single word, as he looked at the screen again, with his hands on his lap, the email was sent!

Sam was a little unnerved, but his fearful reverie was disturbed by a knock at the door. It was the postmen delivering this month’s misery, bills, bills, and more bills that he could not afford. Sam hid them under the keyboard as he heard Anne come in.

Anne and Sam went out to eat that night, Sam’s idea to stop Anne seeing the bills. He just wanted to try and make the best of the last few days of his wonderful life with his amazingly beautiful and sexy wife. He did not sleep he stayed awake most of the night gazing at Anne snoring slightly after a few glasses of wine, and a tear trickled down his nose and dropped solemnly onto her shoulder.

A short time  passed and one morning after Anne left for work, Sam wondered around his study frightened to turn on the PC it was after all his last few days and he should start at least looking for work. He logged into his website and he sat stunned.

He had over 200 extra orders for T shirts, tripling his turnover for that week.

He logged into his analytics to see where his new traffic was coming from and it was from YouTube. He clicked the link and sat totally shocked at the video, Justin Timberlake was dancing and singing on stage with one of his T-shirts, he was also wearing one of the Groovy hat company’s caps back to front of course ‘Kids huh! God bless them! he laughed to himself.

He logged into his emails and saw an email from Groovy hats

‘Dear Sam,

Thanks for all your blogs you gave us recently and for sharing them on social media you really made a difference for us when we were just a start up and everyone else was just ignoring us, and so when we were asked to supply some gear to the MTV awards we thought let’s give him one of your T shirts to wear as Part of his ensemble. Hope this is OK.

Regards

Julian

Groovy hats’

This was a few days ago why did he not see it? He could not even remember writing all the blogs; it must have taken days to write all that stuff for them.  ‘What’s happening to me???’ He wondered excitedly, He rung Anne straight away and she was so pleased for him, but in some way she seemed hardly surprised.

Sam decided to take a slow walk to the shops, to try to see if he could make some light of what was going on. By the vegetable market there was a commotion lots of kids stood in a huddle watching the beggar lady, and filming her on their phones. She had one of his T shirts on. “WTF!??” He thought.

The kids were applauding and taking videos of this funny woman performing amazing ballet in the street wearing one of his T shirts, she had a cardboard sheet upon  which she scratched out ‘please help’ and wrote:

 ‘Get your own personalised T shirt at www.sams-shirts co.net and you can dance like me’

People were throwing dollars and dollars into her hat, they never knew she was a trained dancer. Many years ago she was a famous Ballerina who performed in front of royalty at all the top venues, sadly she fell on hard times and got depressed when her husband died young. ‘Wow I never thought it was possible to do the splits still at 75 years of age.” This day is getting stranger and stranger’ Sam thought.

The beggar lady saw Sam and their eyes met, she smiled as if to say thank you for showing me what kindness can be, and restoring my faith in people and finding my joy again.

When Sam returned home he logged in to find that sales had doubled again, and he now had enough to cover the bills for this month, the relief was staggering, he sat down in his office chair and sobbed and he then began to realise that the gypsy’s spell had actually worked, and it made him realise that true wealth is only bestowed to you through others.

Later that night Jack, Sam’s brother popped round with a bottle of wine and talk of his promotion and a cool order for Sam for 200 more personalized marketing shirts each month, as he is now the Marketing CEO for his company.

That night was the best night of his life and he put his arms around his wife, thanked her for being there, and to help him understand what the true meaning of wealth is, and that the money is a side effect of what truly matters.

Anne smiled looked at his hands and said “I am so happy my Darling. You now know money misleads, and just adds a sense of theater to the otherwise uneducated!”  

Sam looked at his wife,….. and then he knew!

Love and wealth thank you

Alan Johnston