Poor People Have More Things Than Rich People

An interesting concept came into my head the other day. It might not be new for some people, but for others it can be eye-opening.

I’m not sure I was ready to think of what I thought in the past, hence my delay. But as I evolve and change I’m beginning to see clearer.

Growing up I didn’t have much. And certainly didn’t have room for too many things. Whether it was when my family of five stayed in a room in my uncle’s 2-bedroom condo or when we lived in our own 2-bedroom apartment. I was sharing spaces and what was for me to have personally wasn’t very big, for years.

Until finally my parents were able to buy a house and I got a room all to myself. Wow, those were the days. I packed that room up like no tomorrow. Unintentionally, by the way. Just over time it just happened. Things everywhere. I just kept keeping things. All kinds of stuff I’d keep, whether I got a free shirt at an event or purchased a souvenir from somewhere, et cetera. And to make matters worse, there was a basement in this house and once my room got filled up I found space in there to put things so that I can have more room in my room for other things. By the way, yes, I began to purchase storage bins and I was in the game of storage.

And this wasn’t only me. Later in life I realized my whole family had packed up stuff in the house. Empty boxes, electronics that might be broken, random wires, even expired food cans that we didn’t even know we had, just were there, in the house. Wow, wild, eh?

So I bring up that backstory to help analyze myself in a way, but also bring an understanding to this concept that poor people have more things than rich people.

Now, I’m not necessarily speaking about poor as in financially poor, though that tends to connect with that concept. Instead I’m referring to poor in terms of knowledge in this area of accrual of items and how space is perceived. And when it comes to space there’s also a connection with wealth, so again, bringing this idea of money into the equation is fine. But understand that space can also be understood as mental space. I feel like I’m going in a bit of a complicated direction as I bring all these ideas in, so let me get back on track to the points I’d like to make in simple terms. You can choose to interpret poor, rich, things, and space however you see fit and beneficial to yourself.

Poor people usually don’t understand quality in terms of an overall life. And often they are influenced by trends and reactions. They are open to getting anything they can get for free, and for good reason on their end, because it’s free, duh! And they tend to invest in the opposite of what rich people invest. It’s actually very interesting.

A rich person may invest in having very few things in a home, whatever the size, i.e. having the discipline to not have so much, not keep things that are free, but not needed, and not buy random stuff, instead have space, like actually empty space, to breathe and be inspired. Spaces might be curated in a way to help be more productive, enjoy specific aspects of life in a much more enhanced way, and have real relaxation. While on the other hand a poor person might invest in having a space filled up with things as if it’s some sort of competition of who can have more. And the competition isn’t against the rich, obviously as you read this, but it might be if you don’t. The dynamic is crazy if you think about it, because a poor person usually doesn’t have space to put many things, yet he or she is putting so many things in spaces, while the rich person has a lot of space to put so many things and more, yet he or she is either leaving a space blank or putting something very selective in spaces. Shouldn’t it be the opposite?

Notice, I’m not saying a rich person has a mansion or anything like that. A rich person can actually have less surface area to fill than a poor person, yet may look like he or she has way more space. That’s because spaces aren’t filled with nonsense and things that don’t matter. Every centimeter counts and every item that is owned should be consciously decided on.

In the long term as the poor person accumulates more things he or she eventually may rent out a storage unit (get seriously in the storage game) that would lead him or her to being more poor, more stuck, and more unhappy. As for the rich person he or she may actually decide to let go of more things so that he or she can be more rich, more free, and more happy. Weird how it works.

It’s very freeing to have very few things. Inspiring and revealing too. To have few very important, selective, timeless things. Beautiful.

And having nothing is probably amazing.