Rich or Poor?

The business maganate and the founder CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk was speaking in a conference in the United States on investment and finance a few years ago. An interesting question was thrown at him during the Q and A session,

“As the richest man in the world, can you accept if your daughter marries a poor or modest man?”

His answer was, “No, I won’t.”

Musk explained it. Wealth doesn’t mean having a fat bank account. It’s primarily the ability to create wealth. If someone wins $ 100 millions in a lottery or gambling, he is not a rich man. He is a poor guy with a lot of money. Most of the lottery millionaires become poor again after 5 years.

But we also have rich people who have no money, e.g. most of the entrepreneurs. They don’t have money, but they develop their financial intelligence to create wealth.

If a young person decides to learn new things and tries to improve himself constantly, he is a rich man, as he is convinced that he just needs knowledge and training to take off.

On the other hand, if a young person thinks that the problem is the state, and the rich are all thieves, he is a poor man. He expects others to give money and support to take off.

So he concluded that his daughter would not marry a poor man.

One day, a guard of a bank found a bag full of money, he took the bag and  gave it to the manager. That guard was in fact a rich man, who had no money. One year later, he was offered a job as a receptionist, 3 years later, of a customer manager and 10 years later, he was managing a Region of the Bank.

So, it’s upto us to decide whether we wish to be a rich or a poor person.

In this context, I strongly believe that Vinisha Umashankar, just 15-year-old school-girl from Tamil Nadu is one of such rich persons.

Vinisha invented Iron- Max, a solar-powered ironing cart to replace the charcoal ones in India. She is one of the finalists of Earth shot Prize.

While addressing the world leaders at COP 26 summit, she emphatically said,

“I’m not just a girl from India, I’m a girl from Earth…. We won’t wait for you to act. We will lead even if you don’t. We will act even if you delay. We’ll build the future, even if you are stuck in the past.“

The future of our nation, our earth is in safe hands of such rich persons.

–Kaushal Kishore

images:google