RICH MAN to POOR MAN

By B.F.

In most case scenarios life goes from good to better, the rich get richer and the prosperous stay that way. But life isn't always fair and the game not always easy. Sometimes life takes a disastrous turnaround and the good rich and prosperous end up poor broke and disadvantaged. A once luxurious lifestyle can turn into a catch as catch can lifestyle of struggles for continued existence searching for a little extra when available or affordable, and even then, pennies must be pinched for just the basic needs of mere survival.

A person used to a particular lifestyle of high living and easy money can find the turnaround quite disheartening and mind boggling, not to mention the most stressful situation anyone can imagine. If you have never had anything to call expensive in your life then the change wouldn't seen so traumatic but to encounter poverty at a later age and to find that the common person has no earthly idea of how the rich live or even think is another obstacle to survival almost as confounding and life threatening as the lack of sustenance to a thirsting man crawling through the hot dry dessert.

Even basic conversation is at a premium with someone who has never tasted the good life as they cannot understand what it means to have more than what it takes to survive, let alone know the feeling of ever having too much. Whey they see someone on TV with so much abundance, it seems comical and they must be crazy to have more than is necessary and why would they want all that? It is not a situation where they envy, just why must their lives be so flamboyant?

The rich are different than most. A saying that has been bantered around since money was invented. And they are. Money gives one freedoms unknown and unheard of by the common folk. A freedom to be more than what is expected and the power to buy what you want when you want it and for some it may even be license to be rude, but that is not the norm. Some wealthy individual are quite pleasant who have not allowed the money or fame to go to their heads or turn them into egocentric eccentrics.

Life can give us many things and money is an advantage that allows many to exist on a level unaware of some world realities and without any knowledged of the poverty of most and unmindful of the difficulties faced by the average citizen who must deal with day-to-day living on a weekly stipend. A common day of yachting for the rich is a luxury that cannot be imagined by the average person and enjoying a bar-b-que in the back yard of the wealthy is quite different from the weekend hang out get together of poor folk.

Even a day watching television for the prosperous can be an adventure unknown to the common man, cause how many can sit in their air conditioned home theaters with a TV screen that stretch across the wall and invite moguls from the business world or those of entertainment notoriety and actually feel comfortable with them as friends?

It is a major transition for anyone who has ever had to face the turnaround of prosperity to poverty. To suddenly be thrown into a life of want... constantly struggling for survival from day to day. It is a mind blowing experience.

But there is a good side to everything and even in poverty some small pleasures can be found. If by chance that individual has found a companion that is willing to be there and understand the struggle and stress that one finds on the other side of the monumental mountain of the prosperous. If they too can be supportive of the mental transition faced by one who after having so much and suddenly thrust into encountering a lifestyle as alien and unknown to him as the lifestyle of the rich and famous would be to her, maybe he can make it.

Money is transitory, just as are lifestyles and people's mindsets. We change, and lifestyles change. Day to day becomes all the time and time doesn't always work out for the best. We must deal with the hand we've been dealt and make the best of it. Fortunes can be made again and if the person reaching can find someone who wants to go the same place and reaches for the same goals and heights together they might be achieved.

But if that person who's life has changed from the up to the down cannot find a camaraderie and equal mental ground with a mate who can accept the promised expected lifestyle that the former affluent person is used to and must have again at all cost, and wants to stay in a lowly one, where they feel comfortable and safe, then that must be cause for consideration and may end up cause for contemplation of the future of their existence.

Life is a struggle sure enough, but with like minds, anything can be possible, and rich and poor mindsets can co-exist.

Age can be detrimental to the factors of renewed prosperity. Those who think young and do not expect the ravages of time to wear them out find peace in knowing whatever was can be again and sometimes on a higher level than before because they see themselves as continuing for unknown time. But those who have accepted age as a stopping point in their lives and see nothing but downhill will always find ways to defeat the positive for theirs is an existence that is about over and they feel it. But the young at heart, the creative and artistic nature of the doers, the dreamers and imaginative will always reach for more, to find ways to improve their condition and lot in life and go on till they cannot go anymore.

The mind of the young is not always just given to youth. Sometimes even the aged can accomplish great things if they continue feeling that they can, and know that nothing short of death is going to stop them form being all they want or can be. Life is a journey that must be traveled and experienced for everything it gives and age will never stand in the way of that. As the saying goes, "If you had it once, you can have it again." And that goes for anyone, at any age.