By: Wiktoria Kępczyńska:
In answer to the question of whether everyone can be healthy, beautiful and rich,
I would say: they could – provided they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth!
However, I have no sympathy for the collective illusion, because what kind of life would it be if everyone suddenly wanted to get rich, to forget about their troubles and to live happily ever after?
I am also not tempted by the pursuit of fame and honour, which is why I definitely avoid this sphere of sensations and experiences.
And yet, there is something that I almost daydream about, and I suspect it is a common dream: I do indeed wish I had been born under a lucky star!
But this is just my pleasant dream, because my real life is not a bed of roses, it is what it is. Not everyone is meant to be… on top, let alone get to Olympus.
Nor do I envy anyone who tries to reach that peak, because, once they get there, will they – I ask myself – be spared the problems? I am afraid there will even be more of them.
Nevertheless, I wish good luck to all those who dream of the career of the greats
of this world. I myself will continue with a cup of well-brewed coffee … and my dreams, because if not everyone can be healthy, beautiful and rich, is it worth giving up even the dream of personal happiness?
Happiness in life is a relative concept, and for everyone it can mean something different. Some people strive for stability, for graduation from university, for finding a well-paid job or they look for satisfaction in family life.
For others, this project will not suffice. Stability is not enough so they want to
re-evaluate the most important things for them, they want to find their own lifestyle and a way to be happy. And of course some succeed.
Not everybody can be beautiful and healthy, but does everyone want to become rich, in particular since it is said that “money does not bring happiness”? And it is not about the scale of wealth achieved, but about the opportunities in which intelligence, talent, character and willpower lead to success.
The 91-year-old Warren Buffett, a billionaire on the list of the world’s richest people, can probably talk about the good fortune that he has had as a philanthropist, since he can afford to give billions of dollars to charity. And that this has not been a straight and easy path is evidenced by the “pearls of wisdom” of Buffett, known as the “Oracle of Omaha”:
* Rule No. 1: Never lose money.
* Rule No. 2: Always bear Rule No. 1 in mind.
* It’s only at low tide that you find out who’s been swimming naked.
* It’s better to be partly right than completely wrong.
* If you have no knowledge of diamonds, meet a jeweller.
* The only good thing about stock market forecasters is that fortune tellers look pretty good when compared with them.
* Wall Street is the only place on earth where people who drive the best cars take advice from those who travelled to work by underground.
Beauty can be improved, you can feel good and turn dreams into reality.
We seem to think differently about health. The pandemic has made us aware that the virus, invisible to the human eye, can effectively damage all dreams and also affect the healthy, the beautiful and the rich.
Admittedly, we already know how to detect and combat it, but are we able to take care of the quality of our health on a global scale?
In this regard, wealth can be used in a variety of ways, such as the provision of free vaccines to the poorest regions of the world.
The more affluent among us could set up investment funds to tackle the pandemic, and the poorer ones could support promotional activities.
Whether we will have the courage to mobilise all possible resources for this noble cause remains to be seen.
And let us not forget that pandemics existed, do exist and will exist, and that it is up to us to determine to what extent they will target the healthy, the beautiful and the rich, even if they happen to be born with a silver spoon in their mouth, for the virus does not distinguish between people’s social status, and the pandemic will change the global economic picture for a long time to come.
It will, of course, increase state spending on health care and medical products and is likely to lead to a significant increase in global debt.
International cooperation will be crucial in limiting the decline of the global economy, and this is an area where insurmountable difficulties may arise.
In the long term, the economic crisis caused by the pandemic could lead to a global recession which would not go unnoticed by those ‘born with a silver spoon in their mouth’, namely by the very lucky ones.
Fortunately, humanity has survived throughout its history the very same heavy blows as those inflicted by the current pandemic.
It seems however that the civilisational diseases of the 21st century are the problem of our times, and it is probably worth looking at how we function every day.
It is also advisable to point out that what is not good for nature is not good for mankind either.
And let us finally raise this fundamental question: when will we finally wake up from the dream in which the human being plays the role of the ‘master of the world’?
