Why understanding *what* you are, not who you are, is the key to building wealth.

Four minutes ago, at 6:39 AM, I found myself gliding across the kitchen as quietly as I could.

The bashful light of the morning was peeking through the shut blinds, giving me only just as much as I needed to hunt for the banana and the perfectly ripe peach I had been imagining for the past hour, as I patiently attempted every conceivable posture in that damn bed, in the vain hope of getting back to sleep.

Sometimes, when I'm trying to fall back to sleep, but I'm doomed, my foot will bounce rapidly at the end of the bed. Even if I systematically and progressively relax each muscle from head to toe, even if I do the famous 4-7-8 breathing taught by Dr. Andrew Weil... still, that foot and those toes will find a way to wiggle and bounce, almost like they're another creature altogether, only reluctantly attached to my leg, if it weren't for all the convenient blood supply.

Sometimes, I swear they even have a mind of their own, because I'll imagine the craziest things in sync with the outrageous movements, like a trombone, blasting them into action, as if they're taking center stage and a spotlight in the dark at a jazz club, oohing and aahing the crowd.

Say one thing for my bouncing foot, say it can dance.

What was I talking about?

Oh yeah, wealth.

I realized as I was biting into this peach that one of the things that made it so delicious was that I spent that last hour not only battling my wayward limbs for control of my being, but also imagining what it would be like to take that first, delicious bite of it, and feel that rush you get when the sweet and nearly sour juice of this fruit of the gods floods the senses.

Which got me thinking about wealth.

A thought I've often repeated to myself over the years is that you can only eat so many meals in a day. You can only sail so many yachts at a time. You can only live in so many homes on any given rising and setting of the sun. (Incidentally, I'm woefully unqualified to think this thought as I've never sailed even one yacht and have only briefly owned two homes simultaneously.)

I believe this thought first sprang up in high school, when I was a Don at Acalanes. If you're wondering if there's really a high school that is so pretentious, its mascot is a Spanish Conquistador called a Don, I'm sorely disappointed to say, it's not only true, but I was one of them. Of all the reasons I'm happy I quit smoking; this particular fact can't be high on the list.

The idea that our ability to enjoy the trappings of avarice and envy is limited by time and space is an insightful one, but my effort at it mentioned just above was novice at best.

Because while it's true, it's also wanting and incomplete.

What would have been much more useful to me at the time is to realize that when we think about ourselves enjoying something or achieving something, we so often take it for granted that we're doing it as a "who" and not a "what".

We project ourselves enjoying some distant future or reliving the past in some superlative fashion to the one we remember, and we forget that woven into the story is this character we imagine ourselves to be.

In point of fact, we are not the character we imagine ourselves to be, or the character anyone else imagines us to be. We can't be. Because fundamental to each of those characters is the illusion that a living, breathing being can be wrapped inside of a name and captured in an image, the same way you might capture an image on a Polaroid.

But, try as we might, try as we do, in fact, incessantly, with the most elaborate schemes like social media, celebrity news and even using manners when we've been in line at the DMV for over an hour... we cannot seem to wrap this system of ever undulating wiggles we call a universe into words, or especially names, however artfully the words (or names) are conceived.

If that's too abstract, I'll ask your forgiveness and make it more plain. (Can you believe Chrome just tried to correct "more plain" to "plainer"? I'll "make it plainer"? How awkward... artificial intelligence revolution my ass).

Here's the plain version of what the hell I'm saying: Our experience of life is not the same as the story we tell ourselves about life, or who we are in it.

And the reason this is the key to wealth is not unlike a verse from the Bible. I don't mean to wax religious so often in these articles, I promise I'm just as faithless and disenchanted as the next hopeless sinner. Call it an old habit, I suppose. Or call it literary genius, as I'm not the only one who quotes this book that echoes through the ages.

In any case, the good book reports that Jesus once said "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal."

To me, this is not unlike saying that the quality of your attention, where you put your attention, is the key to true wealth.

Really, it's the only meaningful wealth there is because it's all you can experience.

I can't, no matter how hard I try, experience your point of view as you consider me.

But so many of our efforts are aimed in this direction, because so often we are literally drying our skin out with tension, as we strain, strive, toil even, to please people we don't even like and gossip about as soon as we're out of earshot!

Or at the very least judge, when we see they've breached some clause of the social contract we couldn't imagine being caught dead breaching ourselves.

I mean, really, what does it matter what I accomplish, if I'm aiming to be proud of myself, when that pride is only experienced as the admiration of others? I can't feel your admiration of me, can I? I can feel my own reaction to it. I can feel my own admiration of you. But that's just the thing, as I actually experience my own being... all other points of view are a fiction, at best.

Now we don't want to give up our pride so easily, so I'll use a more accessible example.

How much pain do you experience when someone else stubs their toe?

The most humbling example of glowing empathy will have to agree, not half as much as the poor bastard who stubbed it.

Well, you can't experience someone else's thoughts about you anymore than you can experience their stubbed toe.

And it's in precisely that realm of illusion that Jesus warned us not to gather treasure, because there it can always be stolen or lost, because it's insubstantial.

The one place your treasure is secure, and secure eternally, the one place nothing can be stolen from you is in your actual experience here and now.

This is where you are, and what you are is what you perceive now.

Now is all we have. Forever.

And so real wealth comes not by gathering duckets, but by learning to pay quality attention to what is happening. To the degree you are present in this moment, how much can you notice in the visual field? What is the most subtle sound you can register? Smell? Feel? Think?

This is wealth.

If this sounds impoverished next to the mind's habitual lusting for things, remember that is in the poor in spirit who inherit the Earth.

Or said another way, less cleverly perhaps, if you shared a great moment today with someone you love, your lover, your spouse, a good friend, or your child or children, how much would you actually experience when it happened?

How often are we robbed of those precious moments or memories by the worries of life, thinking about something we have to do later, or some rumination from the past?

How much of your attention can you free from the worries of life so that you can be here and now with them?

Because if you were to be granted all the money you could spend in a lifetime, if you hadn't cultivated the skill of paying attention, it would be wasted on you. Perhaps even worse, it could even be destructive in your hands, because so long as your mind is plagued with the cravings and aversions that distract you, that suck your attention away from the here and now...

You know the thoughts...

I can't believe she said that... How dare he... Oh my god, I hope they didn't see me do that... What is she wearing?!.. I can't stand when he does that... What if she hates me?... God I'm so embarrassed I want to die... Am I going to be able to take care of that in time... Will I miss the deadline?

As long as we are pushed around by our likes and dislikes, our imaginings of what should be or shouldn't be, our judgements, anxieties and our crushing ambitions...

There is no wealth.

I mean, when you bite into a peach, and you taste that sweet, sweet nectar, how much of your attention is absorbed into the experience?

Visual attention? How often are we on our computers or watching TV while we eat, completely if not at least halfway distracted?

Mental attention? How many consecutive seconds do you imagine the citizen, or perhaps better said than citizen, survivor of technology, can reliably place on the experience of eating before distracted by some internal trigger to put out some fire of the mind?

I would wager the average adult would find it a challenge, perhaps even a harrowing task if each bite across a meal required this level of focus: to chew one bite of food 20-30 times before swallowing.

I dare you!

See if you can do it.

I'm no better.

While I admit with sanguine self-satisfaction, I've practiced for years the careful of eating mindfully, I'm no less distracted for it, as my phone and devices have crept in even to this ancient and sacred art and made a mockery of it.

Still, I'm on a much better track than I used to be.

And at the end of the day, if I've learned one thing through the ups and downs my wife and I have endured the past eight years as we attempted to get our shit together (we're doing alright, I have to say).

It's that our capacity for happiness is exactly our capacity to appreciate what is right here, and right now.

That's all for today.