Fables of Fortune

by Richard Watts

  Periodically Nathan would invite a beautiful woman from the crowd to sit down and play a hand for him at his expense. If she won, he would hand her a $1,000 chip and say, “Honey, treat yourself to a nice dress or a piece of jewelry … on me.” These women were much younger than Marilyn and hung on his every word. And occasionally the same women would repeatedly keep Nathan company in Las Vegas. Nathan became well known to the casinos in Vegas as he might typically lose in excess of $500,000 in one weekend.

  Marilyn, on the other hand, was shopping for clothing—specifically, shoes. Her walk-in closet stored five hundred pairs of shoes. Each rack was filled, and new shoes took the place of older ones. In Marilyn’s ten-car garage, she had converted a wall into a shoe rack that held another six hundred pairs. They too were filled. Her primary shopping companions refused to cruise the local malls with her, as Marilyn would head to the shoe department and spend hours trying on and then stacking her purchases. She had only one rule: her minimum price per pair was $500, with a target range of around $1,500 per pair.

  Marilyn knew about Nathan’s gambling propensities. It was a convenient excuse to permit her excesses in purchasing shoes. Marilyn did not know about the women who had become regulars at Nathan’s blackjack table. Nathan did not know Marilyn was sleeping with her thirty-year-old male trainer.

  The super-rich can be experts in the art of presenting perfection. They work hard to display a flawless public persona and a carefree, opulent lifestyle. Husband and wife smile and recite a long list of show-stopping experiences and luxurious purchases. It may seem to be a rosy picture, but often what you see is not what you get. Nine times out of ten, what you see is what the rich want you to see.

  The have nots believe the haves don’t have problems because of their wealth. Equally naïve is the super-rich person who thinks his money buys immunity from the common troubles of the world. A glossy façade hides a multitude of imperfections. Like mold growing in the dark, the problems multiply out of sight.

  As normal conflicts and troubles arise, the rich can choose to conceal the truth about themselves from the outside world, and a secret life emerges outside the specter of public criticism. The public sees a picture-perfect family, scads of friends, and a privileged lifestyle. But like a photograph, this life is two-dimensional. Wealth occupies space. Family life for many of the super-rich is not apportioned as much space as the typical family of have nots. The more numerous the distractions in one’s life are, the greater the need to shift and re-shift priorities among them. Most people do not care about your average family. But the family of the super-rich is sometimes considered a showpiece to the community. They want you to know the family flies in a private jet on holiday to Aspen. They prefer you not know the nanny didn’t succeed in rearing the children to become responsible adults. Wealthy families often fail to recognize that flaws and imperfections give depth and richness to life.

  How quick we are to buy into the hype. We are all guilty of swallowing the bait, foisting ourselves onto the hook at the end of a line that leads to someone who is merely fishing their way through life, creating drama to satisfy their ego, and using the general population as an endless supply of worms. The next time you wish for a five-star life, visualize the food chain. And remember, the chances of being consumed increase the higher you climb.

  The super-rich feel pressure. But the pressure to confirm and re-confirm money does in fact cure all ills. We all grow up believing winning the lottery is the blue ribbon event of life’s experiences. How often have you felt sorry for a rich person? Even if they experience the normal setbacks of day-to-day life, we are reticent to cut them slack. We become unforgiving because the rich should be able to fix any problem with money. I recently attended a dinner where a guest remarked that a super-rich family had a seventeen-year-old daughter who was struggling with a severe bipolar disorder and was near suicidal. Another guest smiled, “That little bitch drives a new Porsche Cayenne and is heading off to an all-expenses-paid private college. What has she got to be depressed about?” That pressure to maintain appearances sometimes creates behavior that can be obsessive. Obsessions are things nobody likes to admit. The obsessions of the super-rich are just more extravagant.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  SPIRITUALLY CHALLENGED

  Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of its filling a vacuum, it makes one. If it satisfies one want, it doubles and trebles that want another way. That was a true proverb of the wise man, rely upon it: “Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure, and trouble therewith.”

  —Benjamin Franklin

  It has been suggested there is an inverse relationship between spirituality and the increase of one’s wealth. Two factors contribute: the focusing of more time on preserving and increasing wealth, and the distraction of materialism and self-promotion.

  Granted, one who becomes wealthy as an atheist will likely stay an atheist. The challenge comes for the spiritual man who becomes super-wealthy. Both might find struggle in not succumbing to the personal decay of probity. The atheist may land in an abyss of dissatisfaction and lack of fulfillment, while the spiritual man might more likely experience a sense of worthlessness and disappointment.

  Both the old and new testaments of the Bible reflect on it.

  Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless. As goods increase, so do the wants of those who consume them. And what benefit are they to the owner except to feast his eyes upon them? The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep.

  —Ecclesiastes 5:10–12

  Timothy repeats a similar theme:

  People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

  —1 Timothy 5:9–10

  TIME SPENDS ONLY ONCE

  Your life can be sliced like a pie into three pieces: your personal journey, your family and friends, and your spirituality—said another way: yourself, those around you, and your belief in a greater purpose or being. You have only one life, and the pieces, however proportioned, can be no greater than the whole pie. Balancing between them is very important—and, often, not very easy. Wealth tends to expand the opportunity for exploring one’s personal journey. But as we make choices to take on new endeavors, businesses, sports, hobbies, etc., the other pieces of the pie must shrink.

  There is only so much time. And wealth takes time. In Ray Kroc’s book Grinding It Out, he writes, “I believe in God, family, and McDonald’s—and in the office, that order is reversed.” The choice to dedicate more time to building wealth reduces the time one can spend on family and spirituality. Many have argued super-wealth releases more time because people who have it do not have to worry about providing a roof over their own head. That’s easy to say, but it’s not true. Wealth is not just about preservation, but distraction. It requires you to consider how to preserve what you have, make more, and choose from the myriad of things you can do with it and how you are going to spend it. It consumes time.

  Money has a way of perpetuating its own project. Can you imagine if you stepped up to a slot machine and put in $1 and won $100? Your first thought would be, “That was so easy. Think what I can buy. An electronic accessory I don’t really need but would love to have? Take my wife to dinner? Pay off the electric bill? Just carry around five extra $20s in my pocket for a while?” But if you could reasonably expect to win again, the first thing you would do is … put in another dollar. And when you won again, you would consider the things you could now buy with $200. The list could expand: “Maybe a new blazer, a purse, a pair of shoes?” If you stayed at the slot mac
hine all day, and every time you pulled you returned more money, you would continue day after day cashing in on your good fortune. Each time the pile increased you would delight in the mental survey of the next level of consumables you could now buy. Eventually, you would get everything you could possibly imagine and want. Then what? When you can’t give it away because you are invested in the process of growing it, and you have your private jet, and the largest private ship in the marina, you either get a bigger jet or bigger boat, or you just focus your energy on growing the number of zeros.

  While spending a holiday on the beach in Maui, Hawaii, with my family, I noticed a man sitting in his bathing suit outside of his $6 million oceanfront condominium. His wife and preteen children were frolicking in the ocean in front of him. On his legs he held a laptop, and a second, smaller computer sat on the ground in front of him. Two cell phone holsters were mounted on his beach chair, with two spare batteries Velcroed to the chair’s arm. This positioned him for beachside command of his own multiple business enterprises. He used to be the president of a well-known Internet provider, which he had retired from in his early fifties. In six hours I never saw him leave the chair or look up at his kids. He was engrossed in phone calls, typing reports, texting, and e-mailing. He repeated this ritual seven days a week. Building and maintaining wealth is expensive. But the cost is paid in minutes, not dollars.

  The devil has an easy job with the super-wealthy. He doesn’t need to corrupt them. He just needs to convince them to spend more time away from their spiritual being. Self-corruption is our human specialty. Just let a man or woman take the controls long enough and they tend to detour toward materialism and self-indulgence.

  “MIRROR, MIRROR …”

  Money often anesthetizes self-inspection and self-actualization. Spirituality is about selflessness: deflecting personal credit and self-reward in the pursuit of the betterment of the lives of others. It’s about confidently surrendering control and allowing others to participate and contribute to the decision process: being self-sacrificial and nonjudgmental. Sound like your typical billionaire?

  The challenge money poses to the spirituality of the super-wealthy is in defining goals. Life goals are usually defined in terms of the value we assign to personal ambitions. These goals are often lofty, maybe even unattainable, but they are based on a desire to be excellent at something or to arrive at a place in our journey that we rate highly. Money tends to define a goal in terms of itself—namely, to accumulate more of it. If you have $10 million, then you set your goals on $50 million. If you have $100 million, you target $500 million. Instead of reflecting on others, the super-rich become captivated by the reflection of their own story. It is hard to be spiritually fed with the gratitude, love, and respect of others when you are hyper-involved in your own journey.

  In ancient Greece there was a feared superstition that it was fatal for one to look at his or her own reflection. In Greek mythology, Narcissus, son of Cephissus, angered the gods by rejecting the advances of the nymph Echo and was condemned by Aphrodite to fall in love with his own image. He sat next to a pool of water, admiring his reflection, until he failed to even nourish himself and eventually died. In psychiatry and especially psychoanalysis, the term narcissism denotes an excessive degree of self-esteem or self-involvement, a condition that is usually a form of emotional immaturity.

  People of super-wealth are sometimes unknowingly absorbed in admiring the biography of their own life, which is being written and lived by them contemporaneously. Many of them practice sharing aloud among friends and in public on their ongoing favorite topic: their autobiography. When people are consumed with their own story, there is less room for a greater purpose or a supreme being. Super-wealth is not about being bad, it’s about being distracted. Like a Ferrari sitting on the showroom floor, it’s all imagination and potential power. It’s the test drive that leads to ownership, excessive speed, and in the future perhaps a wreck.

  We are all a little guilty of this, but for most of us, reality rears its head and reminds us our lives can be extraordinary only for a while. The realization soon arrives that extraordinary lasts only until the alarm rings on Monday morning and the kids need to be fed, the house cleaned, the laundry done, an eight-hour day worked, and meals made. The gem of life for ordinary people is that extraordinary is just around the corner. If only for a fleeting moment, we have hope it will return.

  The process of worldly saturation is slow and many times unnoticeable for the haves. Those few of the super-wealthy who are predisposed to spirituality may successfully avoid becoming victims of self-indulgence and the erosion of their own self-worth. Few will deny the journey is unavoidably a struggle and, in the end, less rewarding than they had anticipated. People who applaud the charity of the super-rich in public can become bearers of jealousy and criticism in the shadows. The super-rich can become callous and numb to those around them because managing one’s own story tends to isolate them from normal interactions that bear the naked truth about who they are.

  One might argue the charity of the super-rich is evidence of their spirituality. Indeed many of the wealthy who build hospitals and give scholarships to deserving students have good intentions and big hearts. Many are full of charity. But many of the super-wealthy just write a check. It is rarely significant to their relative wealth, yet is met with adulation of the masses. The donors believe they are spiritual and charitable because the masses hold them in high esteem for the gift. But what is in the minds of the super-rich givers? They secretly recognize what the audience really wants is their checkbook. Giving away money becomes boring and unsatisfying. The greatest pleasure for the rich in giving away large sums of money is watching the reaction of the have nots, who are completely delighted and overwhelmed at the thought of so much money being gifted away—a year’s salary for most people, in exchange for a puppy or a chocolate bar at a live auction.

  On one television reality show rich people disguise themselves and secretly enter the world of the “little people” who are responsible for most of the hard work that makes our national charity efforts work. Not the CEO of the Red Cross, who gives speeches at fund-raisers (although this function is incredibly important), but the retired spiritual Mother Teresas who joyfully give their days, weeks, and months doing their best to help others with no expectation of return for themselves. At the end of the show the millionaire sheds his alias and hands a whopping donation (usually between $10,000 and $50,000) to the neighborhood charity. The subliminal message is interesting. It’s like putting a coin in the box of the organ grinder and watching the monkey dance. The charity workers who receive the gift start jumping up and down while crying tears of joy! Clapping and singing erupt! The receipt of a gift of $20,000 directly translates in their minds to five-thousand meals for the poor. Their spirits are full. On the other hand, the $20,000 is no big deal for the millionaire. The millionaires usually shed a few tears, because they actually experienced renewal during their disguised adventure passing out bowls and paper plates to the poor in the soup line. But more telling is the awe they feel as they experience the true sincerity they see before them in the giving, selfless, spirited people who are committed to helping others. Afterward the millionaires go back to the hotel, gather their Rolex watches and four-carat diamond rings, jump in the limousine, and roll out of town.

  One would think, for the super-rich, the ability to give large sums of money to charity would be like imbibing the ultimate spiritual cocktail. How good it must make them feel to do so much good. However, this is not what typically happens from the perspective of the super-rich. Sure, the rich can and do assist tremendously in the building and funding of many important social causes. But does it give them a high? Not for long. In fact, you might feel the same high when you give a $5 tip to a librarian for helping you find a book. Only she will never forget you. “Why,” you ask, “doesn’t it thrill the rich to give away large sums of money?” Primarily because many times they are giving it to an institution and
they don’t get to directly feel the benefit they are conferring. Unquestionably, they understand the importance, and they see the results somewhere down the road, but the gratification is passing.

  And then there is the other issue: the professional fund-raiser. There is an entire industry of very talented salesmen who are experts at hunting down and harvesting the wealthy population for their cause. Few large fund-raising efforts are executed without such a firm in place, and once they paint their high-net-worth targets, they are like cruise missiles. They are professional relationship managers and perform like professional hunters on an African safari. It is all business, and the super-rich know it well.

  One of my clients calls me each year. His family created a foundation with approximately $100 million being held in the foundation—a noble cause. The foundation was initially created because giving money to your own foundation allows a tax deduction on your income. The board of directors is the family. Once the money is deposited in a nonprofit corporation, government regulations require the foundation give away five percent per year. The government wants you to donate money you already agreed to give away. In fact, you could give all of the money at one time to one charity. But the family didn’t get rich by giving money away. Handing someone a check for nothing in return is hard for them. It made sense as a tax deduction, but the charitable intent ended there. The only money that leaves their foundation is the federally required 5 percent. Every year I get a call from the dad because it is both unexciting and annoying to give away $5 million a year, and they ask for suggestions on whom to give it to. Why not make the choice themselves? They are fearful if they choose a charity, the charity will receive the gift this year … and return with its fund-raising professional next year to ask for more.