True Wealth

If someone has an addiction, it can completely overtake his life. It becomes the only thing that matters. He loses control and may even be willing to sacrifice his family, his career, and everything else that is truly important. The reason is because addiction blinds a person to the damage it is causing. The only way to help him is to wake him up and make him see the destruction taking place before his eyes. Sometimes, people become so consumed with earning a livelihood that it resembles an addiction. Money becomes the only thing that matters, and everything else is pushed aside in its pursuit. Every so often, a person needs a reality check to remind himself that there is far more to life than earning money. When the time comes for a person to leave this world, all of his money becomes meaningless. The countless hours spent accumulating it may become a source of regret if they came at the expense of things that have eternal value. A man told me that he became so involved in his business that he completely abandoned learning Torah for fifteen years. Then one day, someone awakened him to what was happening and encouraged him to return to learning. Today, he says he finally feels alive. His life has meaning again, and he is grateful that someone helped him break free from his obsession with making money. There are people, unfortunately, who spend years involved in bitter disputes over money. In this world, those arguments may seem significant. But in the Next World, it will become clear how insignificant they really were. Imagine the son of a king who got into a fight with a friend when they were five years old. In a moment of anger, the friend broke one of his toys. The prince shouted, "When I become king, I am going to punish you for this!" Forty years later, the prince has become king. The old friend appears at the palace and begs forgiveness for breaking the toy. The king would look at him as if he were crazy. Why would he care about a broken toy now? It is utterly insignificant compared to his current position. When a person reaches the Next World, that is how he will view someone who hurt him financially in this world. It will seem like a broken toy. Yet if he can rise above the hurt now and make peace, he will gain eternal pleasure and reward that have genuine value forever. Someone who spends his entire life building a fortune while neglecting Torah and mitzvot is like a man who reaches old age without ever marrying because he was too busy accumulating wealth. People would look at him and wonder what all that money was worth if he never built the life Hashem wanted him to have. So too, if a person leaves this world without Torah and mitzvot, all of his wealth is worthless. We have heard stories of great and successful people who cried on their deathbeds because they realized they could have done more with their lives. At that moment, they understood that the only things that truly mattered were their Torah and mitzvot. Life in this world is incredibly short compared to eternity. If a person does not stop from time to time and think about that reality, he can easily become caught up in pursuits that have little lasting value while neglecting what matters most. Let us always remain focused on what true wealth is. Those who spend their lives learning Torah and performing mitzvot are building fortunes that will last forever. The more we acquire, the greater our eternal reward will be.