Not Rich Enough

“No man is rich enough to buy back his past.”

Oscar Wilde

We live in a material world. A world where wealth is sought and celebrated. A world where things are bought and brandished. A world where heads and homes grow cluttered with stuff. A world where we whisper in unison one ominous word: More.

But there are things we can't buy. Things other than houses and handbags, gadgets and glories, opportunities and oysters. One thing we can't buy: The past.

The past.

What happened to us. Where we've been. Pages flipped. A story lived.

It's out of our hands, but it's in our heads. Who we once were, the decisions we once made, the people we've known and loved and hurt and lost, the mistakes we made, those we should have made, the years we've had.

The past is its own pile of riches, a complicated treasure we can sift through and learn from. Gems glistening and ephemeral, slipping through our fingers like sand. Here. Always here. Hovering and humming. But also gone.

There are things we can't buy back. Priceless things. Like our pasts.

Like the innocence of little girls who make porcelain piggy and hippo banks. Little girls who know many words, so many, but not words like rich and past and enough.

They drop coins in. Clink. Clink. Smile. Collecting pennies. Collecting wisdom. Collecting life.

Collecting pasts.

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How often do you think of your past? Do you ever wish you could go back and do things differently? Do you think our culture is overly obsessed with material wealth, with financial richness? What would you pay to regain a pinch of childhood innocence?