I had a very interesting conversation with someone the other day. We were discussing perceptions and preconceptions. As a society, we measure an individual's success in terms of financial success, not personal accomplishments. We expect that someone who is richly talented and ambitious should also be wealthy. After all, we think, if a person is truly all that intelligent, then they should either have figured out how to make money, or financial rewards for their accomplishments should have found their way to them. That may not be worded the best possible way, but you get my drift.

The conversation had me reexamining my own attitudes towards money. My grandparents were very well off. Fifty years ago, German inheritance laws did not allow personal wealth and property to be inherited by family members not living in Germany. For all I know, it is still like that today. (I think those laws had something to do with the post war reconstruction period.) My mother died before my grandmother, and her only other child, my uncle, inherited the family money. His only son, my cousin, Sigfried, inherited from him and presently owns the Nurnberg fuss ball team. My uncle and his wife- and probably my cousin too- were all hateful and arrogant people who saw my mother's offspring as somethings almost sub-human. They completely shunned us.

Next, came my ex-husband. He inherited his father's money, and even after squandering it all on cars, trips abroad and alcohol, he still died a very wealthy man. He never had a real job in his life, which is why I could never get him to pay child support. (But, he always had the best attorneys when we went to court for non-payment of child support.)These are just two examples, and there are many, many more.

Somewhere along the line, I came to equate wealth with arrogance, abuse of power, and everything that is evil. As I grew older, it never occurred to me to stop and reexamine why I felt that way or were and how those attitudes originated. Acquiring wealth was never a personal goal of mine. On the contrary; my ex-husband used to say that if he did not know any better, he would swear that I took a vow of poverty.

How silly of me! Wealth is not evil, nor are the wealthy all arrogant and abusive. Why did it take me darn near 60 years to figure that out? That almost deserves a California blonde response: duh!