Everyone Wants to Be Rich but almost nobody knows how to receive life

And somewhere along this wonderful journey called life...

the day finally came.

I was ready to leave my golden cage.

One of the most beautiful...

and one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

Right in the middle of a world that had suddenly come to a standstill.

—

People thought I was crazy.

Who leaves behind a beautiful life, financial security, and everything they have built over fourteen years...

without another plan waiting on the other side?

Apparently...

I did.

—

My heart had already chosen an island.

Not because I had found a job there.

Not because someone was waiting for me.

Not because I had carefully planned my future.

I had only spent one week there on holiday.

But the moment I came home...

I knew.

One day,

I would return.

Not for another holiday.

For life.

—

Leaving didn't happen all at once.

It happened one goodbye at a time.

—

I started with my wardrobe.

Oh...

what beautiful dresses had been quietly waiting there.

Almost new.

Every single one had been worn with love.

Taken care of with love.

Instead of hiding them away forever,

I decided to sell them for symbolic prices.

Every parcel left my home with a little piece of chocolate...

a perfume sample...

and a handwritten note.

"This dress is happy to have finally found a new owner.

I hope it gets to go out much more often than it did with me.

Enjoy it."

—

The messages I received afterwards made me smile every single time.

The women were so happy.

And somehow...

their happiness became mine.

There is something deeply beautiful about watching something you once loved...

continue its journey with someone else.

—

Day by day,

my wardrobe became emptier.

Strangely...

my heart felt lighter too.

—

Then it was time for my apartment.

That was different.

Much harder.

Every corner carried a little piece of me.

Every chair.

Every cushion.

Every candle.

Every tiny decoration.

Everything had been chosen with love.

It wasn't simply an apartment.

It had become my oasis.

The place where I returned to myself after long days in the outside world.

I couldn't imagine taking it apart.

It belonged together.

Exactly as it was.

—

So I photographed it exactly like that.

And posted one simple message.

"This oasis is looking for someone who will love it at least as much as it will love them."

—

Technically, it wasn't even mine.

It was a rented apartment.

Buying property in that country simply wasn't realistic for most people.

The real challenge was something else.

If I couldn't find someone to take over the lease, I would have had to pay between three and six months' rent just to leave.

Everyone told me it would take at least a year.

The paperwork.

The bureaucracy.

Finding someone willing to move in.

The timing couldn't have been worse.

—

That evening I published the advertisement.

I was already lying in bed.

Three minutes later...

my phone rang.

"I'll take it."

Immediately.

—

I remember staring at my phone.

Unable to understand what had just happened.

Nothing unfolded the way everyone had warned me it would.

Instead...

life quietly began doing what life sometimes does.

—

In my bathroom hung a photograph of that island.

Every morning I looked at it.

Every evening too.

Sometimes in between.

Every single time I smiled and whispered,

"I'm coming soon.

Wait for me."

—

Yes...

I know.

It sounds a little crazy.

Leaving a beautiful life in one of the wealthiest countries in the world...

right when the world itself had come to a standstill...

to move somewhere completely unknown.

No job.

No plan.

No certainty.

Only a quiet yes inside my heart.

But then again...

I have never claimed to be normal.

I have simply always done what my heart asked me to do.

—

Three months later,

my fourteen-year life in one of the most beautiful countries in the world had quietly been packed into two suitcases.

Everything was done.

Only three weeks remained until my departure.

—

The man who took over my apartment didn't just take over the lease.

He bought everything.

Every chair.

Every lamp.

Every painting.

Every tiny decoration.

Even though he already had furniture of his own.

At the time,

I couldn't understand why.

Today...

I think I do.

Perhaps love leaves traces.

Perhaps some spaces simply remember the people who loved them.

—

During the handover,

we slowly became friends.

Then one afternoon he smiled and said,

"I'd like you to meet someone."

"The woman I work for."

So...

I said yes.

—

I had already finished almost everything before my departure.

For the first time in many years...

I had nowhere I needed to be.

No meetings.

No deadlines.

No long working days.

Only a few beautiful weeks left in one of the most beautiful countries in the world.

And an unexpected sense of freedom.

—

So when he asked if I would like to meet the woman he worked for...

I said yes without thinking twice.

By then,

curiosity had become my favourite travelling companion.

—

He told me she was in her nineties.

He also mentioned, almost casually,

that she owned several castles around the world.

One of the wealthiest women I would probably ever meet.

Her late husband's family had built their fortune through coffee plantations.

Her own family through sugar plantations.

Money had never been in short supply.

—

My future tenant worked as the caretaker of one of her castles.

Every day he looked after the gardens and the estate surrounding it.

The castle itself was enormous.

She lived there almost completely alone.

Only her little dog kept her company.

She occupied just one room.

No one entered it.

Every afternoon, however,

she came downstairs for coffee with the staff.

She hardly ate.

But there was always something sweet beside her coffee.

She loved sweets.

—

That afternoon he brought me there.

Visitors were usually not allowed.

To this day,

I don't know why he wanted us to meet.

But life has always had its own mysterious ways.

—

I remember feeling strangely excited.

It was the first time I was visiting a castle that wasn't a museum.

Someone actually lived there.

Alone.

—

We waited for her in a simple reception room.

Nothing felt extravagant.

An old wooden table.

A fireplace.

A few sofas.

Coffee slowly filling the room with its familiar warmth.

Knowing she was already in her nineties,

I imagined it might take her some time to come downstairs.

—

Then suddenly...

there she was.

—

Sometimes you meet someone,

and before they say a single word,

their presence reaches you first.

That was her.

—

Her silver hair was perfectly gathered into a bun.

Her lipstick the colour of deep rose wine.

Beautiful cheekbones.

A warm smile carrying the kind of childlike innocence you rarely see in adults.

She entered the room as if joy itself had just walked in.

—

"Hello, my dears," she said.

And somehow,

it felt as though she genuinely meant it.

—

We drank coffee together.

She thanked my future tenant for preparing it.

She thanked him for the cake.

She enjoyed every single sip.

Every single bite.

It caught my attention.

Not because coffee was special.

Not because cake was rare.

Simply because...

she received them so completely.

—

Somewhere between those quiet afternoons...

we became friends.

—

For the remaining two and a half weeks before my departure,

I visited her almost every day.

I never arrived empty-handed.

Sometimes a tiny bottle of prosecco so we could celebrate life together.

Sometimes a single rose.

Sometimes a Ferrero chocolate.

Nothing extraordinary.

—

Yet every single time,

she received those little gifts with the same childlike excitement.

As if no one had ever brought her a flower before.

As if it were the very first rose she had ever held in her hands.

I couldn't stop watching her.

Here was a woman who could have bought almost anything in the world...

yet she celebrated the smallest gestures

as though they were priceless.

—

Little by little,

she began reminding me of my grandmother.

The one I had already lost.

Perhaps that was why being with her felt so familiar.

So safe.

So beautifully simple.

—

One afternoon,

she invited me to spend the day by the pool.

Looking back,

it remains one of the most beautiful afternoons of my life.

Just the two of us.

Her little dog.

The silence.

The trees surrounding the castle.

—

I waited while she went to change.

A few minutes later,

she walked towards the pool wearing a bright red swimsuit,

a pair of vintage Dior sunglasses,

and the same deep rose lipstick she always wore.

I couldn't take my eyes off her.

Not because of what she owned.

But because of the way she inhabited her own life.

—

She stepped into the cold water laughing like a little girl.

Completely unembarrassed.

Completely alive.

She expressed every emotion so freely.

Joy.

Wonder.

Gratitude.

As though growing older had never required becoming smaller.

—

Sometimes we talked.

Sometimes we simply lay there in silence.

And somehow...

the silence always seemed to say more.

—

There was one question I wanted to ask her many times.

I never did.

"Why are you alone?"

Her husband had passed away decades earlier.

She had no children.

No close family left.

Being one of the wealthiest women in the world had made friendship complicated.

Too many people wanted something from her.

Too few simply wanted her.

So for almost thirty years,

she had lived alone.

Moving between castles.

Between countries.

Between seasons.

—

And yet...

I never experienced her as lonely.

She was alone.

All one.

Perhaps there is a difference.

—

The Dior sunglasses she wore that afternoon were over forty years old.

"They were a gift from my husband," she smiled.

Everything she owned had been cared for with extraordinary love.

Not because she couldn't afford more.

Because she never needed more.

Looking at her,

I recognised something.

Not something she possessed.

Something she embodied.

Something I had quietly known for many years...

but had never found words for.

—

Looking back...

I think she changed something inside me.

Not because she taught me something new.

But because she gave a name to something I had quietly carried within me for many years.

—

I don't think wealth is a feeling.

Perhaps...

wealth is a capacity.

The capacity to receive life.

—

Not to possess it.

Not to control it.

Simply...

to receive it.

—

Sometimes I wonder whether the opposite of wealth is really poverty.

Perhaps...

the opposite of wealth is the inability to receive.

—

Because we all know people who keep receiving more...

yet enjoy less.

The new car quickly becomes ordinary.

The bigger house becomes ordinary.

The holiday becomes ordinary.

The promotion becomes ordinary.

Eventually,

everything loses its flavour.

Not because life stopped giving.

But because nothing truly arrives anymore.

—

Perhaps that is why I have never been able to see gratitude and appreciation as the same thing.

To me,

they have always felt different.

—

Gratitude is the feeling that arises when we recognise something as a gift.

Appreciation comes even earlier.

It is the ability to notice the gift in the first place.

—

Without appreciation,

gratitude can easily become another ritual.

Another habit.

Another exercise.

—

But when appreciation quietly lives within us...

gratitude almost takes care of itself.

—

Looking at her,

I realised she had never been collecting possessions.

She had been collecting moments.

—

The Dior sunglasses she still wore after forty years.

The lipstick she carefully applied every afternoon.

The little room she had chosen inside a castle.

The coffee.

The cake.

A single rose.

A tiny bottle of prosecco.

—

She received each one

with exactly the same childlike wonder.

Not because they were extraordinary.

But because...

she was.

—

She invested most of her fortune into foundations.

Schools were built.

Hospitals were supported.

Countless lives quietly became better because wealth kept flowing through her hands.

Never stopping there.

—

Sometimes I wonder...

whether money was never her greatest wealth.

Perhaps...

her greatest wealth was her ability to receive life so completely...

that giving became the most natural thing in the world.

—

I still hope that every child who studied in one of those schools...

every patient helped by those hospitals...

received those gifts

with the same open heart

with which she once received my single rose.

—

I will never forget her.

Because somewhere inside her beautiful soul...

I recognised a part of my own.

A part that had always known...

long before I had words for it...

that appreciation might be the quiet currency of life.

—

The more we stop searching for another life...

the more this life slowly begins revealing itself.

A morning coffee.

A familiar voice.

A walk.

A flower.

A conversation.

Nothing has changed.

Except...

our ability to receive it.

—

Before I left,

she taught me one final thing.

One afternoon I brought a tiny bottle of prosecco.

I poured it into two glasses and was just about to clink them together.

She smiled.

Then gently lifted her glass without touching mine.

"You know, Rūta..."

"In castles, it was usually the servants who clinked glasses."

"The louder the better."

"They celebrated the evening."

"But those who lived in the castle..."

"They simply lifted their glass."

"A quiet gesture of appreciation for the day they had just been given."

—

Since then...

I rarely clink glasses.

Most often,

I simply lift my cup of coffee.

Quietly.

In appreciation.

For another ordinary day...

that was never ordinary at all.