I remember with shame the day when I was a teenager and I was admiring on some magazine with some sort of awe the personal Boeing 757 of one such Donald Trump. His wife sitting almost naked in the cockpit seemed to me distasteful though.
Then in 2016, I made a quick trip to New Zealand with my wife to explore the possibility of moving there. Real estate is fairly expensive and they don’t pay nurses as well as in the US. When they tell you they pay you 60k dollars a year, they mean NZ dollars, not US dollars.

My point is that many of us at least secretly love that lifestyle. Many of us harbor the same insecurities a man like President Trump harbors. I mean, if you give me the choice I fly commercial with a well trained pilot rather than… who is overseeing the training of his pilots?

My point is that most people driving a luxury car want to be a Trump, Bezos or Musk. And we don’t know why.

Recently while talking with my wife I got to the realization that to say “I want to be rich” is the same as not saying anything at all. I may as well say “I want to be poor.” It makes no difference.
I believe this is the case because if I say “I want to be rich,” I don’t even know what I want. Now, if I say “I want a new bicycle to tour New Zealand for 3-4 weeks and I don’t like to camp (at least not every night)” then I can come up with I need about 4K to do this. Now I know what I want.

I don’t want to frame this into an “ask the Universe and the Universe will provide.” But knowing what I want makes me be able to plan for that goal.
In the other way, if I say I want to be rich is almost an emotional statement, as if I say I want to be happy or feel in love. But even worse, for most of us it transforms into “I want to be richer than my neighbors, because I have such a fragile self esteem.”

I’m not sure exactly where I’m heading with this. To the importance of knowing ourselves to end this madness? To owning what we want? What we really want? I mean, most of the world will nod with approval if we say we bought a new car. But that we drop a couple of grands on a bicycle? We better be ready to own that.