溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Who Is Wealthier — the One Who Sleeps Soundly with Little, or the One Who Cannot Sleep with Much?
Which is closer to true wealth — the sweet sleep earned by labor, or the sleeplessness that riches bring?
Sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether they eat little or much, but the full stomach of the rich permits them no sleep.
This verse, contrasting the sweet sleep of labor with the sleeplessness of wealth, condenses the whole of Hebrew wisdom literature's view of riches into a single image. Stoic philosophers reached a similar conclusion, establishing the principle that the more wealth grows, the more there is to guard and to fear losing. The same insight recurs in the East — the Indian subhashita saying that "wealth is painful both in earning and in guarding," and Confucius's own words, that joy could be found even eating coarse rice and pillowing one's head on a bent arm, both point to the same place. This insight, measuring wealth by the most private scale of all — sleep — has been rediscovered again and again, across cultures.
Watching people confess that worry grows right along with their assets, this ancient insight — that sweet sleep is the truest wealth — still holds today.
The Preacher sets the nights of the laboring worker and the wealth-accumulating rich man side by side.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
The Preacher sets the nights of the laboring worker and the wealth-accumulating rich man side by side. The laborer sleeps sweetly regardless of how much or little they have, while the rich man, with so much to guard, cannot sleep at all. I relearn, from this contrast, the true definition of wealth: not the size of one's possessions, but whether that possession comes to rule even one's nights. I too look honestly, tonight, at what keeps me from sleeping.
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