When I was a very little girl in kindergarten, my school organised an interesting event. We had many performances to do and hand-made all the decorations for the event. All the kids at the school were very excited! We had days of rehearsal, but what excited me the most was the costumes we were going to wear. The reverend sisters who managed the school cast me to act in a musical play for two other kids. I don’t even know how I still remember the details of this event that happened many decades ago.
My role was that of a rich young lady, and I was to wear the most beautiful dress! Another role was that of a farmer, my love interest and the final role was another girl whose dress was to be old and tattered because she was poor. I remember how excited I was about my dress. When I got home, I told my mother I wanted to pick the dress out myself. I can’t be 100% certain, but my memory tells me that I wore a green and white dress, and it was my favourite dress! Surely you can imagine it had lace and beads all over it.
On the day of the event, I couldn’t wait to go on stage for everyone to see how beautiful I looked. I may be more introverted now, but when I was a little girl, I wasn’t the slightest bit shy. The musical play started, and we were queued to sing,
Me: Farmer, farmer, will you marry me?
Boy: Oh yes, I will marry you tomorrow. But how can I marry such a beautiful girl when I have no clothes to wear?
Me: I will run, run, run to the shop, shop, shop to buy some clothes for you.
The serenade went on with the farmer asking for shoes, a house, and lots more. As a smitten rich lady, I bought everything he requested. When his list was exhausted, he had an instant change of heart and decided to marry the poor girl. What a scandalous twist!
I don’t know exactly why I felt down when he took the hand of the poor girl and walked away with her. We had rehearsed it many times in school. Maybe it was the cheers from the crowd, the feeling of rejection, or perhaps the fact that my dress on the day was much more beautiful than the poor girl’s dress. I don’t really know, but on that day at such a tender age, I knew money didn’t buy love, at least not true love.
It’s good to work hard for money to live comfortably, but we get it wrong when we feel like love and happiness will just slide into place after we clock a particular amount of money. In my experience as a fully grown adult, I know it’s important to make sure we don’t think wealth will solve all our problems and give us total fulfilment. In a very busy world, it’s so easy to forget what truly matters. For everyone, this will be different, but I hope the paper chase doesn’t make you lose sight of the priceless things in life. So if you are reading this, take a minute to love a little.