“Avarice is always poor.� —Samuel Johnson (English Poet, 1709-1784)

Being wealthy is nothing to be ashamed of. Acting like you’re not is.

Illusiopauperosis (imaginary poverty sickness) is a disorder that has reached pandemic proportions in the West (ok, I just invented that name but it’s still true). As a person of great personal wealth and therefore, a known carrier, I have often pondered the frequent exhibition and transmission of this disorder through my own life. Though I’m fairly certain I was born with the underlying condition (a gaping metaphysical vacuum) it was both my culture and my parents that encouraged its complete manifestation.

I lived most of my childhood in a double-wide mobile home as the son of a construction working father and a stay-at-home mother. We were a basic blue-collar household. When I was very young I remember riding with my father through an upscale neighborhood in Pasadena, staring at the big houses and asking, “who lives in there?� “Rich people, Dean,� he answered. “Are we rich, Dad?� “No, we are just middle-class.� And so it began—my acceptance of the delusion that we were not rich—and in the name of that delusion I would hold back the distribution of my wealth for years to come.

My parents said that financially we were just barely making it. My culture said that I didn’t have enough things and should try to buy some more. Hold on tight to what you’ve got and try to get more if you can—that’s middle-class America and I was middle-class through and through.

I was middle-class, but now I’m not. “Come into some money, Dean?� No, I’ve come into some perspective and it’s helping to cure my illusiopauperosis.

more to come …