Judging by Finances

There is a curious modern pastime which I have observed with the same baffled fascination usually reserved for ants carrying crumbs three times their size. It is the habit of judging a fellow human being not by his ideas, his manners, and not even his ability to make a decent breakfast (or even the ubiquitous maggi), but by the assumed weight of his purse.

To me, judging itself is a somewhat unseemly sport. Judging by finances, however, is judging with both eyes closed. It’s a terrible thing to do, and is quite irritating.

People arrive here with good intentions, pleasant smiles, and an enthusiasm for conversation. However for some, the conversation often begins gently enough and then, like a goat straying into the vegetable patch, wanders straight into matters of money. The first inquiry is almost always about land. How much do you own, they ask, and then, without pausing for breath, how much does land cost here!

This is awkward, because I am not a property dealer, nor do I harbour any secret ambitions of becoming one. I have no idea what land costs in the region. As for how much I own, I have enough to manage in the way I wish, and not quite enough to fulfil all my daydreams. I would have liked, in moments of grand fantasy, a vast stretch with its own forest and resident wildlife, a place so large that one would require a vehicle to reach the far end, a pond in the centre reflecting clouds and filled with fish, a mansion of mild absurdity and a huge library, and enough generational wealth to keep it all standing upright.

What I do have is rather more modest and infinitely more real. I have more land than is required for a lawn. I have a small fruit orchard. I can manage it largely on my own, with little outside help. I can hear my neighbours talking everywhere so it is not so large, but I can be hidden away from view and read a good book in the open with no one bothering me. Trees grow, birds arrive uninvited, butterflies flutter by. This, to my mind, is wealth of a very agreeable sort.

When the land fails to yield their desired financial clues, the questioning moves on. How much would a house like this cost to build? Once again, I am forced to disappoint. I am not a builder either. What it cost long ago is written somewhere in the ledgers of my accountant, who is welcome to remember it on my behalf. I do not. What I remember instead is how many years a particular tree took to settle in, how much effort went into shaping a corner of the orchard, and which stones were stubborn and which yielded easily. Where all the green-house leaked and how I sealed it, or how I managed to source the various trees.

The next calculation concerns guests. How many do you host in a year? From this, elaborate conclusions are drawn, rather like predicting the monsoon by observing a single cloud.

Some go further still and inspect the vehicle I drive, the clothes I wear, or the phone I use, as though my soul might be stamped discreetly on the back of a brand label.

I find this irritating, and also faintly tragic. It suggests a world where curiosity has shrunk and imagination has been replaced by arithmetic. Materialism is at its peak now.

If one must judge, there are far better tools available. Judge me by my opinions on the world. Judge me by what I think of the climate crisis. Judge me by the books I read, the conversations I enjoy, and the silences I respect. Judge me by whether I leave a place slightly better than I found it.

Money, after all, is one of the unreliable companions. It cannot be carried beyond a certain point, and it leaves no footprints worth following. What remains are memories, the good and the bad, the care we took, the harm we avoided, and the person we were when no one was counting.

I hope I am fondly remembered for the kind of person I was.

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