Generosity

In another lifetime, I worked for the post office. I was trained in the office of an affluent area (let's call it M), then went to run an office in a rural area (let's call it S.) You can tell a lot about someone by the mail they receive.

When I got to S, the first thing I noticed is that no one there got the Wall Street Journal. Instead, they got magazines about backyard poultry or taxidermy. No one at M ever got chickens in the mail. M residents had wealth, and lots of it. They had large PO boxes that received statements from banks & brokerages. (Some had small boxes because they were too cheap to get big ones, so their mail was crammed in there.) The people of S, many of them, are unbanked. They'd get their SS check, cash it somewhere, bring the cash to me to buy money orders to mail their bills. Some of them needed my help filling them out. Some needed help addressing the envelope. I'm happy to help.

Come April 15, the M's were in line with huge envelopes sent certified. The S's put one stamp on their normal envelope (one page return) & dropped it in the slot.

For all their wealth, no one at M ever gave me eggs from their chickens, flowers or sugar cane or tomatoes from their garden, a cd of their favorite Christmas music, or even a thank you note.

Money doesn't buy class, and the people with the least material wealth are rich in ways that the Ms will never know.