If you are young and reading this then I ask you to remember just this:
you are richer than anyone older than you, and far richer than those who are
much older. What you choose to do with the time that stretches out before
you is entirely a matter for you. But do not say you started the journey poor.
If you are young, you are infinitely richer than I can ever be again.

Money is never owned. It is only in your custody for a while. Time is
always running on, and the young have more of it in their pocket than the
richest man or woman alive. That is not sentimentality speaking. That is
sober fact.

And yet you wish to waste your youth in the getting of money? Really?
Think hard, my young cub, think hard and think long before you embark on
such a quest. The time spent attempting to acquire wealth will mount up.
And it cannot be reclaimed, whether you succeed or whether you fail.
And even should you succeed in becoming rich, unlikely as that is, what
will you have achieved: Independence of a kind? The luxury to choose what
you wish to do with the rest of your life? Happiness? No, no and no. You will
not achieve any of those things. Not when you have too much money.

As Francis Bacon, one of the greatest minds ever to grace England’s
corridors of power, warned in his Essays:

I cannot call Riches better than the baggage (hindrance) of virtue. The
Roman word is better, impedimenta. For as the baggage is to an army,
so riches to virtue. It cannot be spared or left behind, but it hindereth the
march; yea, and the care of it sometime loseth or disturbeth the victory.

It does indeed. Wealth makes many demands and, by the time you have
acquired it, you will be prey to certain habits. You will fear to lose it and must
spend a great deal more time to defend it. No one is ‘independent’ of the
human race. ‘No man is an island entire of itself, every man is a piece of the
continent, a part of the main.” Heed the words of John Donne, finest of
poets: ‘And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for
thee.’ Aye, so it does.
No luxury of choices for rich little you. You will be too busy keeping the
sea from washing away the sand you have spent so long collecting at such
terrible cost to your health and your sanity and your relationships with
others. It is always thus. There is no escape. You believe (I know you do) that
it will be different for you. But it won’t be. It never is.
Happiness? Do not make me laugh. The rich are not happy. I have yet to
meet a single really rich happy man or woman – and I have met many rich
people. The demands from others to share their wealth become so tiresome,
and so insistent, they nearly always decide they must insulate themselves.
Insulation breeds paranoia and arrogance. And loneliness. And rage that you
have only so many years left to enjoy rolling in the sand you have piled up.
The only people the self-made rich can trust are those who knew them
before they became wealthy. For many newly rich people, the world becomes
a smaller, less generous and darker place. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?
Ridiculous and gloomy.
But then, you are to consider that I have been very poor and I am now-
very rich. I am an optimist by nature. And I have the ability to write poetry
and create the forest I am busy planting. Am I happy? No. Or, at least, only
occasionally, when I am walking in the woods alone, or deeply ensconced in
composing a difficult piece of verse, or sitting quietly with old friends over a
bottle of wine. Or feeding a stray cat.
I could do all those things without wealth. So why do I not give it all away?

Because I worked too hard for it. Because I am tainted by it. Because I
am afraid to. All those reasons and more. Perhaps, if l am lucky enough to
become old, I will accumulate something else: the courage to give it all away
before I die. That would be a good thing, I think.
(When I die, it is all going to a charity called ‘The Forest of Dennis’. You
see, even when I do a good thing with my money, my ego insists that I name
it for myself. Not a good sign.)
Giving money away when you are dead takes no guts. No courage. But
to divest yourself of hundreds of millions of dollars, or the greater part of
your fortune, before your death? That would be something to be proud of,
don’t you think? It even makes logical sense.
For what is left afterwards but a few tears by a graveside and years of bickering and waste over a complex will? (The wills of the rich are always
complex.) Bitter years, where lawyers count the number of fairies they
believe
you once thought danced upon the head of a pin – years in which they enrich
themselves at your descendants’ expense. A fine legacy, to be sure.

But you must make your own choice. I have said my piece and I meant
every word of it. This small part of my book was composed in my mind years
ago. It was easy to write. I knew all of it before my fingers touched the
keyboard. It has troubled me for years and I thank you for allowing me to
share it.

I suspect it will have little effect on you, though. You are probably young
and are tired of being poor. And tired, from years of growing up and schooling, and of being lectured. Very well. Let us return to a recap of the ‘important bits’ to help you on your journey. But just before we do, can I ask you
to do me a small favour?

Please lodge one fact in your memory: that the last one thousand five
hundred words was an ‘important bit’. In my heart of hearts, I know it was
the most important bit you will read in this book.
Mark it with a bookmark and write today’s day upon it. Come back to it
in twenty or thirty years, when new books printed on paper will be rare
objects. Then cast your mind back to a time when you were young, and you
first read this book, and to the thoughts of a fool, a rich poet, long dead,
who once typed these words sitting in one of the most beautiful houses on
earth, staring at a turquoise sea, sipping a glass of slightly chilled Chateau
d’Yquem.

That will be enough for me.
Enough! Let’s get on with getting rich!