What is wealth.

In a world of fiat money, debt has become more real than income. Profit is a number on a spreadsheet that moves left or right based on decisions made far from our lives. The house you own is never fully yours. The food you buy exists inside a system where abundance for one often implies scarcity for another. Driving a car, eating a full meal, owning a pet, having a partner, or choosing to have children are framed as privileges rather than ordinary human experiences.

And yet we were born wealthy.

We arrived on this planet as living organisms with the capacity to sense and feel. We can smell rain, feel warmth, taste food, hear music, and experience the full spectrum of emotion. Love, anger, jealousy, grief, joy, and longing are not luxuries. They are built into us. They are the inheritance of being alive.

So what is wealth.

When these innate gifts are absorbed into economic systems that convert time, attention, and even intimacy into profit, the meaning of wealth becomes distorted. Value is measured by accumulation. Success is measured by expansion. More rooms, faster cars, better views, rarer experiences. A modest car becomes a luxury vehicle. A studio becomes a two bedroom. Summers are spent elsewhere. Winters are spent higher, colder, and farther from ordinary life.

Traditionally, the answer is simple. Yes, that is wealth.

But only because wealth has been defined as freedom.

So what is freedom.

If freedom is tied entirely to consumption, then it is fragile. It depends on income, stability, compliance, and constant performance. It can be revoked. It can be priced out. It can disappear with one illness, one mistake, one economic shift.

That is not real freedom.

Wealth is not the car you drive, the home you live in, or the places you travel. Wealth is the ability to make choices aligned with your beliefs. It is the capacity to act according to your sense of right and wrong. It is the space to live in accordance with your humanity.

Wealth is the freedom to express humanness.

To be imperfect.
To make mistakes.
To feel deeply.
To grieve without being unproductive.
To love without calculating return.

It is the ability to exist without constant justification.

Wealth is not a number.
Wealth is not status.
Wealth is not distance from others.

Wealth is a state of being.

It is the quiet knowledge that your worth does not fluctuate with markets. That your value is not measured by output. That your humanity is not a liability.

If wealth is freedom, then freedom begins where humanity is allowed to exist without apology.