How different you are now from the infant that you were. You came into this world with nothing, but through the years you have allowed yourself to be weighed down by so much heavy baggage, in the name of security, that your journey through life has become a punishment instead of a pleasure.
     Lighten thy load, beginning today.
     Understand that the true worth of man is measured by the objects he refuses to pursue or acquire. The great blessings of life are already within you, or within your reach. Open thine eyes to the truth before you stumble past the very treasures you seek. Love, peace of mind, and happiness are jewels which no condition of fortune, no amount of land or coin, can either exalt or depress.
     What reward is there in gold and silks and palaces if their possession destroys the happiness you have so blindly taken for granted? The greatest falsehood in the world is that money and property can fill your life with joy. If wealth becomes part of your baggage you become poor, for then you will be no more than ass whose back bows under  the weight of gold you must carry until death unloads thy cargo.
     Of all the needless materials that you embrace, of all the pleasures you enjoy, you will still carry no more out of this world than out of a dream. Admit riches grudgingly into thy home, but never into thy heart.
     And envy no man his grand possessions. His baggage would be too heavy for you, as it is for him. You could not sacrifice, as he does, health, peace, honor, love, quiet, and conscience, to obtain them. The price is so high that the bargain becomes, in the end, a great loss.
     Simplify your life. He is richest who is content with the least.