Rich is a comparison we choose

A couple in Maadi can sit at the same table with the same money and come away with two different answers to one question. Are we doing well?

He has been looking at cousins who moved abroad, at the new cars in their photos. She has been thinking about her grandmother, who raised six children in two rooms and counted every egg. Same flat, same bank balance. One of them feels poor. The other feels unreasonably lucky.

Neither is wrong about the facts. Rich has never been a fact. It is a comparison, and we pick who we compare ourselves with. Choose the neighbours with the bigger flat and you will always be behind. Choose almost anyone from a century ago and you are living like royalty, with medicine, light at the touch of a switch, and most of human knowledge in your pocket.

This is why people with plenty can feel squeezed the moment a number dips. They are not short of anything. They are only less far ahead than they were, and less ahead is easy to hear as not enough.

So for many of us, feeling rich is a decision rather than a total.

That decision can go badly. Some people use the feeling to look down on others, to grab, to push. If that is where it leads, better to leave it alone.

But if feeling rich makes you more generous, more patient, more willing to plan in years instead of weeks, more open to the people around you, then nothing is stopping you. You can choose it this evening, without a single pound changing hands.