Looking to the future

Imagine my confusion when the eldest fine young gent announced on the way to piano lesson, "When we grow up, we're going to be minors."

???

"We're going to get jewels and stuff out of the earth."

Aha. Miners.

They've got a plan. They'll live in a cabin on a mountain and mine. They'll sell all of their diamonds and jewels to get money, and the gold they'll sell for free to the poor people. Then when they run out of money, they'll just go back to their mine and get more jewels.

They won't give any money to the rich people, because the rich people are greedy and bad and only want more money. This is the point where I finally stepped in, a bit gingerly: "Are all rich people greedy, do you think? If it's not fair to think badly of someone who has no money, maybe it's not fair to think badly of someone with lots of money. What if we just judge if people are greedy and bad if they act greedy and bad?"

Silence. Well, crumb, I think. I killed the dream.

Then, "Oh. Well, maybe we could give the money to the good rich people so that they can share and help the poor people too, and then they can be good."

Which led to a discussion that filled the rest of the journey to piano and afterward too, about resources and charitable foundations and sharing, and how we're rich in comparison to most of the world, and our favorite gems.

I know they'll figure out soon enough that it's not that easy, that fabulous fairy-tale caves filled with jewels and heaps of gold don't really exist on this earth. For now I'm just charmed that the plan is to keep some and share some. That's a worthy plan for the future.