The greatest wealth?

The quest for wealth is never-ending for us humans but, you know, we depend of others to tell us what IS wealth. I mean, there would have been a time when a soldier thought that 'salt' was wealth considering that he was paid in it. Can you think of anyone hoarding salt and gloating over how much salt he has, these days? So, yeah, once others tell us what counts as wealth, we'll rush after it.

Well, our man Tiru has his own ideas about what is the best wealth.

Selvatthul selvam sevicchelvam; achchelvam selvatthul ellam thalai - Tirukkural

Of all wealth, the wealth of knowledge earned by listening is the best; it is the foremost of all wealth - Loose Translation.

There he goes again! Proving all over that he is dated. In his times, people were taught by lectures and, therefore, knowledge was acquired almost exclusively by listening. Paper, you see, did not exist in his times and, thus, books as we know them did not exist. So, when he talks of the wealth acquired by listening, we need to understand that what he means is knowledge, no matter how acquired.

But THAT is not what I mean when I call him dated. We live in times when people talk of employ-ability as soon as you talk of education. If the knowledge imparted by education cannot be parlayed into a job thereby earning wealth for you, it is considered useless. So, knowledge is ONLY a means to acquiring wealth, in other words. How, then, can it be equated to wealth itself...and the supremo among all items of wealth, no less?

Those were ideas of his times, which is why I think he is dated. I mean, in his days, they considered knowledge as making you wise in your choices. In what you chose to do with your life, in how you decided between options, in the way you judged people, even in your ability to enjoy the arts. They considered knowledge as molding your character - in the way you dealt with adversity, in the way you dealt with prosperity, in the way you dealt with people around you - both those better off than you and those worse of, and so on.

So, essentially, the problem reduces itself to what Tiru thinks is knowledge and what we understand as knowledge these days. I mean, I hardly think that he would consider that knowing to write code in Java or whatever is this 'sevicchelvam' that he prates of in this Kural. So...

We can get to a meeting point with Tiru, though. I mean, like, KNOWING not to share your OTP and the likes over phone...THAT is wealth, indeed, because you'll cease to remain wealthy if you fail to know that!