I remember reading the saying “Money can’t buy class” for the first time more than ten years ago. It was one of those ideas I thought I knew what it meant.

But I didn’t. I had never talked to people with a lot of money before that.

I used to think that someone with class was someone who dressed well and looked nice.

But class is not looks.

There is being classy and being flashy.

Over the past 10 years, I’ve had the chance to talk to, meet, and learn about people with a lot of money, both directly and indirectly. I’ve learned that wealth and class don’t go together. Not one bit.

Wealth just makes what was already there bigger. If there was goodness in a person, wealth brought out a lot of it.

If you are an insecure person, wealth made sure that we see it.

A poverty mindset doesn’t go away just because you get rich; it goes away when you change the way you think.

And a lack of class stayed the same, no matter how much money was in a bank account.

We do not consider what you did to be a class act because you purchased the most expensive gift; rather, we consider you to be a class act because you cared more than anybody else did even when it was difficult to do so.

Class is subtle.

Class is achieved via the cultivation of emotional awareness and the performance of behaviours that are unrelated to the amassing of material possessions.

Class is doing work that matters, it is caring, it is showing up, it is serving, listening, and really seeing others [sawubona].