Big Numbers
Think for a minute about the things you can buy for a dollar. A can of soda. A newspaper. A ball-point pen. Real stuff. Tangible goods. One dollar is no fortune, but it's not a subatomic particle of wealth either. Now consider a year: your age in years, how long America, or England, or China has been around, the number of years since human beings evolved, since the Earth cooled, since the unvierse began. Scientists think the universe could be about 12 billion years old - a period almost inconceivable from the vantage point of an individual human being.
OK, imagine having a dollar for every year the universe has existed, sitting in a neat 1000 mile-tall stack in a safety deposit box of a very big bank somewhere. Got it? Good. Now picture that money suddenly disappearing. It was all yours yesterday and today it's gone. Finally, think about what it would be like to not care, because you know that you still have five times that much safely squirelled away. That's what it was like to be Bill Gates in 2002.
10:07:51 AM 
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