Sometimes I stop and look at the speed of the world around me and I ask myself a question that hurts a little: Are we really living, or are we just adding numbers to a balance sheet?

We are born into a culture that teaches us to measure our value in things. A bigger house. A newer phone. A car that shines more than the neighbour's. We are trained to chase promotions, bonuses, and discounts as if our dignity depended on them. The word "success" has been kidnapped by the language of money.

But when the noise of the day fades and the screen finally goes dark, something very sencillo happens: the figures disappear, and what remains is how we feel.

On one side of the scale we put materialism.

Materialism promises control: If you own enough, you will be safe. If you buy enough, you will be happy. If you win enough, you will finally be someone. It is a very efficient story for keeping the economic machine running. It is also a perfect recipe for emptiness.

Because materialism always needs more. Whatever you have today is not enough tomorrow. There is always a bigger house, a better car, a new gadget. There is always someone who earns more, owns more, shows more. And so you run. And you run. And you run.

Until one day you look at your life and you realise that you have filled every corner with objects, but you have left very little space for yourself.

On the other side of the scale we put love.

I am not talking about romantic slogans or perfect couples from advertisements. I am talking about the quiet, stubborn kind of love that does not appear on magazine covers.

The love that makes you stay next to someone you care about during a long rehabilitation process.

The love that makes you get up one more day to write, even if you are not a bestseller, because you know that somewhere there is at least one person that needs to read what you have to say.

The love that makes you accept that your time is limited, and that you do not want to waste it chasing the approval of strangers.

Materialism shouts. Love whispers.

Materialism fills the space with things. Love fills the space with presence.

Materialism wants spectators. Love just wants truth.

And yet, if we are honest, many of us spend more hours every week working for materialism than for love.

We spend eight, ten, sometimes twelve hours a day improving the numbers of someone else’s company, but we say we have no time to call a friend, to listen to our own children, or to simply sit in silence with the person we share our life with.

We check the price of our favourite cryptocurrency twenty times a day, but we do not check how many days hace that we do not say "I love you" without irony or defence.

We say that we are free because we can buy what we want, but we panic at the idea of losing our job, our status, our purchasing power. That is not freedom. That is a very well decorated cage.

The truth is that materialism is not evil by itself. Money is a tool. Comfort is not a sin. The problem begins when the tool becomes the master, when comfort becomes the only religion we obey.

Love, on the other hand, does not promise comfort. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it demands sacrifices. It does not come with a refund policy. But it has something that no object can offer: Meaning.

You can lose your car, your house, even your savings. It will hurt. It will be hard. But if you have built a life where love has weight, you will not be completely broken.

If you have someone to hug.
If you have someone to care for.
If you have someone who remembers you not for what you owned, but for how you made them feel.

That does not disappear when the market crashes.

In my own life I have come to a simple realisation: The richest days are not the days when I earn more, but the days when I feel less fear.

And fear does not go away when the bank account grows. Fear goes away when love grows.

When you know that even if everything external collapses, there will still be a reason to get up in the morning that is not written in numbers.

This article is not an accusation. It is an invitation.

An invitation to look at your own inner scale.

On one side, the things you own, the goals you chase, the material security you fight for.

On the other side, the people you love, the time you share, the peace you feel when you are honest with yourself.

Only you know which side is heavier.

I am not asking you to choose poverty or to reject comfort. I am asking something much more radical and, in a way, much more difficult: to choose consciously.

To admit that if all your decisions are guided by fear and scarcity, no amount of money will ever be enough.

And to admit that if at least some of your decisions are guided by love, even the smallest gestures can transform an entire life.

So I leave you with three questions. Not to answer me, but to answer yourself:

What would change in your life if you stopped making decisions only based on money?

Who would appear in your memories if you knew that tomorrow everything material would disappear?

And when your time here ends, what do you want people to feel when they hear your name: envy for what you had, or gratitude for who you were?

Between materialism and love, the world will keep trying to pull you towards the side that can be measured, bought and sold.

But there is a part of you that knows.

It knows that, at the very end, the only real wealth is the one that stays when everything else is gone.