The House of a Lifetime: Between Wisdom, Wealth, and the Web of a Spider

A few weeks ago, during a family gathering, I found myself sitting beside a man whose reputation precedes him.A poet, a scholar, and a figure well known enough to have his own Wikipedia page.He spoke with the calm tone of someone who had long stopped competing with the world.He was comfortable, content, and quietly complete.

As we spoke about life, I asked him almost naturally about his home.“How long have you lived there?” I said. “Is it your own design?”

He smiled and answered with the modesty of a man who no longer measures himself by what he owns.Later that evening, as we left, one of my relatives told me something that lingered.He said that this same poet once received sixty thousand dollars a substantial sum and rather than invest it, he spent it on a three-month family trip around the world.

When a friend of his, a businessman, questioned the decision, the poet replied with a proverb passed down from his grandfather:

"اللي حيموت ما حيكون عنده أكثر من بيته العنكبوت"“He who dies will own nothing greater than the house of a spider.”

A line poetic in its humility, devastating in its realism.

The Architecture of Philosophy

That phrase stayed with me.Because behind its humor lies a philosophy that shaped generations before us the belief that permanence is an illusion, that wealth should be lived, not stored.Yet today, when we revisit that idea through the lens of economics, it raises a sharper question.
archup.net/the-house-of-a-lifetime-between-wisdom-wealth-...

Taken on: September 17, 2025

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