A friend who grew up in Japan told me that in traditional Japanese society it was considered preferable to own one thing of beauty rather than many, because if you own one thing you will look at it and truly appreciate it, whereas if you own many things the beauty of each gets lost and you fully appreciate none of them. G. K. Chesterton said something similar. ‘The modern world’s notion of progress,’ he said, ‘has been to pile one thing on top of another, without caring if each thing was crushed in turn. People forgot that the human soul can enjoy a thing most when there is time to think about it and be thankful for it. And by crowding things together they lost the sense of surprise; and surprise is the secret of joy.’
It’s not how much you have that makes you rich, it’s how much you appreciate it.