THE SEARCH FOR MEANING OF MONEY
As describe by Milton Friedman, “Money is whatever is generally accepted in exchange for goods and services – accepted not as an object to be consumed but as an object that represents a temporary abode of purchasing power to be used for buying still other goods and services.”
Money plays a pivotal role in our lives, yet its complexities are such that no one can be totally free of misconceptions about it. According to Robert Kiyosaki, people in this world are still confused about money, even those who have lots of it. According to Kiyosaki, “the confusion about money is the main causes of majority of our world’s problem.”
Money was created to serve the peoples’ need, to inspire people to live in accordance with their values, to enable people to make and receive what they need or desire in return, and to make contributions to the community as a whole.
The Chinese character for money is composed of three symbols. One symbol means gold while the other two represent spears. The first spear symbolizes the outward struggle for survival. The second spear represents the battle within. Before one can fight and win the outward battle, one must win the battle within.
The Chinese were the first to use paper money, beginning in the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.). During the Ming Dynasty in 1300 A.D., the Chinese placed the emperor's seal and signatures of the treasurers on a crude paper made from mulberry bark.
Money originated largely from non-economic cause – from tribute and from trade, from barter and from commerce. It was used in the early days, partly because of their qualities in acting as a media of exchange. Commodities were chosen as a preferred form of barter due to its convenience and its durability. With agriculture came the need to measure value through time more accurately. For example, if a man wants to buy salt, but have nothing but cattle to give in exchange for it, he was obliged to buy salt to the value of a whole ox.
In theory, money is supposed to activate the production of goods and services. They exist to simplify exchanges and the settlement of debts, and to provide a means of storing values or savings. But in our society today, nothing, absolutely nothing can be done without money. Our health, happiness, security and our survival seems to depend solely on how much money we have or do not have. Money is used not only to exchange goods and services, but also to measure our success.
For the East Asians in particular, the economic collapse beginning from Thailand in July 1997 spread like wildfire down south. Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, South Korea were the worst hit and the business communities were in tragedy. Although, the recession was anticipated due to the high growth period from 1990 to 1996, the effect was too devastating. Hundreds of billions were lost in days, particularly in the stock market, and the individual currencies of each East Asian countries were devaluated daily. Survival becomes unbearable and the uncertainties of tomorrow reins. Value of hard currency becomes the prime importance and “Do we have enough to Survive?” was the daily mission statement.
Spending money is comparatively easy because it only depends on oneself. Earning money is a different matter. It depends on those who are willing and able to buy the goods or services that one has to offer. In a monetary economy, nearly everyone is faced with the necessity of having to sell now in order to be able to buy later.
Sometimes corruption is perceived to increase administrative efficiency, particularly with public sectors employees who receive speed money in return for productive service. But only those customers who are able or willing to bribe those officials behind the counters will benefit from the productivity. Speed money does not buy efficiency, but simply a service, which would otherwise have not been produced, in normal circumstances. Speed money also serves to encourage officers to intentionally slow down productivity so as to create opportunity for wealth creation. Nepotism plays a vital role in the increasing concentration of capital.
When one is destined for greater accomplishments in life, the preparation for such a journey can be extensive. We need to lift our hearts to give us a hint of something bigger than ourselves and of the infinite possibilities of life. Spirituality is the valuing of the non-material aspects of life, and intimations of an enduring reality. For a truly spiritual individual, the path of spirituality is like walking on a razor’s edge; it is a diligent pursuit of one’s perfection. However, for others, the pursuit of spirituality is merely a vague notion; it actually is a pretext, an excuse to practice inertia and avoidance of life’s challenges.
Before currency was used widely, words such as millionaires and billionaires are meaningless. The social changes wrought by the steady creation of wealth have transformed the world so profoundly that humans on either end of the century could almost be considered two different species. It is impossible to compare wealth today with wealth that existed before currency became the primary medium of commercial relations. Human have always had a choice in how they regard wealth and yesterday’s luxuries are becoming today’s necessities.
Life is essentially about economics, that money is the measure of most things, and that the market is its sorting mechanism. In the modern industrialized world, the principal struggle for survival takes the form of the struggle for money. Anyone who wished to accomplish his goals or claim a share of the earth’s abundance must first be prepared to do battle for money. The game of monetary success is not only about getting the money; it is also about having a great idea and being able to keep that money multiplying through worthy efforts.
Many people have a big misconception about what "wealth" is. We have allowed the world system to redefine our vocabulary, especially in regard to money and wealth. Most of the world’s money is chasing other people’s money in the global financial markets oblivious to the devastation being wreaked upon the world’s ecosystems and people. The understanding of money and its effect on our daily lives becomes the prime subject and a necessity. Morality, religious values and the need for enough money have always been the sensitive topic. We cannot deny the impact of money that had on our lives.
What is real wealth? Our lives are constantly faced with the questions of what is right and what is wrong. Happiness has always eluded us due to the uncertainties of our daily needs. There is always a sense of “Not Enough” and we are seldom capable to reach our personal level of enough. Money was created by the early leaders to perform trade but have risen to be the only reason of our struggle in life, for without money we are impotent.
Wealth is an uncertain thing. Fortunes are made and lost in thin air. While species go extinct, forests are decimated, rivers are poisoned, and people starved, the money is blindly directed towards greater profits, destroying the world in the process. The global economy has been shaped by military force, money, greed, fear, and a massive propaganda campaign. Money is a tool of empire, which has served to transfer wealth and power from the many to the few.
As Carol Brouillet says, “Real wealth is a healthy planet and healthy relationships between all lifeforms – it is inner peace, world peace, balance and harmony in the home, the community, the world”.
Money and wealth are obtained through interactions with others. After the division of labor has thoroughly taken place with which a man’s own labor can supply him, the far greater part must be derived from the labor of other people. In order to get a fair exchange value, it is necessary to convince the people with whom you do business that you can be of benefit to them. Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life. We are all programme to judge success and winning in relation to how fast we can produce visible results. To have a sense of your own worth, you first have to do something that is worthy of your own respect.
Throughout history, many people have used strength, imagination, and luck to amass greater surpluses than their contemporaries. A simple and enduring truth about wealth is that money begets money. The rich have a distinctive gift and a receptive society in which to exploit it. They have a knack for using wealth to create more wealth. Regardless of how they assembled their fortune, the millionaires were men or women who harnessed great determination to their pursuit of wealth. Each of them understood that accumulating great wealth entailed capturing a fraction of the property or production of other people. But the self-made wealthy son-of-man has always been distinguished by their resolve.
Rich people know a lot about the magic power of money and they fully understand how their money could be used to satisfy their appetites for power, status, and love. For some people, money gratifies their need to assess their value in relation to other people. They have the money to get different treatment and privileges that the poor don’t even realize they exist. A rich man has an influence not only by what he does but also by what he could do. As a Jewish proverb puts it, “with money, you are always wise, and always look handsome or for some, beautiful”. Even the sour grapes in the vineyard of the rich are sweet in comparison with the lesser.
The vast majority of the millionaires got a head start from their parents or grandparents. The best way to be rich is to have some to start with. “No man to my knowledge has ever entered the ranks of the great American fortunes merely by saving a surplus from his salary or wages”, wrote Catherine Wright Mills, in her book, ‘The Power Elite’. “In one-way or another, he has to come into command of a strategic position … and usually he has to have available a considerable sum of money”.
An income large enough to give a man what he wants and when he wants it apparently can’t make as much happiness. “Champagne everyday ceases to be a luxury”. A thing can be best enjoyed when it is barely within occasional reach, and when its selection involves a dash of sacrifice. Psychoanalytic study of the rich have found that the rich always fear that he wouldn’t have enough, that more was necessary, and as a result falls victim to their own money. The less limited one feels, the more intolerable all limitation appears. The inability to afford something seems like a terrible limitation to many people. The ability to buy anything turns buying into an irrational exercise governed by whims and fancies. Whatever a person has, if the rich does not have, it will wedge an insecurity that would torment them.
Rich people do at times have afflictions that may not have troubled the less fortunate. Wealthy people often are victims of their own wealth. The fear of uncertainty certainly troubled the rich. Occasionally, prestige was earned by the outright destruction of wealth. The rich not only failed to enjoy their riches, but are also destroyed by them. Perhaps most appealing about wealth is that the rich have so many choices – even the choice of not having to work. The idle rich don’t work and boredom is becoming an occupational hazard of the wealthy. Some work long and arduous hours simply because they fear having not enough and they will not stop till they can’t get rid of those money as fast as they comes in. More money may only bring greater happiness only if others don’t also get more.
Leisure, like money, is a form of power, which people covet without necessarily having any clear idea of what use they wish to make of it. To some truly rich, it is to possess the means to realizing in big ways one’s little whims and fantasies and sickness. Such behavior offers everyone else opportunities to feel superior, even while gorging themselves on another episode of exotic lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Many children of fortune have dispersed their money rather than increasing it by reveling extravagantly in sensual luxury and conspicuously flaunting their financial superiority. Throwing money around has become a new sort of performance art. They openly brandish their money by wearing, eating, driving, donating, and living lavishly while consuming their wealth unlimited, for the fantasy of the status game. At such, the question arises as to whether “wealth beyond one’s need should belong to God-created poor”?
“As prosperity grows, so should our desire to empower the needy and untrained poor among us. Because poverty begins internally, it is not solved with money alone. Wealth, like self-esteem and respect, is best earned. What we need to give the poor is skills, wisdom and godly compassion - truth is the ultimate form of compassion”.
Craig R. Smith, True-Wealth.
Human have always had a choice in how they regard wealth as they can produce much or desire little. It is widely assumed that people have always wanted more, that acquisitiveness is natural and austerity is unintentional. The fantasy of being rich usually involves spending money. Consumption is only limited by the imagination of the rich. Today, more than ever, wealth is synonymous with consumption because there are now so much more to buy and so many more things we need, or desire to have. In mobilizing wishes, money sets people and matter in motion. Money is more efficient for satisfying wishes and needs. Wealth makes daily life easier, removing a source of stress that weighs heavily on most people. Money controls access to precious possessions such as gold, diamonds, fast cars, fine arts, etc. to be magnificent was to be someone with the means to acquire all those coveted possessions. Indeed, today’s rich demonstrates their wealth and status by consuming many products and services: enormous mansions, castles and palaces, dozens of cars, yachts, exclusive fine arts, and expensive holidays, unmatched in world history.
Yet wealth and poverty has long been part of the human tapestry. Where there is wealth, there is almost certainly poverty. Money may not mean anything to the rich, nut surely and certainly, it does mean everything to the poor. Over the centuries, the poor had been the million of people who were born and died knowing nothing but hunger, cold, terror, and plague. Most of them have little, if any, control over their destinies. The poor and the have-nots are dubious of the idea that it is hard to be rich. The idea that the millionaires find nothing but a sad and empty place at the top is the main way these have-nots reconciled themselves to that fact.
Enabling millions of the world's poorest men and women to earn a decent living for themselves are the greatest problem facing mankind. . It can be argued that private charity is insufficient because the benefits from it accrue to people other than those who make the gifts. There is every reason to help the poor man who happens to be a farmer, not because he is a farmer but because he is poor.
Some economists had suggested that if all the monies from the rich were to be distributed to the unequal, it would gradually drift back to its original owners. That is the fundamental doctrines of Inequality and the society will have to learn to accept it and carry on with their life.
Making money can meant taking it from others, for that is the only reason why the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer. Workers work hard enough so that they would not be fired, and owner’s pay just enough so that workers won’t quit. The result is that workers would never get ahead as they work to earn enough to pay their bills. The extraordinary rich all enjoyed a knack for using wealth to create more wealth.
In recent years, increasing numbers of lives are dragged down by poverty in the midst of riches due to the prevalence of the economic myth. People are now facing the reality that those things that used to ensure their financial security – long-term jobs, stable interest rates, savings to support retirement, and stable currency – are no longer dependable. Capitalism, which was supposed to set us free, is enslaving us in return with the dominance of the economic imperative.
Most people only just talk and dream of getting rich. All too often, many of us live on the hope that tomorrow will be better. ‘Just making ends meet’ for one month can’t do us a lot of harm. But thirty years of “Just Breaking Even” can. Most of the people who earn substantial salaries barely break even every month because so much of their income goes to paying debts from excesses of the past. Part of the problem we have with thinking ahead and planning for the future is that we live in an “instant society.” We want things right now, and there is an expectation that everything should be available at our time of need. This drive for immediate satisfaction of all our wants and needs has led to a very destructive ‘get-rich-quick’ way of thinking. Success rarely comes to anyone instantly. As the years pass, we begin to feel more discomfort about our financial situations. The result is that either we start to take more risks or we retreat into ourselves and take no risk whatsoever, clinging desperately to whatever we have. As Craig Smith says, “Do what you've always done and you'll get what you've always gotten”.
Poverty is more a state of mind than an external condition. Most people struggle for small rewards because they are shackled by an unarticulated belief that they are not the kind of people who are worth the finer things in life. We are worthy of whatever material rewards we seek, so long as we acquire them honestly and honorably. It is our lack of faith in our worthiness to receive the gifts that prevents us from possessing them. There is a difference between the potential satisfaction that wealth can bring and the satisfaction experienced by staying in poverty. The specific advantage of being poor is when we have doubt on the value of trading a proven pleasurable experience for the unknown experience of being rich.
Where does all our money go? We probably may have piddled it away. We rarely have any idea why we are doing it. But we all piddle money away because we don’t pay attention. To avoid this problem, we have to look at the spending habits, for that’s where we will find the key to our financial future.
“Poverty is very close to criminal”, says Adam Smith. The worst crimes a man can commit, other than the crimes of violence, which for one with property would have to be considered irrational, are crimes against capital. A man can break most of the commandments with impunity, but please, let him not go bust, that will get him ostracized faster than lying, fudging on his income taxes, cheating, adultery, and coveting all the cows and asses there are.
Individuals choose occupation, investments, and the like partly in accordance with their taste for uncertainty. Actual inequality may be the result of arrangements designed to satisfy men’s tastes. From the universal success of lotteries, we may learn that the chance of gain is by every man over valued, and the chance of loss is under valued. In a perfectly fair lottery, those who draw the prizes ought to gain all that is lost by those who draw a blank. In the game of chance where one million fail for one that succeed, that person that gain all is at the expense of the unsuccessful million. In the lotteries, the tickets are really not worth the price which is paid, but yet it is commonly sold in the market with the consent and approval of the state. The vain hope of gaining some of the great prizes is the sole cause of the demand. Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets, the nearer you approach this certainty.
A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. The real price of everything, what everything really costs the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. Luxury extends itself even to the poorest and that the laboring poor will not be content with the same food, clothing and lodging which satisfy them in former times.
Nobody intends to become debt-ridden. None of us are born in debt. We started life with a clean slate. But then we make bad decisions, such as committing ourselves to a future lifestyle that is predicated on our current lifestyle. To avoid debt trap, we have to keep fixed expenses as low as possible. We should not obligate ourselves to long-term expenses, such as “buy now, pay later” deals. Don’t commit tomorrow’s income today, and make sure our spending habits change with it.
To excel in any profession is the most decisive mark of what is called genius or talent. Many people possess them in great perfection, but they disdain to make use of them; and many more are capable of acquiring them, if they could make anything honorable. The over-weaning conceit, which the greater parts of men have of their abilities, is an ancient evil.
Human can never be satisfied with whatever they get because they will want something else as soon as they get what they had wanted. As soon as they get what they wanted, those things will quickly lose its attractiveness and they will want to give it up and look for something else, which they do not already have. Throughout our lives, we struggle to grasp at things, and we always experience dissatisfaction because we and the things we grasp are always changing. When people have easy lives and are not suffering from any handicaps, they have a tendency to look at what is lacking in their lives. Suffering is caused by dissatisfaction. Suffering takes many forms – social ills, discrimination, and misconceptions. The main cause of dissatisfaction is usually due to emotional conflict, when we fail to reconcile our feelings with the feelings of others. Our happiness is always influenced by the words and opinions of others or by circumstances others had created. The causes of our suffering lies in the fact that we are constantly comparing ourselves with others and trying to adjust ourselves by looking at the happiness beyond us. This therefore creates anxiety, which stems from a fear of being held in lower regard than we would have wish. Anxiety also stems from worries about the future that we could be worse off than we are now.
At the root of the impulse to pile up money is the compulsion to work. This compulsion to work subordinates man to things. It reduces the drives of human being to greed and competition, to aggression and possessiveness. The desire and greed for money takes the place of all genuinely human needs. A man of large revenue thinks he ought to live like other men of large revenue and to spent a great part of his time in festivity, in vanity and in dissipation. Then he will be in the position of a man living beyond his income that insists that he cannot possibly earn more, or spent less, or borrow, or finance the excess out of his assets. Thus the apparent accumulation of wealth is really the impoverishment of human nature, and its appropriate morality is the renunciation of human nature and desires – asceticism (Norman Brown, Life Against Death). A society fuelled mainly by envy of your neighbor is not one that seems worth fighting for.
Human have all the potential to cultivate their minds to reach their goal and at such, we had to concentrate on developing ourselves rather than struggling in vain. For those who always look for bad news and are constantly afraid of failure will find an environment that correspond to their thoughts. As the saying goes, “The key to making the sun rise is not trying to hold on to the night for too long”.
Accountants define "wealth" as our assets minus our liabilities. But in today's volatile financial world, assets can quickly become liabilities if we're not careful. Did you know that 80% of American's "wealth" exists ONLY on paper and in computers? True wealth must have two important elements:
No.1. It must stand the test of time, and
No.2, it should never be a liability.
According to Craig Smith, Wealth is equal to substance plus time. The value of your time is determined by your commitment to efficiency, and your understanding the division of labor, or where you fit in best at work. If we fine-tune our time management, our income will rise too. First, we have to read to lead ... and secondly to follow leaders who are full of integrity and substance.
Money is the element of life that inspires the greatest of emotions in individuals. It is tightly connected with the emotions of agony and ecstasy. When you have money, you never feel you have enough. If you have lost all the money, you wish you had appreciated it more when you did have them.
Wealth is an uncertain thing. Every day, fortunes are made and lost. The people who have acquired wealth by successfully fighting the inward and outward battles is not so devastated by financial catastrophe as is the person who has acquired wealth by accident of birth or windfall.
If you are fortunate to inherit wealth and not have the misfortune to lose it, that can sometimes be a curse as well as you could be imprisoned by your wealth: By stripping yourself of the need to work, inherited wealth encouraged idleness and engendered feelings of worthlessness. The path to wealth is not to chase money for its own sake, but to understand and develop your own intrinsic talents and inclination. You rarely give a beggar money because you want to reward him for his skill in begging.
Many people who cannot earn whatever amount of money they consider adequate and proper, are oppressed by a powerful sense of guilt. They find it hard to preserve their self-esteem and live a life of desperation, continuously searching for distractions to cover their insufficiency, and eager to immense themselves in whatever will take their minds off their failure. They seek refuge by getting addicted to drugs, alcohol, food, etc, hoping that it would remedy their despair, which ultimately sets off a vicious cycle of what we call “dysfunctional behavior” that further reduces their income. The less educated people would have one possible form of expression; that is to break the law, by engaging in criminal activities such as robbery, assault, rape, and murder.
Inequality of wealth or insufficiency has much to do with our attitude and understanding of money. Much of the grievance and inability to prosper is largely due to our own folly, laziness, idleness, pride and inability to accept pain. Many would spend their time in absolute sloth, or doing nothing. They spent much of their time sleeping, time wasting and find time becoming insufficient or what they call “not-enough-time” when opportunity comes their way. When opportunities are available to them, they were sleeping enough in their grave. Another is laziness, which seems to travel so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him. Lazy people are just too busy to take care of their wealth.
Fear is to a man’s soul as a drop of poison is to a well of spring water. Due to the grace of fear, we learn to respect the laws of nature. The most profound knowledge is often only available through direct perception and experience. Knowing the source of fear is the essential element; without it, your understanding of fear will not be complete.
If you are concerned about the outcome of a circumstance, you will experience no fear. When you attach yourself to expectations, anxiety and fear will overcome you. The outcome will be what it will be, regardless of your expectations and fear. Beneath the fear of success and failure is the fear of pain. The most motivating factor in human actions is the desire to avoid pain and do what promises us pleasure.
We will make mistakes no matter which path we follow, but mistakes made on the path to self-discovery will correct themselves, while those made through blind adherence to subjective standards simply perpetuate the folly. Every time we accomplish something and move ahead, we have to exchange the known conditions of our life for uncertainty and unfamiliarity. The question is “What do we want” both for ourselves and for others? We can’t in all equality, propose one set of rules for ourselves and some other thing for everyone else. There should not be one code for the rich and another for the poor. Morality starts with oneself, but has to work for everyone else.
We must understand that a great part of the rich men’s wealth is largely due to the fact that they did not consume much of their income but saved and invest them. With the additional return from their investments, they then plough them back into productive employments for others to consume, resulting in the further accumulation of capital and income.
An augmentation of fortune is the means by which men propose and wish to better their living conditions. The most likely way of augmenting fortune is to save and accumulate some part of what we acquire, either regularly and annually, or upon some extraordinary occasions. Too often we dissipate our energy in resenting the success of others and railing at fate for keeping us from acquiring the wealth we seek. This is the battle within. Almost everyone thinks he wants to be rich, but in reality most of us are where we want to be financially. Obtaining prosperity is not about what you are willing to do to gain it; more importantly, it is about what you are willing to give up in exchange for it. You don’t have to beg in your prayers for material prosperity. The abundance of the world is freely given to those who claim it as their natural birthright.
Creating wealth is to use money you have in a very specific way. “Most people never achieve wealth because they spend all their time chasing ‘bucks’ and spending ‘dough’ on things that brings no return,” laments Robert Kiyosaki. It takes time for wealth to grow and you need to nurture and care for it as it does. The rich get richer because they invest and the poor gets poorer because they consume. People who spend a little more than they earn are spending their future. Pretty soon, the past becomes a burden that life turns into sheer drudgery. It is important that we pay for tomorrow today and not create any debt that would harm us in the future. Therefore, we must earn enough to pay off the past, and earn a little more for the future.
In most part of our life, we are able to recognize ‘Enough’. We know when we have had enough to eat, sleep and play. More than enough then becomes unnecessary, and even counterproductive. It is sad to note that those who do not know what is enough just cannot move forward. They become trapped in the rut of their own monotony day after day, always wanting more of the same, never trying anything new, always dissatisfied, and is unable to find any positive meaning in life.
Money is a necessity, but not sufficient condition of happiness, in which case, more money will not help, if you already have enough. Some things are not free, but because we don’t fully price their everyday use they seem to be free. If you lived alone on a desert island you wouldn’t need money or markets and you wouldn’t miss them. But you might find it very difficult to live without someone to compare yourself with.
More need not mean better. Many a times, we have to learn to say ‘enough’ in order to move on. In fact, the lower we define our level of enough, the sooner we will taste abundance and the freer we will be.
Enough is never enough where our personal standards are involved. Personal growth has no limit. But growth does not mean more of the same. It can mean better rather than bigger. It can mean leaner rather than deeper. Bigness, in both business and life, can lead to a lack of focus, too much complexity and, in the end, too wide a spread to control, and ultimately, the eventual collapse of our empire.
The philosophy of enough is the right of everyone to taste the possibility of enough. But a society that does not recognize the morality of ‘Enough’ will see excesses arise which verge on the obscene, as those who have first choice of society’s reaches appropriate them for themselves. As Edward Burke once said, “ Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites”.
“It is, of course, easy to say “Enough is Enough” when you quite clearly already have more than enough”, says Chin-Ning Chu. “The problem for most people is getting to that stage of sufficiency. A society that adopts the doctrine of enough has to make it a priority to ensure that everyone has a real chance of being able to reach their personal level of enough, so that they can move on. No one can say what level should be for anyone else. It has to be a personal decision. It depends on a trade-off of risks: the risk of moving on. And perhaps, of failing, as against the risk of missing out on a new opportunity, a new chance to learn. The lower we can set the level of enough, the freer we can explore something else”.
The Doctrine of Enough does not mean giving up or renouncing all the activities of this world. The doctrine requires that we move on, not that we withdraw, that we recognize when more of something no longer means personal growth. Most of us just cling for too long to the comfortable and the familiar.
We've heard it said that money is the root of all-evil. The Truth is that the LOVE of money is the critical factor in determining if money is used for good or evil. Wealth is an indication that a righteous man has his house in order. The bottom line is that money, like technology, is spiritually neutral. It can be used for good or evil. God always deals with the heart and the motives of the use of money. Money is a tool, not an end it itself. Money is the fruit of our labor that is to be stewarded for the kingdom with great diligence. Money is not evil unless it is used to promote evil. For wealth is a sign of divine blessing for earned wealth is a direct result of sacrificial exertion in earning money and self-restraint in spending it. Wealth people are always respected and admired for what they do and also for what they know. They are always held in the highest regard and have a seemingly odor of sanctity.
The limited human wisdom that guides our concept of virtue often becomes our compelling force for evil. Our false concept of virtue often is nothing but vanity and an attempt to gain praise or to be self-righteous about how “virtuous” we are, so we may feel superior to others. So many times, because this false virtue is accompanied by a dose of human ignorance, virtue becomes an effective weapon in making humanity a victim.
Today, “virtuous” citizen with sincere intentions attempt to impose their standards and moral codes regarding many social issues onto others in the name of ‘goodness and decency’. The question we have to ask ourselves is, can we be so sure that our concept of virtue has not become a compelling force for hatred, intolerance, and hypocrisy? Are we not, once more, victimizing humanity? A society will not be a society unless it is able to invent ideal concepts and myths that mobilize individual energies and bind people’s souls together.
Money not only satisfies our material needs, it is also, more often than not, the measure of our success. Money breeds creativity. Money also brings choice, and freedom of a sort. Money however necessary is not the scorecard for success. Without money, we feel impotent. Wealth obviously is not the good we seek, for the sole purpose it serves is to provide the means of getting something else.
We can’t live forever, at least in this world, and we can’t take anything with us, but we can leave a bit of ourselves behind, as proof that we made a difference to someone.
Money gives people freedom and security and money confers feelings of self-esteem. Wealth does buy health and happiness and happiness increases proportionately with wealth, although up to a certain point.
Money may not buy happiness,
But it certainly will buy a lot of convenience.
- Chinese Proverb
So, show delight with your money! Have money work for you and make it contribute to your life. Don’t let money take over your whole life, because money is fickle. Money is not part of who you are. You didn’t bring it with you at birth, nor will you take it with you at death. The mystery of money is not one or two-dimensional formula. Even the wealthiest people have no fixed formula to guarantee their own prosperity. If the dynamics of capitalism is postponement of enjoyment to the constantly postponed future, then we will never get around to spending the money that we have made and we will never have the fun of the money game. Bishop Lawrence, the doyen of the Episcopal Church says, “In the long run, it is only to the man of morality that wealth comes. Godliness is in league with riches. Material prosperity makes the national character sweeter, more God-like”. The problem of the future would be how to use the freedom from pressing economic cares to live wisely and agreeably and well.
We may have an idealized vision of how things are supposed to be. But the world unfolds to its own rhythm and purpose. The one who finds fault in others is always first unconsciously finding fault in himself. It is important for you to strive beyond common human understanding, beyond preconceptions of what should be and what shouldn’t be. In time, you will see the perfection in the seemingly imperfect manifestations of the world. As Mahatma Gandhi says, “The Divine guidance often comes when the horizon is the blackest”.
As describe by Milton Friedman, “Money is whatever is generally accepted in exchange for goods and services – accepted not as an object to be consumed but as an object that represents a temporary abode of purchasing power to be used for buying still other goods and services.”
Money plays a pivotal role in our lives, yet its complexities are such that no one can be totally free of misconceptions about it. According to Robert Kiyosaki, people in this world are still confused about money, even those who have lots of it. According to Kiyosaki, “the confusion about money is the main causes of majority of our world’s problem.”
Money was created to serve the peoples’ need, to inspire people to live in accordance with their values, to enable people to make and receive what they need or desire in return, and to make contributions to the community as a whole.
The Chinese character for money is composed of three symbols. One symbol means gold while the other two represent spears. The first spear symbolizes the outward struggle for survival. The second spear represents the battle within. Before one can fight and win the outward battle, one must win the battle within.
The Chinese were the first to use paper money, beginning in the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.). During the Ming Dynasty in 1300 A.D., the Chinese placed the emperor's seal and signatures of the treasurers on a crude paper made from mulberry bark.
Money originated largely from non-economic cause – from tribute and from trade, from barter and from commerce. It was used in the early days, partly because of their qualities in acting as a media of exchange. Commodities were chosen as a preferred form of barter due to its convenience and its durability. With agriculture came the need to measure value through time more accurately. For example, if a man wants to buy salt, but have nothing but cattle to give in exchange for it, he was obliged to buy salt to the value of a whole ox.
In theory, money is supposed to activate the production of goods and services. They exist to simplify exchanges and the settlement of debts, and to provide a means of storing values or savings. But in our society today, nothing, absolutely nothing can be done without money. Our health, happiness, security and our survival seems to depend solely on how much money we have or do not have. Money is used not only to exchange goods and services, but also to measure our success.
For the East Asians in particular, the economic collapse beginning from Thailand in July 1997 spread like wildfire down south. Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, South Korea were the worst hit and the business communities were in tragedy. Although, the recession was anticipated due to the high growth period from 1990 to 1996, the effect was too devastating. Hundreds of billions were lost in days, particularly in the stock market, and the individual currencies of each East Asian countries were devaluated daily. Survival becomes unbearable and the uncertainties of tomorrow reins. Value of hard currency becomes the prime importance and “Do we have enough to Survive?” was the daily mission statement.
Spending money is comparatively easy because it only depends on oneself. Earning money is a different matter. It depends on those who are willing and able to buy the goods or services that one has to offer. In a monetary economy, nearly everyone is faced with the necessity of having to sell now in order to be able to buy later.
Sometimes corruption is perceived to increase administrative efficiency, particularly with public sectors employees who receive speed money in return for productive service. But only those customers who are able or willing to bribe those officials behind the counters will benefit from the productivity. Speed money does not buy efficiency, but simply a service, which would otherwise have not been produced, in normal circumstances. Speed money also serves to encourage officers to intentionally slow down productivity so as to create opportunity for wealth creation. Nepotism plays a vital role in the increasing concentration of capital.
When one is destined for greater accomplishments in life, the preparation for such a journey can be extensive. We need to lift our hearts to give us a hint of something bigger than ourselves and of the infinite possibilities of life. Spirituality is the valuing of the non-material aspects of life, and intimations of an enduring reality. For a truly spiritual individual, the path of spirituality is like walking on a razor’s edge; it is a diligent pursuit of one’s perfection. However, for others, the pursuit of spirituality is merely a vague notion; it actually is a pretext, an excuse to practice inertia and avoidance of life’s challenges.
Before currency was used widely, words such as millionaires and billionaires are meaningless. The social changes wrought by the steady creation of wealth have transformed the world so profoundly that humans on either end of the century could almost be considered two different species. It is impossible to compare wealth today with wealth that existed before currency became the primary medium of commercial relations. Human have always had a choice in how they regard wealth and yesterday’s luxuries are becoming today’s necessities.
Life is essentially about economics, that money is the measure of most things, and that the market is its sorting mechanism. In the modern industrialized world, the principal struggle for survival takes the form of the struggle for money. Anyone who wished to accomplish his goals or claim a share of the earth’s abundance must first be prepared to do battle for money. The game of monetary success is not only about getting the money; it is also about having a great idea and being able to keep that money multiplying through worthy efforts.
Many people have a big misconception about what "wealth" is. We have allowed the world system to redefine our vocabulary, especially in regard to money and wealth. Most of the world’s money is chasing other people’s money in the global financial markets oblivious to the devastation being wreaked upon the world’s ecosystems and people. The understanding of money and its effect on our daily lives becomes the prime subject and a necessity. Morality, religious values and the need for enough money have always been the sensitive topic. We cannot deny the impact of money that had on our lives.
What is real wealth? Our lives are constantly faced with the questions of what is right and what is wrong. Happiness has always eluded us due to the uncertainties of our daily needs. There is always a sense of “Not Enough” and we are seldom capable to reach our personal level of enough. Money was created by the early leaders to perform trade but have risen to be the only reason of our struggle in life, for without money we are impotent.
Wealth is an uncertain thing. Fortunes are made and lost in thin air. While species go extinct, forests are decimated, rivers are poisoned, and people starved, the money is blindly directed towards greater profits, destroying the world in the process. The global economy has been shaped by military force, money, greed, fear, and a massive propaganda campaign. Money is a tool of empire, which has served to transfer wealth and power from the many to the few.
As Carol Brouillet says, “Real wealth is a healthy planet and healthy relationships between all lifeforms – it is inner peace, world peace, balance and harmony in the home, the community, the world”.
Money and wealth are obtained through interactions with others. After the division of labor has thoroughly taken place with which a man’s own labor can supply him, the far greater part must be derived from the labor of other people. In order to get a fair exchange value, it is necessary to convince the people with whom you do business that you can be of benefit to them. Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life. We are all programme to judge success and winning in relation to how fast we can produce visible results. To have a sense of your own worth, you first have to do something that is worthy of your own respect.
Throughout history, many people have used strength, imagination, and luck to amass greater surpluses than their contemporaries. A simple and enduring truth about wealth is that money begets money. The rich have a distinctive gift and a receptive society in which to exploit it. They have a knack for using wealth to create more wealth. Regardless of how they assembled their fortune, the millionaires were men or women who harnessed great determination to their pursuit of wealth. Each of them understood that accumulating great wealth entailed capturing a fraction of the property or production of other people. But the self-made wealthy son-of-man has always been distinguished by their resolve.
Rich people know a lot about the magic power of money and they fully understand how their money could be used to satisfy their appetites for power, status, and love. For some people, money gratifies their need to assess their value in relation to other people. They have the money to get different treatment and privileges that the poor don’t even realize they exist. A rich man has an influence not only by what he does but also by what he could do. As a Jewish proverb puts it, “with money, you are always wise, and always look handsome or for some, beautiful”. Even the sour grapes in the vineyard of the rich are sweet in comparison with the lesser.
The vast majority of the millionaires got a head start from their parents or grandparents. The best way to be rich is to have some to start with. “No man to my knowledge has ever entered the ranks of the great American fortunes merely by saving a surplus from his salary or wages”, wrote Catherine Wright Mills, in her book, ‘The Power Elite’. “In one-way or another, he has to come into command of a strategic position … and usually he has to have available a considerable sum of money”.
An income large enough to give a man what he wants and when he wants it apparently can’t make as much happiness. “Champagne everyday ceases to be a luxury”. A thing can be best enjoyed when it is barely within occasional reach, and when its selection involves a dash of sacrifice. Psychoanalytic study of the rich have found that the rich always fear that he wouldn’t have enough, that more was necessary, and as a result falls victim to their own money. The less limited one feels, the more intolerable all limitation appears. The inability to afford something seems like a terrible limitation to many people. The ability to buy anything turns buying into an irrational exercise governed by whims and fancies. Whatever a person has, if the rich does not have, it will wedge an insecurity that would torment them.
Rich people do at times have afflictions that may not have troubled the less fortunate. Wealthy people often are victims of their own wealth. The fear of uncertainty certainly troubled the rich. Occasionally, prestige was earned by the outright destruction of wealth. The rich not only failed to enjoy their riches, but are also destroyed by them. Perhaps most appealing about wealth is that the rich have so many choices – even the choice of not having to work. The idle rich don’t work and boredom is becoming an occupational hazard of the wealthy. Some work long and arduous hours simply because they fear having not enough and they will not stop till they can’t get rid of those money as fast as they comes in. More money may only bring greater happiness only if others don’t also get more.
Leisure, like money, is a form of power, which people covet without necessarily having any clear idea of what use they wish to make of it. To some truly rich, it is to possess the means to realizing in big ways one’s little whims and fantasies and sickness. Such behavior offers everyone else opportunities to feel superior, even while gorging themselves on another episode of exotic lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Many children of fortune have dispersed their money rather than increasing it by reveling extravagantly in sensual luxury and conspicuously flaunting their financial superiority. Throwing money around has become a new sort of performance art. They openly brandish their money by wearing, eating, driving, donating, and living lavishly while consuming their wealth unlimited, for the fantasy of the status game. At such, the question arises as to whether “wealth beyond one’s need should belong to God-created poor”?
“As prosperity grows, so should our desire to empower the needy and untrained poor among us. Because poverty begins internally, it is not solved with money alone. Wealth, like self-esteem and respect, is best earned. What we need to give the poor is skills, wisdom and godly compassion - truth is the ultimate form of compassion”.
Craig R. Smith, True-Wealth.
Human have always had a choice in how they regard wealth as they can produce much or desire little. It is widely assumed that people have always wanted more, that acquisitiveness is natural and austerity is unintentional. The fantasy of being rich usually involves spending money. Consumption is only limited by the imagination of the rich. Today, more than ever, wealth is synonymous with consumption because there are now so much more to buy and so many more things we need, or desire to have. In mobilizing wishes, money sets people and matter in motion. Money is more efficient for satisfying wishes and needs. Wealth makes daily life easier, removing a source of stress that weighs heavily on most people. Money controls access to precious possessions such as gold, diamonds, fast cars, fine arts, etc. to be magnificent was to be someone with the means to acquire all those coveted possessions. Indeed, today’s rich demonstrates their wealth and status by consuming many products and services: enormous mansions, castles and palaces, dozens of cars, yachts, exclusive fine arts, and expensive holidays, unmatched in world history.
Yet wealth and poverty has long been part of the human tapestry. Where there is wealth, there is almost certainly poverty. Money may not mean anything to the rich, nut surely and certainly, it does mean everything to the poor. Over the centuries, the poor had been the million of people who were born and died knowing nothing but hunger, cold, terror, and plague. Most of them have little, if any, control over their destinies. The poor and the have-nots are dubious of the idea that it is hard to be rich. The idea that the millionaires find nothing but a sad and empty place at the top is the main way these have-nots reconciled themselves to that fact.
Enabling millions of the world's poorest men and women to earn a decent living for themselves are the greatest problem facing mankind. . It can be argued that private charity is insufficient because the benefits from it accrue to people other than those who make the gifts. There is every reason to help the poor man who happens to be a farmer, not because he is a farmer but because he is poor.
Some economists had suggested that if all the monies from the rich were to be distributed to the unequal, it would gradually drift back to its original owners. That is the fundamental doctrines of Inequality and the society will have to learn to accept it and carry on with their life.
Making money can meant taking it from others, for that is the only reason why the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer. Workers work hard enough so that they would not be fired, and owner’s pay just enough so that workers won’t quit. The result is that workers would never get ahead as they work to earn enough to pay their bills. The extraordinary rich all enjoyed a knack for using wealth to create more wealth.
In recent years, increasing numbers of lives are dragged down by poverty in the midst of riches due to the prevalence of the economic myth. People are now facing the reality that those things that used to ensure their financial security – long-term jobs, stable interest rates, savings to support retirement, and stable currency – are no longer dependable. Capitalism, which was supposed to set us free, is enslaving us in return with the dominance of the economic imperative.
Most people only just talk and dream of getting rich. All too often, many of us live on the hope that tomorrow will be better. ‘Just making ends meet’ for one month can’t do us a lot of harm. But thirty years of “Just Breaking Even” can. Most of the people who earn substantial salaries barely break even every month because so much of their income goes to paying debts from excesses of the past. Part of the problem we have with thinking ahead and planning for the future is that we live in an “instant society.” We want things right now, and there is an expectation that everything should be available at our time of need. This drive for immediate satisfaction of all our wants and needs has led to a very destructive ‘get-rich-quick’ way of thinking. Success rarely comes to anyone instantly. As the years pass, we begin to feel more discomfort about our financial situations. The result is that either we start to take more risks or we retreat into ourselves and take no risk whatsoever, clinging desperately to whatever we have. As Craig Smith says, “Do what you've always done and you'll get what you've always gotten”.
Poverty is more a state of mind than an external condition. Most people struggle for small rewards because they are shackled by an unarticulated belief that they are not the kind of people who are worth the finer things in life. We are worthy of whatever material rewards we seek, so long as we acquire them honestly and honorably. It is our lack of faith in our worthiness to receive the gifts that prevents us from possessing them. There is a difference between the potential satisfaction that wealth can bring and the satisfaction experienced by staying in poverty. The specific advantage of being poor is when we have doubt on the value of trading a proven pleasurable experience for the unknown experience of being rich.
Where does all our money go? We probably may have piddled it away. We rarely have any idea why we are doing it. But we all piddle money away because we don’t pay attention. To avoid this problem, we have to look at the spending habits, for that’s where we will find the key to our financial future.
“Poverty is very close to criminal”, says Adam Smith. The worst crimes a man can commit, other than the crimes of violence, which for one with property would have to be considered irrational, are crimes against capital. A man can break most of the commandments with impunity, but please, let him not go bust, that will get him ostracized faster than lying, fudging on his income taxes, cheating, adultery, and coveting all the cows and asses there are.
Individuals choose occupation, investments, and the like partly in accordance with their taste for uncertainty. Actual inequality may be the result of arrangements designed to satisfy men’s tastes. From the universal success of lotteries, we may learn that the chance of gain is by every man over valued, and the chance of loss is under valued. In a perfectly fair lottery, those who draw the prizes ought to gain all that is lost by those who draw a blank. In the game of chance where one million fail for one that succeed, that person that gain all is at the expense of the unsuccessful million. In the lotteries, the tickets are really not worth the price which is paid, but yet it is commonly sold in the market with the consent and approval of the state. The vain hope of gaining some of the great prizes is the sole cause of the demand. Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets, the nearer you approach this certainty.
A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. The real price of everything, what everything really costs the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. Luxury extends itself even to the poorest and that the laboring poor will not be content with the same food, clothing and lodging which satisfy them in former times.
Nobody intends to become debt-ridden. None of us are born in debt. We started life with a clean slate. But then we make bad decisions, such as committing ourselves to a future lifestyle that is predicated on our current lifestyle. To avoid debt trap, we have to keep fixed expenses as low as possible. We should not obligate ourselves to long-term expenses, such as “buy now, pay later” deals. Don’t commit tomorrow’s income today, and make sure our spending habits change with it.
To excel in any profession is the most decisive mark of what is called genius or talent. Many people possess them in great perfection, but they disdain to make use of them; and many more are capable of acquiring them, if they could make anything honorable. The over-weaning conceit, which the greater parts of men have of their abilities, is an ancient evil.
Human can never be satisfied with whatever they get because they will want something else as soon as they get what they had wanted. As soon as they get what they wanted, those things will quickly lose its attractiveness and they will want to give it up and look for something else, which they do not already have. Throughout our lives, we struggle to grasp at things, and we always experience dissatisfaction because we and the things we grasp are always changing. When people have easy lives and are not suffering from any handicaps, they have a tendency to look at what is lacking in their lives. Suffering is caused by dissatisfaction. Suffering takes many forms – social ills, discrimination, and misconceptions. The main cause of dissatisfaction is usually due to emotional conflict, when we fail to reconcile our feelings with the feelings of others. Our happiness is always influenced by the words and opinions of others or by circumstances others had created. The causes of our suffering lies in the fact that we are constantly comparing ourselves with others and trying to adjust ourselves by looking at the happiness beyond us. This therefore creates anxiety, which stems from a fear of being held in lower regard than we would have wish. Anxiety also stems from worries about the future that we could be worse off than we are now.
At the root of the impulse to pile up money is the compulsion to work. This compulsion to work subordinates man to things. It reduces the drives of human being to greed and competition, to aggression and possessiveness. The desire and greed for money takes the place of all genuinely human needs. A man of large revenue thinks he ought to live like other men of large revenue and to spent a great part of his time in festivity, in vanity and in dissipation. Then he will be in the position of a man living beyond his income that insists that he cannot possibly earn more, or spent less, or borrow, or finance the excess out of his assets. Thus the apparent accumulation of wealth is really the impoverishment of human nature, and its appropriate morality is the renunciation of human nature and desires – asceticism (Norman Brown, Life Against Death). A society fuelled mainly by envy of your neighbor is not one that seems worth fighting for.
Human have all the potential to cultivate their minds to reach their goal and at such, we had to concentrate on developing ourselves rather than struggling in vain. For those who always look for bad news and are constantly afraid of failure will find an environment that correspond to their thoughts. As the saying goes, “The key to making the sun rise is not trying to hold on to the night for too long”.
Accountants define "wealth" as our assets minus our liabilities. But in today's volatile financial world, assets can quickly become liabilities if we're not careful. Did you know that 80% of American's "wealth" exists ONLY on paper and in computers? True wealth must have two important elements:
No.1. It must stand the test of time, and
No.2, it should never be a liability.
According to Craig Smith, Wealth is equal to substance plus time. The value of your time is determined by your commitment to efficiency, and your understanding the division of labor, or where you fit in best at work. If we fine-tune our time management, our income will rise too. First, we have to read to lead ... and secondly to follow leaders who are full of integrity and substance.
Money is the element of life that inspires the greatest of emotions in individuals. It is tightly connected with the emotions of agony and ecstasy. When you have money, you never feel you have enough. If you have lost all the money, you wish you had appreciated it more when you did have them.
Wealth is an uncertain thing. Every day, fortunes are made and lost. The people who have acquired wealth by successfully fighting the inward and outward battles is not so devastated by financial catastrophe as is the person who has acquired wealth by accident of birth or windfall.
If you are fortunate to inherit wealth and not have the misfortune to lose it, that can sometimes be a curse as well as you could be imprisoned by your wealth: By stripping yourself of the need to work, inherited wealth encouraged idleness and engendered feelings of worthlessness. The path to wealth is not to chase money for its own sake, but to understand and develop your own intrinsic talents and inclination. You rarely give a beggar money because you want to reward him for his skill in begging.
Many people who cannot earn whatever amount of money they consider adequate and proper, are oppressed by a powerful sense of guilt. They find it hard to preserve their self-esteem and live a life of desperation, continuously searching for distractions to cover their insufficiency, and eager to immense themselves in whatever will take their minds off their failure. They seek refuge by getting addicted to drugs, alcohol, food, etc, hoping that it would remedy their despair, which ultimately sets off a vicious cycle of what we call “dysfunctional behavior” that further reduces their income. The less educated people would have one possible form of expression; that is to break the law, by engaging in criminal activities such as robbery, assault, rape, and murder.
Inequality of wealth or insufficiency has much to do with our attitude and understanding of money. Much of the grievance and inability to prosper is largely due to our own folly, laziness, idleness, pride and inability to accept pain. Many would spend their time in absolute sloth, or doing nothing. They spent much of their time sleeping, time wasting and find time becoming insufficient or what they call “not-enough-time” when opportunity comes their way. When opportunities are available to them, they were sleeping enough in their grave. Another is laziness, which seems to travel so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him. Lazy people are just too busy to take care of their wealth.
Fear is to a man’s soul as a drop of poison is to a well of spring water. Due to the grace of fear, we learn to respect the laws of nature. The most profound knowledge is often only available through direct perception and experience. Knowing the source of fear is the essential element; without it, your understanding of fear will not be complete.
If you are concerned about the outcome of a circumstance, you will experience no fear. When you attach yourself to expectations, anxiety and fear will overcome you. The outcome will be what it will be, regardless of your expectations and fear. Beneath the fear of success and failure is the fear of pain. The most motivating factor in human actions is the desire to avoid pain and do what promises us pleasure.
We will make mistakes no matter which path we follow, but mistakes made on the path to self-discovery will correct themselves, while those made through blind adherence to subjective standards simply perpetuate the folly. Every time we accomplish something and move ahead, we have to exchange the known conditions of our life for uncertainty and unfamiliarity. The question is “What do we want” both for ourselves and for others? We can’t in all equality, propose one set of rules for ourselves and some other thing for everyone else. There should not be one code for the rich and another for the poor. Morality starts with oneself, but has to work for everyone else.
We must understand that a great part of the rich men’s wealth is largely due to the fact that they did not consume much of their income but saved and invest them. With the additional return from their investments, they then plough them back into productive employments for others to consume, resulting in the further accumulation of capital and income.
An augmentation of fortune is the means by which men propose and wish to better their living conditions. The most likely way of augmenting fortune is to save and accumulate some part of what we acquire, either regularly and annually, or upon some extraordinary occasions. Too often we dissipate our energy in resenting the success of others and railing at fate for keeping us from acquiring the wealth we seek. This is the battle within. Almost everyone thinks he wants to be rich, but in reality most of us are where we want to be financially. Obtaining prosperity is not about what you are willing to do to gain it; more importantly, it is about what you are willing to give up in exchange for it. You don’t have to beg in your prayers for material prosperity. The abundance of the world is freely given to those who claim it as their natural birthright.
Creating wealth is to use money you have in a very specific way. “Most people never achieve wealth because they spend all their time chasing ‘bucks’ and spending ‘dough’ on things that brings no return,” laments Robert Kiyosaki. It takes time for wealth to grow and you need to nurture and care for it as it does. The rich get richer because they invest and the poor gets poorer because they consume. People who spend a little more than they earn are spending their future. Pretty soon, the past becomes a burden that life turns into sheer drudgery. It is important that we pay for tomorrow today and not create any debt that would harm us in the future. Therefore, we must earn enough to pay off the past, and earn a little more for the future.
In most part of our life, we are able to recognize ‘Enough’. We know when we have had enough to eat, sleep and play. More than enough then becomes unnecessary, and even counterproductive. It is sad to note that those who do not know what is enough just cannot move forward. They become trapped in the rut of their own monotony day after day, always wanting more of the same, never trying anything new, always dissatisfied, and is unable to find any positive meaning in life.
Money is a necessity, but not sufficient condition of happiness, in which case, more money will not help, if you already have enough. Some things are not free, but because we don’t fully price their everyday use they seem to be free. If you lived alone on a desert island you wouldn’t need money or markets and you wouldn’t miss them. But you might find it very difficult to live without someone to compare yourself with.
More need not mean better. Many a times, we have to learn to say ‘enough’ in order to move on. In fact, the lower we define our level of enough, the sooner we will taste abundance and the freer we will be.
Enough is never enough where our personal standards are involved. Personal growth has no limit. But growth does not mean more of the same. It can mean better rather than bigger. It can mean leaner rather than deeper. Bigness, in both business and life, can lead to a lack of focus, too much complexity and, in the end, too wide a spread to control, and ultimately, the eventual collapse of our empire.
The philosophy of enough is the right of everyone to taste the possibility of enough. But a society that does not recognize the morality of ‘Enough’ will see excesses arise which verge on the obscene, as those who have first choice of society’s reaches appropriate them for themselves. As Edward Burke once said, “ Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites”.
“It is, of course, easy to say “Enough is Enough” when you quite clearly already have more than enough”, says Chin-Ning Chu. “The problem for most people is getting to that stage of sufficiency. A society that adopts the doctrine of enough has to make it a priority to ensure that everyone has a real chance of being able to reach their personal level of enough, so that they can move on. No one can say what level should be for anyone else. It has to be a personal decision. It depends on a trade-off of risks: the risk of moving on. And perhaps, of failing, as against the risk of missing out on a new opportunity, a new chance to learn. The lower we can set the level of enough, the freer we can explore something else”.
The Doctrine of Enough does not mean giving up or renouncing all the activities of this world. The doctrine requires that we move on, not that we withdraw, that we recognize when more of something no longer means personal growth. Most of us just cling for too long to the comfortable and the familiar.
We've heard it said that money is the root of all-evil. The Truth is that the LOVE of money is the critical factor in determining if money is used for good or evil. Wealth is an indication that a righteous man has his house in order. The bottom line is that money, like technology, is spiritually neutral. It can be used for good or evil. God always deals with the heart and the motives of the use of money. Money is a tool, not an end it itself. Money is the fruit of our labor that is to be stewarded for the kingdom with great diligence. Money is not evil unless it is used to promote evil. For wealth is a sign of divine blessing for earned wealth is a direct result of sacrificial exertion in earning money and self-restraint in spending it. Wealth people are always respected and admired for what they do and also for what they know. They are always held in the highest regard and have a seemingly odor of sanctity.
The limited human wisdom that guides our concept of virtue often becomes our compelling force for evil. Our false concept of virtue often is nothing but vanity and an attempt to gain praise or to be self-righteous about how “virtuous” we are, so we may feel superior to others. So many times, because this false virtue is accompanied by a dose of human ignorance, virtue becomes an effective weapon in making humanity a victim.
Today, “virtuous” citizen with sincere intentions attempt to impose their standards and moral codes regarding many social issues onto others in the name of ‘goodness and decency’. The question we have to ask ourselves is, can we be so sure that our concept of virtue has not become a compelling force for hatred, intolerance, and hypocrisy? Are we not, once more, victimizing humanity? A society will not be a society unless it is able to invent ideal concepts and myths that mobilize individual energies and bind people’s souls together.
Money not only satisfies our material needs, it is also, more often than not, the measure of our success. Money breeds creativity. Money also brings choice, and freedom of a sort. Money however necessary is not the scorecard for success. Without money, we feel impotent. Wealth obviously is not the good we seek, for the sole purpose it serves is to provide the means of getting something else.
We can’t live forever, at least in this world, and we can’t take anything with us, but we can leave a bit of ourselves behind, as proof that we made a difference to someone.
Money gives people freedom and security and money confers feelings of self-esteem. Wealth does buy health and happiness and happiness increases proportionately with wealth, although up to a certain point.
Money may not buy happiness,
But it certainly will buy a lot of convenience.
- Chinese Proverb
So, show delight with your money! Have money work for you and make it contribute to your life. Don’t let money take over your whole life, because money is fickle. Money is not part of who you are. You didn’t bring it with you at birth, nor will you take it with you at death. The mystery of money is not one or two-dimensional formula. Even the wealthiest people have no fixed formula to guarantee their own prosperity. If the dynamics of capitalism is postponement of enjoyment to the constantly postponed future, then we will never get around to spending the money that we have made and we will never have the fun of the money game. Bishop Lawrence, the doyen of the Episcopal Church says, “In the long run, it is only to the man of morality that wealth comes. Godliness is in league with riches. Material prosperity makes the national character sweeter, more God-like”. The problem of the future would be how to use the freedom from pressing economic cares to live wisely and agreeably and well.
We may have an idealized vision of how things are supposed to be. But the world unfolds to its own rhythm and purpose. The one who finds fault in others is always first unconsciously finding fault in himself. It is important for you to strive beyond common human understanding, beyond preconceptions of what should be and what shouldn’t be. In time, you will see the perfection in the seemingly imperfect manifestations of the world. As Mahatma Gandhi says, “The Divine guidance often comes when the horizon is the blackest”.
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