Earnings and amassing wealth

Question:-

As the people in the world trying hard to earn more money or accumulate wealth like lands and properties, can we also strive for such amassing wealth?

Answer:-

I recommend to earn and accumulate wealth as much as possible.

But…there are other considerations while making money.

ENJOYMENT:
The first and foremost is the enjoyment of life. The earning of money should not in any way disturb our enjoyment of life. The earnings are meant for enjoyment. So, the process of earning money should not defeat the enjoyment, which is the whole purpose of making the money. I presume this point is very clear.

Apart from the above, there are other considerations also.

Who are we? We are made up of body, mind and soul. Apart from this, we have our own Identity, that is Solai, or Stephen. Suppose, if somebody says, Solai is a coward. It is pointing a person other than the body and mind. Like drumstick, chilly powder, bengal gram, water has individual names. But, when all are combined it has a different name called Sambar. Similarly, apart from the individual components like body, mind and soul the combination has a name like Solai or Stephen.

So, the earning of money should not in any way damage these components of a person, namely, the body, mind and the individual identity. Soul is unaffected by anything. So, we have to exclude it.

BODY:
Now, let us see, how some of the earning process affects the body:

Many people, work for almost 18 hours and have a little sleep and work and work. By this way they not only enjoy, but they also loose the health.

Some people, though they don’t have a long hours of work, they work under tremendous stress and stress leads to lots of internal health problems, including high BP, hyper acidity, nervous break down etc.,

Some people work under unhealthy and unhygienic working conditions and end up in occupational hazards.

Some people stick to the fields, where they don’t get job satisfaction, but, continue their job as they are getting lots of money. At the end, they will feel a vacuum and they will end up in chronic depression.

In some families, the husband and wife work together and they have to travel long distance to their work places, so they woke up early and they leave the young kids in the crèche or baby sitting and they run for work. They don’t get sufficient peace to do their house hold work and their children don’t get sufficient food from the crèche or baby sitter, so the whole family’s food habits get changed and eventually their health gets affected.

So, ultimately, the earning process should not affect greatly the 8 hours work, 8 hours spare time for family and 8 hours sleep pattern. In short the health should not be under threat due to earning process.

MIND:

After all, the mind is the key player in everything. But, the money or properties has the peculiar character to affect the mind greatly.

In what way money or properties affect the mind? When we loose money, or when our earnings or accumulation of wealth with higher benefit is obstructed, or when we assume that we lost money.

For example 1: we buy a pen for $ 2 and we go to another shop next day and we noticed that they are selling at $ 1, then we feel disappointed. We curse us for not checking with many places; in case if it was recommended by our spouse, we curse him or her and we curse the first shopkeeper; we recommend our friends not to go there and we loose sleep on the night for being cheated for $1. Suppose, if we didn’t visit the second shop, our peace is with us. The same product and same price we are so much happy and whenever we write we feel great about the pen. But, the moment we understand that we are cheated, whenever we write with that pen, we feel about the cheat and we don’t feel great instead we feel small when we write with the pen.

Example 2: The Company has given me a brand new Toyota Camry and it is fantastic and I feel great about it. But, the moment I come to know that somebody much junior to me, with less qualification, with less experience, is also given the same Toyota Camry, I lost my happiness. I will feel this is ridiculous and I am being degraded in the company. So, until I get a better car or that person is given a smaller car, I will not be happy.

Example 3: When the exchange rate is higher or lower or when the stock prices are lower or higher or the gold rates or higher or lower, it affects our mind. For example, we sent $10,000/- to India at Rs 46/- per dollar on 17/12/06 and on 18th the rate gone up to Rs 52/-. That is enough for us to feel depress that I should have waited for one more day. I lost Rs 60,000 in one day. So, whether we really lost any money? No. suppose, if the rate gone down to Rs 42/- we would have felt happy. It applies to the other rates I mentioned above. I know people who look at the rate simply but either feel happy or feel sadness.

Apart from the above examples of fictitious losses, there are at times actual losses also. Suppose, we buy a washing machine with one year guarantee and on the 13th month the washing machine is beyond repairable. We lost and we hear from someone that they purchased some or same washing machine 7 years ago and it is still running good. Our mind goes down further on the magnitude of loss. We purchased a plot on the prime location assuming that it will escalate in the future. But, unfortunately the Govt. constructed a fly over in front of the plot and even for free no one will buy the plot. We lost in the deal.

Apart from this there will be real loses like losing our baggage, or jewels or laptop or mobile etc.,

Next is the loss of opportunity or obstruction to our growth or better prospectus. For example, now, you feel that you have somehow been stopped from being allowed to get a better job in a better state. Similarly, people think that “I have been stopped from being producing a movie by some means.” People think that “I have been stopped from starting some business etc; somehow my promotion is stopped; somehow my increment is stopped.”

All these, fictitious, actual and real losses and our assumption that we are stopped from our growth opportunities disturb our mind. We should not allow these losses to disturb or affect our mind in any way. In nutshell, suppose, if we purchased an expensive diamond necklace and we lost during a party and if we are able to come in the night and sleep as if we lost a worn-out slipper, then we are highly matured. That shows that the money is not affecting our mind.

INDIVIDUALITY:

To the individuality, we attach so many attributes like prestige, pride, ego, dignity, credibility, honesty etc.

A person apart from his body, mind and soul he is made up of his characters. These characters are the values of life.

In majority of the cases these values are lost in process of making money.

The hero in the movie “E” is prepared to kill and do prostitution to make money. We will not be even killing a rabbit if we are given money. A pimp will wait near Egmore and look for individual girls who are lost and took them to prostitution and he will not feel anything bad for the feelings of the girls or for the prostitution instead he will look at the money only.

On the contrary, suppose, if a company tells our conservative girls to come just with very minimal low cut T shirts, some will refuse even if it is highly paid job.

Just I gave some examples of the various values in our life.

But…there is a wrong notion among people that we can do anything to amass wealth. You can lie, you can cheat, you can beg, you can hide things, you can twist facts, you can kneel down etc., for the sake of money. This mentality has come from America and western. That is why all the advertisements show all the misleading information. If we tell lie in Politics it is called diplomacy (Raja thanthiram), if we tell lie in the business it is called Business strategy (viyaabara thanthiram). But, this is wrong.

When we are making money, we should not in any way compromise our values. Once the values are compromised we loose our identity. For example, if someone says, you send your wife with miniskirt and sleeveless low cut jacket, I cannot send and my wife will kill me. Why? Because, by doing this as per my wife or me, it is devaluing us. Whereas, we don’t mind making a lie in the CV or in the interview or in presenting a report or twisting the facts for our convenient.

There are so many wealthy kings and businessmen lived and died in the past, but do we remember them. But, we remember the people, who were penniless. In the Gandhi movie, the first dialogue comes from the final ceremony commentator, saying, “This man is not a head of any state, not a head of any political organization, not owning any properties, but all the heads of states from all over the world is gathered….” Why? That is the value of a person. The king of Ramanathapuram, Baskara Sethupathi took the position of a horse and pulled the chariot wherein Swami Vivekananda was sitting. Swami Vivekananda was much younger than the Raja Baskara Sethupathi and the king has a large reputation and has enormous wealth, but assumed a position of horse and pulled him. So, there, the value of money and position became smaller than the character. The same with any saints.

So, as long as our individual value is not degraded or devalued, we can make money. But, I know wealthy people just for the sake of 10 rupees making big lies.

So, the summary is: We can make money or earn money and accumulate wealth, without in anyway compromising or affecting the four considerations mentioned above, the enjoyment, the health, the mind peace and the individual value.

Our mind should be focused on making money, we should think about saving money, we should think about not wasting anything, we should be cautious in spending, we should look for opportunities for the ways and means to increase the earnings and wealth. But, not at the cost of enjoyment, health, mind peace and individual value. These four are the priorities in life than money and wealth.