Employ money to make your Life
comfortable. Don’t let it enslave you!
This morning’s papers had a
shocking story of girl from Kochi suing her father for gifting her ‘fake
jewelry’ at her wedding. It’s yet another instance of how money keeps us from
being human! It got me thinking.
Money is important. No doubt. It
can buy you many things that will make your Life simpler and comfortable. But
letting money buy over your peace of mind is hara-kiri.
Our entire attitude to Life has
become money-oriented. Life decisions are being taken basis whether it can help
make or save money. Not basis whether it can give you joy! Another dimension worth
considering is that you can never say what people want of you. Do they want you
and respect you for what you really are? Or do they want your money and respect
how much of it you have? So, when money, which anyway is impermanent, stops
coming your way, you suddenly discover that your durbar has dispersed. People
don’t want you anymore. Because you don’t have what they want with you. You
feel lonely, unwanted and unhappy. That’s when your big realization happens.
That money is just a means. It must not dominate your Life, your emotions or
your actions. Instead if you let happiness dominate your Life, emotions and
actions, you will still make money. More important, you will then know how to
use it!
I remember the movie Forrest Gump,
which has a very relevant line that Gump says: “Don’t own nothin’ if you can help it. If you can, rent your shoes.” This
whole desire to amass more and more in the hope that we will be secure and
happy makes us slaves of a lifestyle we have long stopped enjoying. It fills
our lives with grief every time something goes wrong with our Life __ as it
often will and does! You lose your job or an important business contract and
you imagine it is the end of the road. You plunge into depression. Or you lose
your sanity over trying to protect what wasn’t worth protecting at all in the
first place. I love LAMY pens. And I collect them as well, besides using them.
A few years ago, when on a flight, I lost my favorite blue LAMY pen. For weeks
I agonized over it. I felt a part of me was lost. I hunted high and low for one
in India. At that time, Indian stationers did not retail LAMYs. And so I couldn’t
find one in India. Years after this incident, my Firm went bankrupt and we entered
a phase of complete pennilessness. One day, while practicing my daily silence
period, it suddenly struck me how stupid I had been in agonizing over the loss of
a pen, when in reality, my family and I had lost everything material __ all our
money, all assets. And what remained was just us and our love for each other!
It was a beautiful moment of awakening. The light that appeared in that moment
continues to drench my Life with its brilliance!
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| Azim Premji: Keeper not Owner |
A recent issue of Forbes India has
Azim Premji, one of the wealthiest Indians, and chairman of Wipro, share his
views about ‘employing’ his wealth to make a difference to others. His son
Rishad, who works with Premji, both in the corporate and also on the board of
Azim Premji Foundation, the Group’s philanthropy arm, says that they (the
Premji family) are only keepers of the wealth (estimated to be $ 12 billion)
and not its owners. “He’s (Azim Premji) always told us, ‘I am comfortable
giving you something in Life but if you want anything above that, you have to
earn it for yourself. The rest is meant to be given away, it is an obligation
to give it away’,” says Rishad to Forbes India’s Mitu Jayashankar.
Important perspective that.
You or I may not have the billions. We may be giving. Or we may plan to give. But
the least you__and I__can do is to not grieve over money or let it enslave us.
Let’s put it to good use __ to make our lives comfortable and to make a difference
to someone else’s!
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