How to be rich

Wanna be rich? Do you really wanna be filthy rich? Read this!

You’re probably expecting this to be just another networking scam, I mean scheme spreading all over the internet like wildfire promising loads of cash. Well I have no selfies posing with thick wads of money stacked into a fan or dramatically spread all over the bed with me lying on it. I don't have a lot of money to tell you the truth, and reading this won’t earn you a dime. All I got is my two cents about the subject. So please read on.

The desire to get rich, stripping away the usual wanting to enjoy more-- more leecher  friends, paid admirers and criers, servants, etc.-- is eventually an issue of security. We want more means to secure for us a steady stream of “happiness” in this life. After all life is too short to be sad. Sounds familiar? Yeah, you might have heard or actually said it back in college when your mouth is at one end of a hose and in the other is a jar of booze. We're so desperate to feel happiness that we jump blindly at the assumption that being rich is synonymous with being happy. I don’t blame myself, hell, I heard that one from school: study hard, get a good job, earn lots of money--to which I add, stash a large portion of it in health care, for you’re gonna need it when you’re on a wheelchair and-- as Ethan Hawke puts it in Reality Bites-- "your balls are filled with tumors."

I guess we’re all just afraid to see our lives quickly pass us by without having experienced a gulp of bliss in this world. Well that’s just natural, who doesn't want bliss? But knowing I want bliss is one thing, and knowing where to get it is another. To think that happiness can be bought like candy from a store is ignorance. Money buys almost everything so it must follow that it can also buy happiness--that's foolish. 

First, I don't see a lot of happy rich people. Yes, they are more comfortable in their big houses, flashy in their clothes, trendy in their new toys, but who knows the state of their hearts? What I hear from time to time instead are rich people addicted to drugs and alcohol, going in and out of rehab or worse the morgue. If a rich person is satisfied with the things money can buy why would he take the trouble of wasting himself in coke? What pain is so great that only an o.d. can ease it? 

Clearly he is not satisfied nor happy. He has access to enjoy his senses but he is not content. He has practically everything but he is empty. All he knows about ecstasy is that it is a pill.  Come to think of it, if in case happiness is for sale, life then would be so much easier—if I wanted to be happy, I'd just rob a bank. But bank robbers and even bankers are not the happiest bunch I know.  

Let me divert a little bit:

Out of his compassion, my teacher--from outside of school actually--shared to me his story about a bicycle he was going to receive on Christmas day. Basically that year for him was 360 days of anticipation, intensifying as the big day drew near. In his mind, he had made all the plans where he was to ride the bike, he was guessing what his friends would say, etc. He was so sure in his heart that this bike is the one, this bike will complete him. Then the big day came and he opened the big box under the tree, saw the bike and expected the happiness.  And for a while it did made him happy, the first minutes being the best. But after a few days, it dawned on him, his bike was just another thing. That early on he realized that no thing coming from this world can ever make anyone happy. And he was right. 

We all have our own versions of this anecdote, our bicycles come to us in different forms. Mine, to cite one, comes in a more pathetic form: paper. I used to love receiving neat little pieces of paper with my name on it written in fat fancy texts--most call it a certificate. I used to hang it on my wall every time I get one. With the number of paper I get, I need a wall the size of a football field—just kidding. The point is how much paper do I actually need to receive to really feel I'd finally nailed it? I did not know. Until he enlightened me about how ridiculous and pointless my farming for recognition was. Bicycles and certificates are those little cute things that are not really considered as things even. Fancy cars, mansions, million dollar bags, those, are things that anyone would definitely recognize as neat things. The thing is we are actually clueless of whether something could make us happy or not, so we try and we try and we try and we try, but we "can’t get no satisfaction." Actually it is impossible to be happy when we are struggling to be happy. The struggle itself drains us much of our innocence, our ideals and whatever little humanity we have left for a chance of a little sip of nectar out of life.  But that’s another story.

My teacher then added: Don’t worry too much about getting rich. The worse thing that could happen to being poor is starve to death. We don’t immediately see people actually starving to death do we?. Take the hobos, and the crazies, they practically have nothing but they’re still around. I mean, yes there are millions of people starving in the world, and thousands may be actually dying of hunger, but this number is relatively small compared to the people dying of heart attacks, stroke, cancer because of over eating. Tell me, how many people are actually trying to gain weight? The Biggest Gainer show is yet to be seen. The roads are filled with joggers, panting, suffering the excess weight of their bodies. The problem of the world is not hunger for food, the problem is hunger for substance, for life. As food can be bought by money, substance and life can be purchased by something else.

Jesus said don’t worry about not having material riches or even worrying for your survival. For God loves you more than the care-less birds in the sky, or the adequately clothed wildflowers in the meadows.  All the saintly teachers say that real wealth is love for God. Love for God is even better than seeing God. Being spiritual in essence, love for the Supreme Spirit nourishes our real hunger—our hunger for God. So don’t burden yourself with worry. Don’t fill your house with things and worry about them if they’d be stolen or broken, instead fill your heart with love for the Lord, then love for others, and you will truly feel like a million bucks hundred fold. Haribol!