Last Friday’s cell was about success. What is success? This depends on your age when you are asked to define success. For my eight year old son, his main concern should be academic success, that is, to do well in his studies. Well, I would not say that he is too enthusiastic about it. For a working adult, his goal is to race up the career ladder, to be recognized as one of the best in his field, to be promoted and get well paid. To an octogenarian, success is to pass over a great legacy to his children and grandchildren. He would want to be remembered for all his positive contributions to the family and to make amends if he still can. So, success defies pigeon-holed definition.
Even between different professions, success varies widely. Ask a priest and a stockbroker and you will have wholly different views of success. Success for one is measured by catechism, charity and austerity. The other is measured by making a killing in the stock market, rewarding clients with rich returns, and maybe investing in a yacht or two as a testament to one’s stock picking acumen. Success also changes over time. In this materialistic culture, the young would want to be rich and famous. The middle-ager with a family would strive to work hard to support the family and make sure life holds together till the children grows up to working age. The retirees see it all differently from the rest. As they are closer to their grave, their life’s philosophy is usually less hurried, more generous, and deeply practical. After going through life’s experiences, the tears and the shame, the regrets and the pain, the joy and the misgivings, they are generally more enlightened and forgiving. Success to them is usually relationship-oriented with a touch of religious depth to it. Apart from that, nothing truly satisfies.
Recently, I read a book written by two highly successful individuals in their own rights. Donald Trump, the real estate billionaire, and Robert T. Kiyosaki, the investor extraordinaire, came together, with generous support from a dedicated team of editors and writers, to write a book entitled WHY WE WANT YOU TO BE RICH. The book title is very telling. These two towering capitalists of our time want their readers to be rich by way of astute investment over one’s lifetime. In a nutshell, their message is the same message that their rich dads gave them, “We are born rich. We all have been given the most powerful lever on earth, our mind…so use your mind for leverage to make you rich rather than to make excuses.” Some of the excuses that unsuccessful people give are listed by them and we should be quite familiar with some of them. Here are the excuses in one helping: Laziness…Bad habits…Lack of education…Lack of experience…Lack of guidance…Bad attitude…Bad influence…Bad environment…Lack of focus…Lack of determination…Lack of courage.
There is no doubt that the book gave some very practical advice about investment and how to get rich. Here are some of the high points of the book. The authors identified three kinds of investors: (1) People who do not invest at all (well, by right, these group are not investors at all); (2) People who invest not to lose; (3) People who invest to win. According to them, those who make it rich are those who invest to win. And those who invest to win are those who leverage wisely. The key to growing rich is to leverage big so that one can reap big. Leverage is defined as the ability to do more with less. The “less” that they are referring to is essentially raising debt (loan) to invest in worthy stocks or property. Thereafter, one is to focus exclusively on the investment like a farmer conscientiously tending to his harvest field. Quite cleverly, the acronym for FOCUS is Follow One Course Until Successful.
The book has other fun wordplay like the three Ds of Desire, Drive and Discipline. Most of us desire to be rich but do not have the drive or the discipline. As such, we fall short. Then, there is the Triple As: Ambition, Ability and Attitude. This is self-explanatory, I guess. Here’s more wordplay. How about the Triple Es: Education, Experience and Execution. Lastly, the Four Hs of Honor, Humility, Humor and Happiness. Not much explanation was given in the book on defining these general terms. But any mature reader roughly gets the general intent of the ideas imparted.
The all important advice given by these hyper-rich men is to debunk the common advice issued by most financial advisers. The philosophy of these common financial advisers is to work hard, save more, get out of debt, invest for the long term and diversify. The book rallied strongly against this dated advice. To them, we should not be working slavishly for money. But, money should work diligently for us via wise and focused investments. They also advised against over-saving because more funds saved means less funds invested. Then, debt is not a taboo for them. Like the financial mavericks that they are, the authors encouraged taking measured risk. In their own words, “There is good debt and bad debt. The purpose of getting financially smart is to know when to use debt and when not to.” And lastly, the book discouraged diversification like what mutual funds managers do. The authors also encouraged people to know everything about their investment and persist in it until it bears fruit. In the end, the authors left the reader with this choice: Work for the rest of your life as someone’s employee or as a small business owner, or prosper by being the boss of big businesses or a multimillionaire investor. The choice is yours, and the destiny is your own making. In one of the book’s captions, it reads, “Give yourself a little freedom to develop into something or someone you’d actually like to be.”
While the book gives good and practical advice for all, young and old, one has to bear in mind that the authors offer only one aspect of success as defined by this world. Material wealth is no doubt important. But money can buy only so much, its satisfaction goes only so deep, and its value reaches only so far. At the end of the day, any millionaire or billionaire would have to “kowtow” this simple truth, “To be successful and unhappy is the greatest failure of all.”
I am not one who would eschew wealth-generating activities. I believe in wise investments of stocks, shares and property. I believe in taking calculated risks, making a good profit in business and related commercial transactions. There is nothing wrong with owning big mansions, fancy cars and a personal yacht. The Bible desires that we prosper in our own way and in our own time. But the risk still lurks in the corner, waiting to pounce on us when we are at the top of our material success. This risk is not the risk of losing it all, that is, our money, property and shares. It is not the risk of making a wrong calculation that might transform our status quo overnight from an instant millionaire to a distant street pauper. It is not the risk of financial bankruptcy. This risk is more insidious than that. It is in fact the risk of having everything until everything has us. It is the risk of never having enough and always wanting more. It is the disease of covetousness, which rots our soul with envy and greed. Here the remarks of a famous naturalist John Muir are instructive. He once compared himself to the railroad magnate E.H. Harriman by saying, “I am richer than the railroad magnate because I have all the money I want, and he hasn’t.”
As Christians, we have to keep all perspectives in the right balance. Our wants may mutate along the way. In our youth, enough is mostly enough. We are carefree and sometimes careless. We have moderated expectations of material possessions. Should our basic needs be satisfied, we are more or less satisfied. Most youth I met are more concerned with their immediate, more tangible needs like making the grades, getting into a good school, having trusted friends, and enjoying the coming holidays. But as we age, and enter the formidable rat-race, our desires take a twisted turn down the rabbit hole. Our wants now become less satiable. We want more things, more fame, more recognition. Our vortex of wants become deeper, wider and spins faster. Soon, if left to its own natural course, our wants mutate to become our needs. When our basic needs for food and security are all sated, we clamor for more material possessions. It is at this time that we no longer just “want” a bigger house, a speedier car, a fatter bank account, or the other subtler forms of greed like more self-recognition and self-adulation.
As our unchecked desires for the things of his world go into hyper-drive, we turn our wants into needs and degenerate into a helpless addict for material things, hankering for one material high after another. Soon, we turn this addiction into an entitlement and we cannot live without it; neither do we want to. Although a smaller car would still serve the function of transporting us from point A to point B, our warped sense of entitlement would make us crave for a bigger, more expensive transport; not so much to transport us from one point to another but for purposes of showing off to those we deem as “the less fortunate.” But this act of showing off becomes a self-serving game of one-upmanship. In other words, it becomes an ugly competition to out-do, out-wit and out-smart anyone whom we are envious of. You can see how out of control the endgame will be.
In the end, I think it is much safer to embrace the wisdom in 1 Timothy 6:6, “But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out of it.” Note that the pair is logical and inseparable. Godliness with contentment is juxtapositioned together. No other juxtapositions will do. There is no such pairing as “wealth with contentment” or “marriage with contentment” or “career with contentment”.
Having said this, let me clarify. I have indeed seen many wealthy men and women who are contented. And contentment is a state of mind. Although the opposite of contentment is covetousness, it is not the same with “resting on your laurels”, “idling away your life” or “retiring early and becoming a beach bum.” So, you can pursue your dreams while maintaining a balanced attitude of contentment.
You can easily identify a contented wealthy person by his lifestyle. Such a person is always giving unconditionally. He has a peace of mind, always willing to learn, humble and even self-deprecating at times. He savors life’s challenges and makes the most of it. And most of all, he is genuinely happy for the success of others and he does not wallow in self-pity or seethes with anger and bitterness when others succeed.
But these wealthy folks are contented not because of their great accumulation of material possessions or the recognition and adulation that come with it. I believe the root cause of their contentment is godliness. In Luke 12:21, Jesus admonished us to be “rich to God.” Needless to say, to be rich in God is different from being wealthy in this world. The richness of God is not measured by the abundance of our possession. If it were so, Jesus would not have given this injunction to all in Luke 12:33-34, “Sell your possession and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroy. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
To be rich in God is to come to the realization and acceptance that we are merely stewards of God’s material possession. We are His faithful trustees and we manage His possessions, and not insist that we own every bit of it. The ultimate ownership is with our Creator. And the hallmark of a godly and contented wealthy person is a spirit of selfless giving and not selfish hoarding.
So, let’s return full circle on our definition of success. It is said that success is not in the things we see, it is intangible, untouchable. It is like the air we breathe. We know it and we feel safe and secure in it, but we cannot see it. Success is not a material force, it is a spirited substance. The Bible urges us to seek the kingdom of God and all His righteousness for only in this earnest search can our joy in this life be complete.
Let me end with these revelatory words from the Christian missionary martyr, Jim Elliot. Please do not gloss over these powerful words but always keep them in your heart so that you do not lose sight of what is truly important in this life and the life to come, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” A buffet-spread for thought?
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