When my primary school teacher started to talk about the virtue of saving, and encouraged us to develop it as a habit, I thought that sounded so familiar. Well, I learned about saving from my own personal experience at home. Yes, I learned to save at a very young age, the quest for security drove me down this route, and I became very self-absorbed. There was a serious lack of security floating in the air in my family, to the extent we believe money is everything, yet we can't have everything because we often run into "money problem" at home (read more about this on here). Anyway, from my little habit i picked up on saving, I learned to live by the minimum and by doing so, I have very little desire and hence low expectation. I felt happier as I know I would less likely to run into "trouble"
Indeed, I see no desire, no expectation and therefore happiness as a good formula. See, if you have a car because you want to "show off", you will have to handle it if it broke down, which I cannot bear to think I have to deal with the consequences. You win some, but you lose some, and I am not bother at all losing out on having a car. The satisfaction derived from having a car can be replaced by other things. After all these years, situation changed and I become relatively well-to-do, still I am not quite spendthrift, my brother would say I am tight, my mom would always ask me "to buy more to eat". My dad would say, why are you saving so much money for, what is the use. My dad's remark, which he made few years ago, seriously made me question my purpose of existence, which of course, include my existence with my wealth. What's it's for and what it suppose to represent and imply. Recently, I found a conclusion for myself and I have decided what I would want to do about it.
Owing to my lifestyle, being living alone and independent, it allows me to think about my "quality" of life, and not having to spend a fortune, I am able to live quite comfortably, leading a healthy lifestyle, focusing on food, exercise and good work life balance. I am amazed by the relation of desire and expectation to happiness, which I believe is true, but for me, I learned it by the hardest and darkest way possible, where I only see the light coming out from another end of the tunnel,after quite a while. Perhaps you also have your own experience unlike those of mine, but we all get there one day.
0 comments:
Post a Comment