On the World of Wealth and Protector of Money

We knew it as we checked our mailbox this morning. We know his writings all too well and we also know that we are in a big trouble. A second passed and we realised that we need help so bad. Save us from Mr. Bills! 

Before we start, let us answer a series of questions. Is spending money really addictive? How many clothes do we need to shop to make us happy and satisfied? Do these letters look familiar, S-A-L-E?  Is showing off makes the world a better place? Are we guilty of going beyond our means? Is stopping and re-assessing our finances impossible to do? If we answer yes to all these questions, then darlings, we are in dire need of help, and trust me, not from our credit cards.

Finance taught us many things. Earning money is hard but spending it is easy. Keeping our money is even harder. Knowing how to use money properly is the hardest.

We are constantly bombarded with financial information. Nowadays, websites tell us how to spend wisely or where to invest our hard-earned money. A red on the board and we buy. A green will say sell. We can also download application on our smartphones to track our expenses or we can just simply open Excel and make our own. Cool, isn’t it? Yes, Sir! Wealth building books also made the cut. Remember Trump and Kiyosaki?  How about Napoleon Hill? Felix Dennis, anyone? Is Sophia Kinsella counted? 

But even if we have this buffet of information, the quest for financial freedom still remains. Will these avenues enable us to change or we are going to stay stuck in a maze? Can we achieve financial liberty because of them? Yes, no, or maybe.

As I watched Suze Orman’s video, I can’t help but agree with her. As information gets easier, life gets harder. And just like Finance, she taught me things. Eight months worth of emergency fund? Check! Savings account and time deposit before stocks? Check, check, and check! Trust me, it felt like a girl on girl talk minus the chocolates. On the other hand, I can’t deny the fact that there are points where I found myself somehow guilty. I am guilty that I bought that pair of pink shoes even if it was not on budget (it makes me happy, I told myself); that  sometimes I defer paying my bills (will do it next week); that I lent a big sum of money to someone who will never pay it back (opportunity cost comes into play); that I still find it hard to have the courage to tell a person (or even myself) that he is not financially sound; that I am still waiting for my pure equities UITF account to spring back to life because it once did (give my gains back!); that until now, I am still asking myself, “Is time on my side?”; and that I am not always rational. These may be the reasons why I am still inside the maze, trying to look for the key for financial freedom. 

So, right now, I am asking myself, am I in a position to  escape that financial maze, change and make a big leap towards financial liberty? Am I ready to alter the story of my life and my money? If I am, are you?

As I contemplate, I realised that it will all boils down to this. Money and taking care of it are integral parts of our lives, as well as truth and lies, whether we like it or not. Bills and expenses are things of everyday and we can never avoid them (but we can control them). Investments are not only for the Wall Street people or Gordon Gekko, it is also for simple people like us. But in that world, past is past. Like Enron and the Lehman Brothers, sunk costs are history. Look forward. We can all be saved if we want to save ourselves. All we need is financial knowledge, discipline, and that tiny spark that will tell us to change. 

In Words: Life, Race, and Endpoints

       “One by one, I’ll face the tasks before me and complete them as best as I can. Focusing on each stride forward, but at the same time taking a long-range view, scanning the scenery as far ahead as I can. I am, after all, a long-distance runner.

My time, the rank I obtained, my outward appearance - all of these are secondary. For a runner like me, what’s really important is reaching the goal I set for myself, under my own power. I give it everything I have, endure what needs enduring, and am able, in my own way, to be satisfied. From out of the failures and joys, I always try to come away having grasped a concrete lesson. It’s got to be concrete, no matter how small it is. And I hope that, over time, as one race follows another, in the end, I’ll reach a place I’m content with. Or maybe just catch a glimpse of it.” (Haruki Murakami, What I Talked About When I Talked About Running)

In my writings, I always tell stories of other people’s lives. Yes, life, that sublime and surreal thing hidden in the gray smoke of uncertainty. In my stories, I seldom tell the story of my life and what I do with it. Mine is always hidden. Theirs are more open like lights coming through the curtains, waking you up. But I guess it won’t hurt to share a part of mine. Writing this is not an assurance of a life clear of gray smoke but we can give it a try. So, this time, let me tell you a little bit of my life. This one is for your taking.

Hi, I am Anne. All my life, I’m excited but scared.

I’m excited of this life that I headed and I am heading. It is thoroughly planned by God, my family, and myself. I graduated in a business school. I landed a job in the banking industry. I can say that I am starting to be financially successful. I am taking up my MBA, focused on finishing it. And then goes the DBA. I even managed to squeeze  in travel in all these. Everything is according to plan. I have everything. At the same time, I am nervous. I am apprehensive of what tomorrow will bring or if  there will be a tomorrow coming for me. But the thing I am scared the most is that, at the end of the day, after all these courses, the certificates, the salary and bonuses, I am still nothing. You know what I mean? I walk, most of the time run, through this path of life. I hurried fast to every finish line. I am very competitive. But looking back, I can only see the kilometres, the numbers, how far I did go. But what does that mean? What does this mean? Do I learn something from my run? Am I fulfilled? Am I truly happy? Have I done something?

It is not until three years ago that I found what all these mean. In December of 2013, my best friend invited me to do some volunteer works with a Gawad Kalinga village in Paranaque. No, we didn’t build houses. My best friend and I would like to call it “building small people’s lives”. Back then, we taught children to read and understand stories (think Adarna Publishing books) in English. We thought it was better to start with these story books because it requires the children to imagine. Imagination is important to a child’s cognitive development (I do sound like a Promil endorser here). It is basic but it really does matter. I am a firm believer that basic problems can be cured by basic solutions. No fuzz about it. At the same time, the kids always have a good time. 

After each session, I often reflected on what the children learned and what I learned from them. In my class, there is only one golden rule: Everyone has to speak his or her mind. 

In one of our most recent sessions, we let the children drew their feelings and aspirations. The work of one of the children strikes me the most. He wrote “Be-You-Tiful”. He explained this by saying that everyone is unique and that we need to respect each other’s perfections and flaws. We have different interests. He added that even if he is poor and he is not good in English, he has his dreams to pursue and no one has the right to stop them from coming true. He was then bullied. He felt unmotivated. But it is through the lessons from those story books that he learned to overcome all those.

Looking back at it now as I do this blog entry, I came to a realisation. For three years, I have the same sentiments as that boy, but unlike him, I have been silent. I endure what is there to endure. I just want to finish the race. I have all these potential, opportunities, and resources, and yet I am still a target for belittlement. But as what this boy said no one can stop us from making our dreams come true.     

In conclusion, I can say that I am very fortunate to have all these opportunities and resources for me to finish every race. At the same time, I ask the question, how unfortunate it is for them that they don’t have what I have? But thinking about it, we, these kids and I, are the same. We are all human beings and we all have dreams. Our dreams are not of those kinds that are only embedded in our subconscious. They are meant to be real. Having these potentials to help, equipped by the lessons that these children taught me, and coupled with my experiences, the power is in my hands. This is why I, together with my best friend and some college friends created “The Thousand Books Project”. The Project does not only aim to donate story books to GK villages, but at the same time, motivate GK kids through storytelling. Continuous learning is my calling. Motivating children to aspire for the best is another thing. Let the children dream, they are meant to dream. Let them show it. No person is allowed to demean them. God has given me all the tools to help them. I have gifts. It is time to share it to them. 

In the end, I hope that through this calling, I will be able to touch the lives of others and leave an impact on their hearts, no matter how little it is. And if tomorrow never comes for me, I pray that before I run at that last finish line of mine, I can look back at that life that is mine with smile on my face knowing that I  learned what I need to learn, I live it as moral as possible, and I will leave it sublime and surreal with no trace of grey smoke of uncertainty. 

Hi, I am Anne. With this life, I have never been this excited. 

And you know what, I am no longer scared.   

My life is a life well-lived.

   

In A Canon's Cloak

I will always remember my friend Sophia and the question she answered during a “Would You Rather” when we were young. It goes: “Would you rather be rich but lonely or poor but happy?”. She answered the former. A few hours later, I cornered her and asked the reason for her answer. She said, “Because I have always been that way.” Is that it?

I spent the rest of my college days being curious in capturing the spirit of wealth and happiness, their meanings, the disparity, as well as their connection. For years, I always wonder, if you can give your excess riches, even just a portion of it, to the poor and the poor gives you his extra happiness, then wouldn’t it be perfect? Wouldn’t it be a win-win situation?  I mean, this is what we are aiming for, right? I sometimes asked myself. This is what Management classes taught us. Strike win-win! But one thing I learned, win-win does not exist solely in the realm of business, of maximising profit and minimising costs, but there is this other world. Reality. And that world is complex, fast, modern, and ever-changing. 

Modern day realities (such as globalization, modernization, and infrastructures) paves the way for faster, direct, and more convenient way in improving one’s lifestyle, entertainment, and access. No wonder it is no surprise that humans, in a way, are caught inside their own realities. We set ourselves apart on becoming what is truly human. We tend to forget that reality is more than what the retina screen projects and that our realities are different from those of the poor. Ours are the one filled with purple Dome blooms. Theirs?  Theirs can only be dreams that are equivalent to our reality. We must do something. 

There is no harm in eliminating the gap between the rich and the poor. Saint John Baptist De La Salle further validated this when he said, “Real wealth is the ability to think and to feel not to be possessed by possession, to receive, to share. Children know this and there is no class distinction among them. If I can open their minds and let the sun enter in, if enough can do this, if we can only reach beyond the boundaries of the marked rich and poor, if we can open their minds to this light, the world will become a brighter place, closer to peace, closer to human fraternity.”

Doing so doesn’t require a title of a saint. With our intentions of improving their “reality”, we can always wear a cloak just like St. John Baptiste De La Salle and be simply like him -   

As a Dreamer who desires to transform violence to discipline and as someone who, at the same time, fulfills the dreams of others;

As a Leader who will start the spark for positive change and will support and guide his fellows in achieving the ultimate goal of opening the minds of people, especially of the youth, that the rich and the poor can be united;

As a Volunteer who doesn’t ask for anything in return;

As an Educator of the less fortunate whose literacy is a common struggle and as similar as difficulty of putting food on the table and providing shelter;

As a Humble Servant of God and His people, promoting kindness in all classes of people; and

As a Giver who gives something in return to a society that gives him more than enough because he believes that with great power comes great responsibility. 

Recomposed

“What have you done?”

On the reason behind ‘On the 24th’, the concept of time, and one’s impact to others. 

My first blog was born in February 2012. It was a space dedicated for all my creative juices flowing freely with nowhere else to go. It was a manifesto, a public declaration of all my opinions, mostly about fashion and style. Most importantly, it was a medium meant to support the local fashion industry.  Fast forward to a year later, in the month of March, over expectations and constant commentaries regarding what subject matters were ought to be cognitive and professional, I shut it down. It was a sad reality that the apparel market, which is among the world’s largest industries, with a value of US$1.7 trillion in 2012 and employs approximately 75 million people (fashionunited.com), was regarded as something that was not serious and relevant by some people. 

So, why am I saying this? 

It is because I am hoping that this time, this blog, unlike the first one which I gave up on, will succeed in becoming an archive of perspectives and reflections from a person who connects and traces the lines of her life on the scattered points of time when she touches others’ lives. ‘On the 24th’ is inspired by the poem I wrote when I was in senior year in high school entitled, “Life on the 24th”, which focused on the idea that a person’s lifetime is measured based on the number of lives he touched and the level of impact he made until the last 24th hour of his life. 

In many ways, I know that that concept of mine can never be a wishful thinking. Social responsibility, once instil, can be an inedible mark in development.  I know that through unwavering support and strength, goodness can be evoked. And that at the end of the day, if there is a single question that we want to take, it will be this: “What have you done?”.