BEING CONTENTED

The line between greed and achieving your dreams is a very fine one. One would argue, that to be successful in your life, to live a comfortable life, to own a nice house, a nice car, to be able to go for holidays are merely achieving your dreams. But I believe that many of these so call “dreams” become greed while we continuously justify the fact that we are merely still chasing our “dreams”.

“Dreams” like the above sounds as genuine and as innocent as “just chasing my dreams”, but what we do not realize is that we always fail to define the “what”. What do we mean by a successful life? What does it mean to live a comfortable life? What kind of nice house/car? What holidays?

My parents who were both Maktab Perguruan lecturers didn’t earn much but I always considered them successful, we had a comfortable life, a house and a car to go about and local holidays where we enjoyed ourselves. Never did I feel that we were lacking of anything. By God’s grace and providence, they’ve manage to put all 3 of us through private college and me to a year overseas.

The reason I’m writing this post is because in the past years, I have come to the realization that being contented is something that I’m finding harder and harder to do. There seems to be more and more material things that I want. What I currently have doesn’t seem to be enough.

A brief background of where I am today. I am of course 28 years old young. In the span of 5 years, I have managed to climb the corporate ladder to be a Manager at the age of 27 at a local bank. I earn a comfortable salary.  I got married and bought a house together with my wife at 24 without any financial backing from our parents (it was our wedding and house and we didn’t think it would be fair to burden them further after all they have given to us). I am a father of a beautiful daughter when I was 26 and we sustain our lifestyle all by ourselves. No extra pocket money apart from what we earn.

It all seems like the perfect life to have. What more can I ask for? I should be contented with what I have. My dreams have definitely been achieved. But no, I have found myself to be yearning for more. Nicer car, a bigger house and more salary. As simple and as innocent as these new “dreams”/thoughts that I have, I have to remind myself over and over again about being contented. There’s no end to “dreams” and we can definitely see people around us who are super duper rich but yet there’s no sense of contentment. Their accumulated wealth could possibly sustain a couple more of generations but the quest for more never just ends. And that scares me. Deep deep down, I know, I have to learn to be contented, to stop comparing myself to people who are more successful that fills my heart with a sense jealousy and the raging question of “Why am I not him/her?”, “When would I be there?”, “How can I earn like him/her”.

What I AM NOT SAYING:

1.       That we should stop dreaming.

2.       That we should not hope for a better life.

3.       That we should live with what we have now and be happy – end of story.

4.       Stop working hard/earning your high salary/throw away all your luxuries

What I AM SAYING:

1.       Evaluate our dreams and draw a line between greed and being contented.

2.       Yearn for a better life but quantify what a better life would mean. A savings of RMxxx, a house worth RMxxx etc. Be realistic. There’s only 1 Bill Gates.

3.       Definitely learn to be happy with what you have today, work for more should you have perform item (1) and (2), but stop comparing your value with others, it’s your dream, not theirs. Don’t dream to be like that someone. You’ll never be happy when you’re him/her.

4.       Work hard, but understand your priorities. There’s nothing wrong with wealth but there’s more to life than wealth.

5.       Stop shifting the goal post – what many people do when they achieve their dreams is to dream of more. Theirs is no end to it.

People always say, it’s not accurate to compare how your parents brought up 3 kids (all the way to private colleges) and your current situation – you know inflation. You definitely need to earn more. But my response is this. Apart from inflation rate (which I agree forces us to earn more to sustain our basic necessities), there’s a deeper underlying to reason for earning more. My parents only bought a van after my 3^rd brother was born (plus my grandmother lived with us) (so before the van, 5 ppl travelled in a car), but today, with only 1 kid and no parents living with us, I am looking for a MPV. My parents lived in a single story house with 5 people in it. Today, I am looking for a 2-3 storey house (again with only 1 daughter and a wife) with a buildup of 2,500 sq ft. KFC/McD/Pizza Hut was a luxury then. Today it’s a norm. Please tell me now that I need to earn more because of inflation.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying we should live like how our parents lived. The reason I’m bringing up the comparison is to illustrate how a lot of us are already living a better life and a more comfortable life. We need to learn to be contented with what we have. The ambition/dream for more would never end if we continually move the goal post to achieve more and more. Life is never a one way highway to monetary rewards. Life is a multi level highway each leading to the many facets of happiness. Enjoy the journey on each of the levels and with the limited time we have, choose wisely which road you spent more time in.

Credits: This is one lesson I am very thankful to my parents for teaching me – Contentment. When my friends were in FILA and NIKE, I was in Cheetah and still happy about it. When my friends held the magnificent Nokia 3310 (then), I was happy not having one and happy to borrow from them to just to play snakes. When my friends had Play Station in their houses, it never bothered me that we never had one. When my friends were in fancy shirts at a dinner, I was in an old presentable shirt (because my parents confiscated the expensive nice shirt I bought behind their back and lied to them about the price), I was still contented at the end of the night. When my friends lived in fanciful big bungalow houses, it never bothered me to have them over at my terrace link house worth only a fraction of theirs. It didn’t bother me that I drove my parents Nissan Sunny around nor the fact that I never had luxuries in my child hood. Every piece o clothing was carefully decided upon, nothing was bought that was unnecessary.  These are some of the reminders that I need to continuously remind myself of, to stop myself from tipping over to greed and forgetting everything that is precious beside me.