The Money Game

When I opened a new savings account to hold my extra earnings, the teller asked me if I was interested to open a Unit Investment Trust Fund(UITF) instead. She insisted on the benefits and higher return rate I could get if I opt instead for the latter but I refused, giving myself some time to think it through. When I go wander to that moment and ponder, it's funny how money controls us in what I coined as its 'Money Game'.

We unknowingly played it all along and the Game Master were the business people, the bank people. Through time it evolved to make us work harder and harder for a future of materialism. First level, we need to work to earn money and buy our needs. That's okay. Second level, we need to work harder or longer to earn more money and buy our wants (Yey! we get a shot of short-term happiness). Third level, we need to open up a savings account to save money and prepare for the uncertainties the future brings. With this, we actualized in our mind to be ruled out by money, to let it control our life, to be crippled by it and chase it. The game never ends, it keeps on evolving. The fourth level lashed out the safety net 'savings account' will shield for the future's uncertainty, now they are instilling that its gonna be beaten by inflation and we need to go opt for stocks and UITF that now will give us the safety net.

Will the chase for higher interest rates and bigger income come to an end? Will it while they keep on advertising artificial needs, securities, and wants?  

Abstraction.

I came upon a video about Django ORM explaining the importance of knowing your tools not just using it.

I watched Youtube videos documenting how we are losing bees which are necessary for pollination.

At first, these two events seems unrelated with each other but when I think about it they both scream out the word 'Abstraction.' In computing, it just mean being able to do things without diving too deep into the technical parts. In modern era, as our good ancestors do not want us to suffer the way they did, they made abstraction for things. In Django, so we do not need to handle painstakingly SQL statements, they created the Django ORM. In consumerism, businessmen offered abstraction by delivering right in our doors, in our mobile phones, in the supermarkets, products that we can buy and consume easily. They made it easy but they made us blind also. We always tend to take things for granted. We have ORMs that made CRUD easier, so why bother digging further to SQL. Our fruits can be easily picked from the supermarket, so why bother knowing how they were delivered and produced.  We are dumb and irresponsible for taking these things for granted. Great powers come with great responsibility. Our lives are made easier but we must allot some of these made-free time to dive into what abstraction made hidden. A last sentence to ponder:

"Do we know that our greedy population, eating too much, building too much space for us to live have destructed the ecosystem bees needed in order to live? Do we even care or know that they are the keys for producing the fruit we pick in the market? Or we just don't care, hell, I'll just pick and eat?"

Protection.

If you want to protect the weak, you have to be strong first. How can you protect them if you are weak yourself? How can you protect them if you do not have enough knowledge to defend them against people who benefit from knowing how to play the game. It is unacceptable to stay ignorant and nonchalant when you know something is wrong and it is failure to be defeated in conflicts you just flee from, knowing in yourself that you could have done something more if you have enough power and used that power to defend what should be defended.

Artificial Needs.

Traversing EDSA on a common weekend, I saw billboards on my hindsight - beauty products, shoe brands and go to restaurants were among them. Businesses thrive from its customers and from this arise the challenge on how to attract and maintain its customers. They need to highlight their product and differentiate it against its competitors, they impose fear to create artificial needs in order to gain customers. They create consumerism. They create the illusion that we need those items. They ask us to buy more, to earn more money, to chase money in order to have those artificial needs. Those artificial needs were superbly and strategically advertised in our daily lives - commercials, billboards, online advertisements that it successfully penetrated our mind that we feel unsatisfied and inferior if we haven't bought them because we think its a need. Think deeply of those fears they have made - retirement with no money, death with no insurance, being late because of traffic, living uncomfortably, staying up-to-date and connected. Think of the needs it makes - insurance, car, condominium, cellphones. Sometimes, we are chasing money to afford those that we made ourselves blind of the big picture - living in harmony with our planet and saving it from the long term effect of consumerism.

Every Little Thing Needs Love.

We often end our day feeling unsatisfied. We drift away our minds and think of the future - of what we want to be, what we should be doing next, of what to buy next, to satisfy that hole within us. We dig the past and felt unsatisfied for what we could have done, what might we been. But what if instead of living our lives digging the past we cannot change and drifting to the future that is uncertain to happen, we live in the present? A life mindful of the present, feeling the air we breathe in and out, giving our attention and love to little things that needs it - to the house needing cleaning, to the pet that longs for a touch, to the plant begging for a taste of water, to a stranger passing by our life. We need not to be on top of our company, a superstar,  search for that next big volunteering activity nor save up big digits in our savings account to help. In our everyday living, there are little things that needs our love and extra time. We become less bitter to the life we are living in if the satisfaction comes from us giving love to those little things and at the same time, a less bitter world if those little things received love.

Above all, send the bees love. Every little things wants to be loved. - Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

Excess.

Buffet. Dresses in vogue. Cute little things. Spending our money on excess things, on things we desire and want but not actually needed. I felt guilty. It was also my doing. I thought how I bought lavish things during my payday, how I eat more than what my body needed during birthdays, how I celebrate Christmas with tons of foods and gifts, while I neglect those beggars who needed only a spare of my money and time. Like the priest preached this Sunday, we are all hypocrite. We'd say 'poor little things', we felt pity but we did nothing -  We have closed our eyes to those who needed us because we felt comfortable and we want more, we dare not to spend a little time not just to give them spare money or food but also to know their little stories.

But what if instead of spending our birthdays on buffets, we celebrate simply and put on the excess money to children who needs the money for their school supplies? What if instead of celebrating Christmas lavishly, we spent it sharing our blessings to those we really needed it? Wouldn't it be more fulfilling and happier?

Chunk it (not junk it)

YOLO - You only lived once. A phrase that brings encouragement to live life fully and happily but on its other hidden side, hints threat as it says that we only have one life to live and wasting it is a no no. A lifetime that seems too short to waste and too uncertain to take into granted, we have lots of to do's in our bucket list overwhelming us and often, leads to disappointment.

My 2 cents of penny - forgive yourself if many times you fail to do this list, to follow your new year's resolution, to incorporate in your life the Japanese term 'kaizen'. The important thing is to never give up when you fail or fall and learn that this overwhelmingly to-do list can never be done all at once, one big at a time and as quickly as possible. What you need to do is to prioritize what needs to be done first, strategically considering your resources. Chunk it. Chunk the buckets into dippers (tabo in Tagalog) and chunk these dippers into mugs. Metaphorically, you can now drink the mug's content, slowly, swallow one a time, two-three mugs a day. And never forget, as what my previous blog says continually do the 'baby steps'.