Monday, March 21, 2005

The secrets of the world are yours, but I have to kill you

I belong to a money group. The group taught me how to save, invest and take care of money. Along the way, I did not realize that I had changed all that much. The following are the achievements of some members of the group in the last year. One member has $50,000 and is now shopping for a house in Redwood City. Another member bought a house in Las Vegas. I managed to save $21,000 this past year. Another member saved $18,000. Over the weekend, my teacher who is called Tuhan mentioned that what the group has done in the last four years is remarkable.

He also said something very interesting. "I can tell you the secret of life, the world and money. But I have to kill you." Of course, since sometimes I am slow, I did not understand. Phrased differently, Tuhan said that as we began doing the exercises and the saving of money and the counting of money, we were changing ourselves. We had to examine our life and we had to account for our failures and successes. Are you happy with the life you have? Or do you want to be able to take care of yourself? If you want to change, you will have to kill the current "you".

While driving to sacramento, the SO and I were talking. She said that in one sense, she did not have problems with the money group. She had gone through a death and a rebirth during high school when she began questioning who she was. She said that as we change and become older, we also die. And so it happened to me. The REtong who was a bumbling teen-ager died / changed into the REtong who was an undergraduate. The undergraduate died and became a graduate student. The graduate student died and became a Pin@y.

It is difficult to come to terms with one's mortality. Sometimes, it seems larger than we can ever overcome. But with time, it makes more and more sense. The time is limited. Let us make use of it.

No comments: