Showing posts with label Greed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greed. Show all posts

Sunday, December 28, 2008

My Plea

These days I've been battling with the voices in my head...

Pride...

Judgments...

Pressures...

Competitions...

Wants, wants, wants...

Goals, goals, goals...

Greed...

Dreams, dreams, dreams...

Negativism, cynicism, bitterness...

Sometimes it gets so hard to try to live simply no matter how much I want to do so. And now I'm getting tired of ME.

I'm trying to separate myself from all the voices...and tune them up. God, help me break down my pride!!!



Help me remember that it's all about YOU
and not about me.

It's about You, You, You...
Everything I have is simply
what You entrust to me to have
for the time being.

Help me be wise...

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Irony

Just read this story from this site and I thought it'd be good to share it with you:

A young investor stood looking out into the cool Gulf waters on the end of pier in a small coastal Mexican village. Having spent the last several months working hard toward gaining his securities license, he left for a few days of sun-soaked pleasure in Western Mexico. As the sun sank into the pale horizon,he a single fisherman docked his boat along the far side of the pier. The young Wall Street banker walked over to the boat and saw several large yellow fin tuna gasping for air. The young executive complimented the tanned fisherman, a wise-eyed, weathered man, on the quality of his fish and asked how long it had taken to bring in the catch.

“Not long at all,” the fisherman replied.

“Well, why not stay out longer and catch more fish?” the young New Yorker asked smiling.

“I have enough for today,” said the fisherman, “this is what I need to feed my family.”

“What do you do with the rest of your time?” the young man asked curiously.

“I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria, and stroll into the village each evening where I enjoy some wine and laughter with friends. It’s a full and happy life,” the fisherman replied.

“Well, I'm a Harvard MBA and have just completed my investment securities training. I could help you. You could spend more time fishing and with the proceeds from the larger catch, buy a bigger boat. Then you could catch even more fish. With those profits you could buy several more boats and hire captains to fish for you, and eventually you could open your own cannery. Then you would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal village and move to Mexico City or LA or even New York where you could run your expanding enterprise.”

“How long would that all take?” asked the somewhat bewildered fisherman.

“Fifteen, maybe twenty years, max.”

“But then what?”

“Well, when the time was right, you could announce your IPO, sell your company stock to the public, and become very rich. You could be worth millions,” retorted the proud young investor.

“Millions? Then what?”

“Then you could retire and move to a small coastal village like this one where you could sleep late, fish a little in the morning, play with your grandkids, take a siesta, and enjoy wine and music with your friends in the evening.“

The fisherman grinned, tipped his hat at the young advisor, and shook his head as he walked off the pier without a reply.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

On Religion

As we all know, religion doesn't make people better. However, without religions, the situation'll also be the same. At least that's how I think it is. We all have our weaknesses. Even our strengths can be our weaknesses, as well. Our strengths can act like a boomerang against us, especially if we've cultivated them to the extreme.

I've witnessed the so-called religious people (who know more about religious theories than I do) fail to be "religious" in their daily affairs. They can perform religious practices very well and convincingly and they can cite religious verses very well. However, they've failed to follow this rule: love your neighbours just like you love yourself. They love themselves more than they love their neighbours, thus they follow this advice so happily and effectively: the end justifies the means. And when they're done doing that, they think they're so blessed by God, so they praise Him immensely without realizing that they've defiled their own act of worship.

Some others are so twisted in their religious thinking that they think they're the holiest ones. Thus they preach on what they believe in and try to feed it to others without realizing that they're also stained. Everybody's stained! Yet they fail to see the stains all over themselves and they keep on preaching without admitting their own stains.

I have a problem with people who use religion to get what they want. I have a problem with holier-than-thou type of people. I have a problem with people who know a lot about religious theories, but they seem to "forget" morality and ethics. Greed, lust, ambition overrule them. They contort religion to their own liking. They bring shame to their own religions.

However, at the end of this contemplation, I look back upon myself and I find myself stained, as well. Let me just not try to change others, but first change myself. Let me not try too hard to see other people's faults. Let me just realize that humans are humans, thus they're prone to fail when they face temptations. Simply because we have free will to choose and simply because we don't always choose the right thing. Let me learn from my mistakes and forgive others who've done me wrong. Let me live a balanced life, so that I may choose to do the right things every single day for the rest of my life. This is my prayer for me and everybody else. May God help us all.