One day, one of my mom’s helpers (who she sent to school) got married. She set up a little sari-sari store that became her neighbors’ go-to place every time they ran out of something.
When students were on their way home, they’d pass by this little store for their nocturnal joys — maybe lemon candies, some sweet biscuits, or a small bottle of soda and hopia.
One day, the husband decided to use the extra money from their store to venture out as an OFW. Soon after, the little sari-sari store expanded. An annex was added. Suddenly the neighbors could buy dry goods, too. T-shirts and slippers, small appliances and walis tingting.
The store became the street’s success story. All because the father’s income infused additional capital which made the store expand.
But one day, it was a huge shock to everyone when they heard that the family had asked their father to come home! His wife and children (now young adults with steady jobs) wanted him to be with them.
They weren’t rich, but they said they didn’t really need more money. All they wanted was for their parents to be together, and live a fairly comfortable life. It was a dream come true.
The family was wise enough to know when they already had enough money. They knew that their father had to come home — before he ended up sick or paralyzed or bound to a wheelchair — which is what happened to their neighbor who had been an OFW much longer than their father. This man’s wife left him and ran away with their kumpare, bringing with her all their life savings.
Greed has a way of backfiring when you least expect it.
The insanity of greed deceives you into thinking that there’ll be no end to the money pouring in. No end to the people and things that your money can buy.
The insanity of greed gives a different kind of high — like the thrill and exhilaration you feel when you go on shopping sprees because you know you can buy most everything in sight.
So you hoard. Collect. Amass. Until it becomes an addiction. You just have to have more. You just have to buy another one for your next fix. But, alas, each purchase brings less and less exhilaration.
Because ironically, greed causes diminishing satisfaction. In Economics, it’s called the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility.
Imagine you’re famished and you’re eating your first slice of pizza — it’s incredibly, utterly enjoyable and satisfying. But as you eat more and more slices, your enjoyment diminishes.
Hence, greed looks for another kind of high: flaunting your wealth. Strutting your stuff. Stoking people’s envy.
Because (you’re thinking) what’s the use of being filthy rich if people don’t know about it? Can’t see it? Where’s the thrill in that?
We know that flaunting wealth is tacky. It’s flaky. It’s crass. But it gives a cheap, addictive satisfaction to the one who’s doing the flaunting. That’s why they won’t stop making spectacles of themselves. Greed does that. It debases and demeans you, without your knowing it.
The more inferior we feel, the more we need to show off.
As greed controls you, it makes you insane. You get reckless. Arrogant. Shameless. With a heart as hard as stone.
You take more risks to make more money. Then you commit more and more mistakes because you think you’re invincible, untouchable, unstoppable.
Until one day, something or someone makes everything come crashing down. Like a rat lost in a maze, you frantically scurry around in all directions, looking for a way of escape.
Indeed, there’s a lesson here that’s screaming to be learned.
Clearly, we can see that truly rich and successful people are like those who own the little sari-sari store.
They are wise in the wisest sense of the word. They didn’t give in to greed.
While the losers are those who are totally consumed by greed. They eventually go insane because of it.
Because greed is a curse.
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36)
