Not everything that can be counted, counts! Not everything that counts can be counted!!
Where does the greed end?
What should be imparted to children — Character or Capital?
Which matters more — numbers or emotions behind the numbers?
The Story
Many years ago, there lived a woodcutter in a small village. He was very poor with no land or resources. His children and wife had no food to eat and had to wear torn clothes. The woodcutter every day prayed to the Almighty to improve his condition and to get sufficient money so that his family and he could live well, eat well and sustain a decent life.
One night when the woodcutter was sleeping, God came into his dreams. God told the woodcutter that listening to his woes, He is blessing him with an axe with which he can cut trees and that he would get a box full of gold coins under the trunk of every tree he cuts.
God further said, ‘I am blessing you with a mirror; that mirror can tell you how rich or poor you are as compared to others. You have gone through the misery of poverty and helplessness and hence this mirror will aid you to help those who are poorer than you. After stating these, God disappeared from the woodcutter’s dream.
In the morning, the woodcutter shared the dream with his family and his family shrugged it off as a mere dream and nothing else. A few days passed; there was no change in his situation. One day while cutting a tree, his axe broke and he didn’t have money to repair it.
Distressed and dejected he sat under the tree and all of a sudden he saw a mirror and a silver axe lying under another tree, opposite to where he was sitting. He remembered his dream and thought God had finally fulfilled his wish. The woodcutter went and picked up the axe and looked around if someone had forgotten the axe and the mirror in the woods. He waited and looked around but couldn’t find anyone.
He brought both the axe and the mirror home and shared the events of the day with his family. The next day, he took the axe and went to cut the same tree where he broke his old axe. With a few blows of his new silver axe, the tree fell. He found a box full of gold coins as he had dreamt. He bought things, clothes and food for his family. Now he was getting richer by the day.
As he started getting more boxes of coins, his greed started increasing. He wanted to know how many people were richer than him instead of finding people who are poor and helping them. The mirror kept giving him the numbers. He now started spending more time cutting the trees rather than taking care of the family or helping the poor. One night, dacoits came and killed the woodcutter and his family and took the entire gold and silver axe with them.
The Human Life
Human beings since birth are given this numerical milestone to achieve. It starts from home, where one sibling is pegged against others and compared in terms of marks, studies, behavior, better, inferior, and this comparison gets deeply embedded in minds of siblings, leading to Lifelong Sibling rivalry.
From home, it moves to school, then to college, and then to the workplace. Barring defense services or some team plays (Selective Coaches focus on it, others look for stars) the concept of camaraderie is neither inculcated nor encouraged in any walk of life.
Every business Promoter is looking for Star CEO, every sports management is looking for Super-human Sportsperson, every political party or producer is looking for a celebrity idolatry hero.
Parents expect their children to come first in class. For them, it does not matter how much one has grasped and how one will use the concepts learned (application of learned concepts) in one’s life. Most sports are played to reach the number 1 position and to get the money tagged with that position without focusing on the joy of playing the sport.
Only one of million reach that position and the rest are made to feel like lesser mortals, losers, less humans whichever name one can choose.
Everything in the present-day is evaluated in terms of 3 things:
How soon (in terms of age),
Personal net worth (for individuals)
and market capitalization (for businesses).
One keeps running on this treadmill and one fine day when one nears one’s retirement or burnout, whichever is earlier, one realizes that one is where one started from, with only a few more gold coins.
In the race to earn more and with a myopic view of life to spend more time on earning and enjoyment (the definition of enjoyment has become convoluted — synonymous to spending more money, looking for happiness outside, traveling & shopping at most expensive places or expensive things), one forgets to build character to one’s family, instead believes that leaving a Legacy of Capital is better than leaving a legacy of Character.
“पूत कपूत तो का धन संचय, पूत सपूत तो का धन संचय” — Sant Kabirdas ji.
Why bequeath wealth to an unworthy son, why bequeath wealth to a worthy son.
For a good child, one doesn’t need to leave an inheritance, for a bad child, no amount of inheritance is enough.
The Investment Specialist
The story of Investors and Investment specialists is the same as that of the woodcutter. Both keep chasing the numbers, the percentages, and earnings on a month-on-month basis without realizing that it’s more important to have a sustained enriching and enthralling investment experience rather than an investment portfolio just depicting a percentage.
What counts in the investment process is the quality of the investment manager, his commitment to his philosophy, and his ability to steer through tough periods and tough decisions without bringing in personal biases.
Do investors only care whether the portfolio is generating 15.50% returns or 16.85% returns or something higher?
Imagine a meeting where an investment specialist learns something from the investor from his journey of life and implements it in his investment thesis.
A day where an investor looks forward to meeting an investment specialist and treats him like a wholesome family advisor sharing his concerns and getting some ideas on resolving challenges which he or she is facing in his or her personal or business world.
Once the connection and the relationship between two human beings move beyond numbers, which in this materialistic world represents money or equivalent, it enhances the quality of life and augments the experience which can’t be measured.
The irony of life is all big decisions are based on emotions and feelings that can’t be counted. Whether it’s love, hate, affection, honor courage, devotion, loyalty, or anything else due to which humans decide, they accrue that decision on finite monetary terms which can be counted to put a façade to hide the real reason.
More often than not, when one says YES to anything, it’s based on emotion, sentiments (more money is invested by investors when the market is higher than it is lower, defeats logic), feelings that can’t be counted whilst to justify NO to oneself and to others, one uses counting and measurement tools.
Thus Siddhartha Rastogi says: Focus on what is uncountable and things that can be counted on their own will become less significant.
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