Life Teachings

Sometime ago on a particular Saturday morning when I was back in office, my Director was also in. He shared some ideas on management and teachings with me, obviously hoping that I start recruitment and rise to manager as soon as possible.

He told me that men should be prudent and live within our means. Earning loads of money doesn't mean that a person should live a lavish lifestyle, drive big cars and look down on people. For you do not know where you stand in the future. When one becomes rich and famous, he tends to become arrogant and comfortable with what they have, which is the start of their downfall.

To sum it up, he said:

花没有百日红，

人没有千日好。

Loosely translated, it means that flowers don't bloom for a hundred days, men don't flourish for a thousand days. I was so impressed with this statement, especially when it came from a veteran who has lived two times as much as me. Now, when people talk about life and earning loads of money, this phrase constantly rings in my head.

The moral of the story is: Everything in this universe moves in cycles, like it or not. So remember that you can be earning $100,000 per year now, but you can also be out of job when I come back to visit you two years later. It is therefore important to save for a rainy day and don't pretend that life must get better.

In finance, we call that random walk. Today you might be up, tomorrow you have an equal chance of going up or down. This trend may persist for a prolonged period but eventually it will revert to the mean.