A Chinese Proverb About Wealth

Actually, it’s not necessarily a Chinese proverb about wealth per se. It’s a quote that I found long ago in a poem in the Tao te Ching. This is a book of philosophical poetry, 2000 years old, translated from Chinese. Leo gave this book to me the year we met, along with Candide, by Voltaire, which should have given me pause. But you know, when you’re young, you just assume everything is going to work out.

Among the poems of the Tao te Ching is a coda about wealth and health that I carry always with me in my mind. It’s a Buddhist koan, perhaps, or a meditation piece. It both tells you what you should aim for, and what others expect of you. It tells you what it is to be rich in more than money. And it tells you what your parameters are for worldly life:

“This is what the world respects:

Health, wealth, long life, and staying in one piece.”

It is a proverb about wealth, but it breaks down wealth into four components. Because wealth is not just about money. Wealth is about having what the world respects, and there are four parts of that which the world will watch you for.

Health

Health is a lifelong project. When you’re young, it’s often a given, and you take it for granted. For some, it seems easy, and others are burdened with various difficulties. I have very bad teeth, but my physical constitution is good. I can hike and bike, though not as fast and far as some. I work a lot on the area on eating good food. Someone asked me this week, can I cook. I said sure I can cook. Hamburgers, pizza, tacos, spaghetti … but that sounds simple. What I cook most of all is apple salad, cole slaw, and oatmeal. Which I eat every day. If I eat these simple vegan dishes ever day, it is good for my health.

Your health is central to your well-being. It’s the first part of the koan. And what you eat is very important. You should consider this if you haven’t recently.

People Judge You

People judge you by your health perhaps more than any other factor. Contained in health is your physical appearance, your ability to get up and do things, how you look in clothes (if you don’t take care of your body, you can’t buy your way out of a unbalanced physical form) and your life expectancy. This is critical. They say to have good health is to be fortunate indeed and that is true, though we often forget.

Wealth

The money angle is also very important for worldly success and it’s worth noting that, while we like to complain about “how materialistic American are” the ancient Chinese were just as concerned. Like health, wealth is a visible measure. People judge your wealth, considering factors as where you live, what car you drive, your haircut, your shoes … and what you are doing on the weekend.

You could fake having wealth, and that’s a common trope in literature, because having wealth makes people trust you and it makes people want to be your friend. They think you might share your wealth with them, or take them to some of the cool places, here or far way, that you are going because you have wealth. This is natural, but it’s also a danger to you.

You Want People to Love You But ..

You want people to love you for who you are, and here they are judging you by what you have! What to do? Be careful with your friends. And if you have wealth, there’s reason not to brag or go around showing off. Many truly wealthy people dress simply and talk little. They know that being wealthy can set you up for unwanted attention.

Are You Planning to Have a Long Life?

This is a thing that I think about a lot. You might not have to plan for a long life, but it helps. Keeping an eye on what you eat is important. But also the choices you make during the early and middle part o your life may impact on the length of your life. Did you know that living next to a freeway causes shorter life span? Certain jobs come with potential health risks that appear over the long term.

They say cancer comes from internalizing your bad feelings, though no one knows for sure, and everyone internalizes sometimes. But there’s no question that spiritual people are less likely to die young. According to Dan Buettner, of Blue Zones/Live to 100 fame, going to a spiritual community weekly can add 4 to 14 years of life. Who knew?

Healthy Habits are Key

This tenet of holistic wealth in the eyes of society includes such things as healthy habits. Exercise, not smoking, not watching too many hours of screens. Talking to people and being social. The things that, though they seem small, actually add up to greater constitution and longer life.

Don’t Forget Staying in One Piece

A life of quiet anger, and failing to speak your mind, could expose you to diseases. And making dangerous choices, such as hobbies where people often get injured (bike riding and horseback riding, and skiing come to mind) could be a risk, although relatively small. And substance abuse of all types is a huge risk for accidents.

How do your choices today make you more likely to be okay? Are you a daredevil? Do you play fast and loose with your own feelings, or those of others? Have you become angry enough to get in a physical conflict with someone?

A Life of Crime Doesn’t Always End Well

This tenet might also apply to famous and glamorous criminals. Al Capone comes to mind. On some level, he had an exciting, glamorous life, but then dying of syphilis on Alcatraz is a particularly florid way of not staying in one piece. The legal term “knew or should have known” is operative. People don’t respect you if you get yourself into serious difficulties by not making smart choices. It doesn’t even matter if they’ve made the same bad choices too, the thing is, you got caught.

Another Example:

I have been thinking about acclaimed novelist David Foster Wallace this week. I came across his name in a journal online and I thought back, yes, I remember him. At the time he died, he lived in my old stomping grounds, the Inland Empire of southern California. He was a professor of English and successful novelist, married … everything I ever wanted to be! And yet, he died a suicide. I wondered at the time, and I wondered again this week, how could such worldly success have coincided with such existential misery. Apparently being everything many writers dream of didn’t cut it when it came down to existential angst. Staying in one piece. Not always easy.

Staying in one piece, then, on some level means either a) don’t do the thing or b) don’t get caught or have to pay for what you did.

A Personal Reflection on This

When I found this quote, back in the ’90’s, I instantly began the practice of trying to follow it’s wisdom. When we thought of things to do, I would ask myself, how does this plan (say, moving to Italy) impact health, wealth, long life, and staying in one piece, and if I didn’t see it as a problem, I’d consider that it had cleared that hurdle.

I used to tell myself that I was going to try to live a long time, and the things I couldn’t do when I was young, largely because I was constantly responsible for young children, I would hope to be healthy enough to do when I was middle aged.

And now, here I am, doing a lot of those things. I feel the proverb served me well. Helping me to take the long view when I was young. With this proverb, I was able to plan to pace myself.

But the Wealth Thing was Always an Issue

When I originally wrote this post, two years ago, Leo had been going around telling family members that “Susan is running out of money. Susan won’t be able to pay her bills. Susan isn’t going to be able to afford that house.”

I wrote about my feelings on this at the time:

“My whole life, that has been a struggle surrounding wealth. Your financial picture is a composite of your income and your expenses. People never believed me when I told them Leo spent everything. And the past few months I’ve learned: Leo spent more money than even I’d realized. How could that be? I’ve been the bookkeeper all this time. He liked fancy clothes and he liked to go out to eat and he liked to travel and he bought so much food at the grocery store you cannot believe it. Year after year he spent more than he earned. My Income dropped when he left in November, naturally, and I waited for the money to dry up. So far it hasn’t. I don’t spend very much.

“Finally, yesterday I got the notice from the credit union: my mortgage refinance is approved. I’m buying the house. He’s getting a cash payout on the equity.

“Hearing this, my mother was pleased. But she was worried, too. “What will Leo do with all the cash he’s getting?” I realized that she was right. He might lose it. He doesn’t know much about money.

“On the other hand, I might not care what Leo does with the money. Because for the first time in decades, Leo misusing money is Not My Problem. That is a whole different ball game.”

So, My Own Tally on the Chinese Proverb about Wealth?

In order to really follow the proverb I had to get free of the financial burden that Leo was constantly creating. It’s very unusual, I now realize, to get divorced because someone is financially ruining you. But it can happen.

I didn’t actually divorce him because of the money of course. It was a lot of stuff But the money was a side effect. It happened. And now, I find myself in a place of freedom. A kind of financial freedom I haven’t known in decades.

Freedom to spend or not spend money. Who’d have thought this would be so big?

My Chinese proverb about wealth helped me see the way over decades, and the four ways of being wealthy helped me plan for life. . That’s something to be grateful for, a tool we can all use. Health, wealth, long life, staying in one piece. I’ll say it again: you can bet your life on building a future using these.