Is there a virtue in poverty!
One of the strikingly down-to-earth statements of Robert T. Kiyosaki in his bestseller Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money….. is that parents tend to brainwash their children that being poor has a virtue in it and that it is a sin to be rich! What a pity!!
In my boyhood days all the moral science books and stories invariably portrayed the poor as the very embodiment of virtues and the rich and affluent as villains of the piece, all vices personified! Another fallacy that we were fed with is that all riches are ill-gooten. It was as if poverty is the “equilibirium status” as it were, and that gathering riches in a grave sin. The stories exhorted us to lead a spartan life, sacrifice personal creature comforts (without any cause!) since the poor are God’s children! What a tomfoolery! The person who wrote such books would have sold the copy to the highest bidder and and marketed them with vigour to gather as much money as possible. It is rank hypocracy to negate the natural urges to own and enjoy. Ok, even discounting over-indulgence and hedonism, one has to possess enough to live in this manifested world. Look at the so called “seers” and “mantrics” and “tantriks” – they invariably wear spectacles to correct their vision or apply hair-dye to give a “face-lift”. They need these worldly things in order to draw a crowd to listen to them so that they can dwell at length on the virtues of renouncing attachment towards worldly pleasures!!
It is high time the children are told right things at the right formative years so that they do not end up trudging along in their life “working for money”, rather than “making money work for them”!
Let us stop existing and start living!