Once there was a carpenter who worked out of his home. He took joy in building furniture. He would often sing while hammering and shaping wood into a piece of furniture. One day, the carpenter’s rich neighbour got fed up with the noise he made as he hammered the wood. The neighbour finally hatched a plan to quieten the carpenter. He took several hundred dollars and left it in an envelope in the carpenter’s workshop.
The neighbour thought that if he gave the carpenter money, he would not have to work and he would stop his incessant hammering.
The carpenter found the envelope, and instead of using it to take a vacation, the carpenter thought, “Someone has left me several hundred dollars. What good fortune! I will invest the money in buying new tools so that I can build bigger and better furniture and make more money.” The money flamed the carpenter’s desire to earn more money. He began working even harder, hoping to increase the hundreds into thousands.
No End To Greed
When the carpenter had earned thousands, he wanted to make a hundred thousand. He put pressure upon himself to work day and night. Soon, he stopped his humming and singing. He no longer took joy in his work, but felt strangled by the pressure he had put upon himself. On many nights, he was so stressed, that he could not even sleep. Inner contentment and peace were now forgotten in the pursuit of money.
Let us think about our own lives. Do we find ourselves spending all our time trying to make money? If we make all the money in the world but cannot enjoy it, then is it worth the effort?
If we find we are devoting too much of our time in making money and do not have enough time to spend with our families, pursue our hobbies, or spend time in spiritual contemplation, and in doing things we love, then we need to find out whether we are making the right choices. It is good to save for the future, but is it worth using up our entire life in trying to have more than what we need?
The Future Is Uncertain
Who knows what the future will bring? When we become old, will we have the strength to do what we waited our whole life to do? If we leave our spiritual pursuits until we have reached our senior years, who knows how much time we will have left or whether we will be able to devote time to spirituality at that stage. If we ignore our family until they are already grown and have children of their own, we might miss an important part of their lives that can never be recovered.
If we have decided that certain goals are important, then we should try to find time for them throughout our life, and not put them on the back burner in the pursuit of amassing more money than we need. Being conscious of how we spend our time and our life is important. If we listen to our soul, we will find that inner peace and contentment are more valuable than all the riches in the world.
