Pursuit

Jeremy Goh
jeremygoh
Published in
2 min readNov 13, 2013

A few weeks ago, an investor shared with me a story about the pursuit of money — The reality of why he wanted to exit the industry of being a role of a fund manager. He simply ask me to dump everything out of my pockets & bag, be it a wallet with cards, my iPad and MacBook, a card holder, a water bottle, tissues, presenter remote, tie, etc etc.
He pointed at an item at random and asked: Do I need this? Why do I need this? Do I need this for my survival? If you’re going to end up in the graveyard, do you still need this? Anyway, what is it for? Does that make you happier? Or more at ease? Why carry something that’s a burden to you?

I’ll like to the change the emphasis of problems.
What is problems? What do you honestly need? Do you honestly need it .. or want it?

I began to realised that the pursuit of luxury is endless, and building a personal fortune with the goal of accumulating wealth is simply losing the purpose of life. How many times do we get to have a proper uninterrupted meal with our loved ones? How many times are we appreciative of people around us? Did we take unconditional love for granted?

With that, great power comes with great responsibility, with the high status quo, high paying job, you are tasked to steer the organisation you are with to the right path. Feel free to ask any entrepreneurs — that requires long-term thinking, planning, execution, manpower, support and willpower to push it through. When you are being compensated for anything, there is a price to pay for it, if you can’t perform, you are out. Pay it through your nose, mental or physical health, that’s basically something known as the economic term — Opportunity Cost. You basically give up something for the other.

The investor simply continued: “Will your next lifelong holiday be on a sampan?”

TLDR; The pursuit of your dreams will lead you to happiness which wealth will take care of itself.

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Jeremy Goh
jeremygoh

Travel + humanising technology. Security Print @ HP. Follow for stories on perspectives around the world of humane connections. Made in SG / TW