Episode 14: A Lesson from the Philippines

[00:00:00] Seth: So I lived in the Philippines for, for a little while. And you know, it was one of the most impactful experiences of my life because I got to become so deeply deeply familiar with a place that's very different from where I grew up. I was challenged beyond what I'd ever experienced up until that point, and I learned a lot of lessons while I was out there.

But there's one lesson in particular that I learned from Filipinos that I feel is really worth sharing. One of the worst things you can be called in the Philippines is Kuripo, which is stingy, greedy, miserly, are good English translations for that. People that are seen to be wealthy. But are not gracious are seen in really an extremely negative light.

It's sort of a different world there in regards to, to money, at least from what I experienced. Many people there are frequently just wrapped up in this never ending circle of small debts between each other. It's, it's amazing. It's this incredible tangle of debts between hundreds and hundreds of people.

And, um, if you're well to do, I mean, it's really expected that you're going to be pretty liberal in lending money to your peers or the people around you. At least, this is how I interpreted what I saw. So if you happen to be a native Filipino you're welcome to correct me if I'm wrong. So additionally, there was one behavior that really confused me when I first got over there.

And it was seeing people look at other people's stuff. And asking for it. And what was even more confusing to me was seeing people that were being asked, actually give whatever was being asked of them. And I mean, a lot of times it was things that weren't even necessarily small, like something that had some amount of value to the person that actually owned it and they would give it to their friend that asked for it.

And that just kind of blew my mind at the time. For the most part, Filipinos don't seem to have the same expectations of foreigners as they do of themselves, which would make sense. We're different. We don't think the same as them. But even still, I would still get asked for my stuff all the time. And I recall buying, at one point, these cheap little speakers to, to play my music on.

And I can call them cheap now, but at the time, they were really quite expensive for me. And yeah. They would, they would have certainly been considered expensive by the local population at the time as well. But I can't tell you how many times people would ask me to give those to them. And I remember the first time somebody asked me, I kinda, I think I kind of chuckled and, and I probably told him something to the effect of, are you kidding?

I use these things every day. And you know that if I'm remembering right, I don't think they took it too bad. They just kind of walked off and they're like, okay, whatever. And but you know, the inverse of all of this was a lot of times people would give me stuff. Yeah. Sometimes stuff that I could tell was something that they liked.

So, I mean, it went both directions, but you know, me being a Westerner, I was kind of like, what, giving my stuff away? What the hell are you talking about? I'm not going to give you my stuff. But I had a moment. It was, it was just kind of, it was like, what the heck I'm going to, I'm going to go native, I figured while I was there, I'm going to try to be as culturally Filipino as I could just to truly dig into the experience.

And so I, so I opted to give away those speakers to somebody. It was one of the best things I could have ever done. Some people naturally understand the joy of giving gifts, but I was never one of those people. When I was a kid, I couldn't even bring myself to spend money, because I didn't want to lose the physical dollar.

I was worried that the dollar's feelings would be hurt if I gave it away. So, when I gave away something that I actually valued that I couldn't replace for the first time, it felt amazing. I felt a stronger bond with that person that I gave those speakers to. And I felt fantastic when I saw them using them.

It was, it was just completely foreign experience to me. And like I said, some people get this naturally. I am not one of those people. So for me, this was such a lesson learned that like, this thing that I liked so much and I use so often. I can get just as much satisfaction out of giving it away to somebody else.

It really, really blew my mind. And not only just as much satisfaction, but more, and a deeper bond with somebody else. It's pretty easy to go buy a present for somebody, but something that you actually use and like, and having to give that away. Is a little harder. See that which we give our time and attention to is generally the things we value.

So consequently, when we give up something that has real value, it's kind of showing that you value the person to whom you're giving it. More than that thing that now some people don't know how to receive gifts some people are not very good at showing gratitude and and obviously you got to be a little strategic about who you want to actually Give something to because you know you go and you know, you see some woman that infatuates you and you want to Give her some expensive thing that you have she's probably not going to appreciate it.

Um, especially if you don't know her that well, but on the other hand, somebody that you actually have an existing bond with and already have a strong bit of a relationship with, like it just makes that bond stronger. So giving away these important things to you, it's almost like it releases you from this artificial bond that we create with physical items and then it benefits somebody else.

And even if we benefited from those things before, there's a kind of freedom that comes with having nothing. So when my kids fight over toys or other things, I've adopted this phrase. I say, things don't matter. People do. And so a good question to ask yourself is, what would you be without your things? See, I love my things and I understand how a person can get attached to things.

Like I said before, like I, I had this like, personal connection with the physical dollars that I had when I was a kid. Didn't want to hurt their feelings. Um, and even now, I have been, especially have a fondness for certain tools that I use all the time. Like, I have a drill that I've used more times than I, I can count.

And I look at that thing and I feel like I'm looking at my old friend. It's like, ah. You know, it's what I would imagine like a, in a movie, like some medieval soldier looking at his sword and his dear friend that's seen him through all the battles. That's like an exaggerated, an exaggerated version of the feeling I get when I look at my, my stupid drill.

But you know, if I didn't have that thing, I would still be me. Things are tools and nothing more. Tools for entertainment. Tools for productivity. Tools for surviving. You Tools for status, tools for whatever you need. Even your body is essentially a tool for survival and pleasure. And, like, it's everything, everything physical is basically just a tool to serve us.

That piece of us that, I guess you could say, our soul. So, the less dependent we become on things for our happiness, the more you have to find that happiness inside of yourself. And a person that can find happiness, regardless of what they have, would probably be the freest person on earth. When we have a thing, it becomes like an extension of ourselves to some degree.

Our minds catalog the item as a thing we can use, almost as if it was an extra limb. But people can't handle that much stuff, that's why we feel good when we consolidate everything. We get rid of half of our crap and then we've only got so much stuff, and it's usually only the most useful that we keep.

And it feels amazing because our, our whole life has been simplified. We have less things that are, less limbs, so to say, that our body's trying to keep track of. That being said, it's hard to give up a limb, or in this case, some item that we use a lot. But we gain a couple of things when we do it. One of them is a release from that bond that we create to that physical item, and the joy of being able to see another person benefit.

You know, some people are just so natural at this. It's almost like they get a high off of it. And I could say, you know, to some degree I get it. I get a little bit of a high off of giving something, giving gifts to people and seeing them really appreciate them. So just to put a little perspective on the things in our lives.

If they were as important as we thought they were, we would never want to go on vacations because we'd have to leave so much stuff. But oftentimes when we go on vacation, we don't even want to come back, regardless of whether or not we have our stuff. In fact, we wish we could just stay longer. See, the things are novel, they're useful, they're fun, but they are temporary.

And so what if a thing that's in our life spends just a little less time with us? Before you had whatever that thing is, you were likely happy. And when you first acquired whatever that thing is, physical or, or even um, abstract, even like uh, some level of status even, before you acquired that thing, you were happy.

And after you acquired that thing, it probably made you real happy at first, And then it just became the new normal. And then you went looking for something else. Because you wanted a new thing. You wanted something more special. More better. Something else to adorn yourself with. As people, we're really good at progressing in life.

And feeling ecstatic about the acquisitions we make in life. The acquisitions of physical wealth. The acquisitions of, of status. The acquisitions of I don't know, anything, you can, you name it. Acquisitions of stuff. But we are utterly terrible at keeping perspective when we lose things. So, I think the happiest people on Earth are probably small children.

Whether you find them in a rich family surrounded by hundreds of toys, or a destitute family with effectively nothing, they're all still generally happy little people. It seems like none of us learns to really be unhappy With what we have until we get a little older. So as adults, we kind of lose this ability to adapt in a, in a negative way to, to losing things.

Whereas little children, it's like, well, even little children aren't great at losing things. If you take a toy away from them, they're going to be sad. The discontent is usually fairly short lived relative to a grown up who will carry that discontent for a long, long time, even forever sometimes, if the thing was big enough.

But imagine if you could gain the superpower of not being affected by having to reduce your material wealth. What if you could have nothing except the clothes on your back tomorrow, with everything you own taken from you? Imagine if that could happen and you could still feel happy. I mean, that would be a superpower that rivals the best of them.

I'd take that over laser vision any day. It reminds me of playing video games when I was younger. You can make this progress and then suddenly lose it all and have to restart. You know, that's kind of, I think a lot of games, there's a lot of capacity to, to save. But even still, even though you can save at lots of different points, if you ever forget to save your game, and your character dies and you have to go back to that save, you, you've lost everything.

The cool thing about a game though, is once you've lost everything, you can usually go through and do it faster and get to the same goal much quicker. So the stuff or the progress may be lost, but there's usually wisdom or knowledge gained in acquiring it or the experience you had giving it away. will stay with you as long as you can remember it.

Things are nothing more than temporary help to achieve a goal. And when I imagine a life where I lose everything, it's scary. But at the same time, I know better now how to manage my life. I think I would be really uncomfortable if I lost everything for a little while. But I'd rebuild. And I'd probably do it faster because I know so much more and I've built so much more confidence.

Of course, this would happen after all sorts of, you know, weeping and moaning and discontent and unhappiness. Um, I'm certainly not immune to that, but I know that I would rebuild if it was all taken from me. And if it was taken from me again, I would rebuild again. Because what else is there to do? The thing that is exciting in life, the thing that we really are about is.

Is just that kind of forward progress. And so if we can adapt to our circumstance, like we're still going to make forward progress and it's still going to be exciting. You know, I think, I think a man that journeys from being destitute to a moderate level of wealth in the later years of his life, that was probably a pretty incredible life.

And then you've got like a man that maybe started out wealthy and got more wealthy. It may have been less incredible because he made it, he may have achieved less. And it's that process of, of achieving and progressing. That's the exciting part about life. That's the part about life that is. Well, it's one of the parts about life that makes life worth living, because there's many parts about life that make it worth living.

Now, I think if we're living really healthy lives, mentally speaking, I think we'll come to a point where the things in our life become less and less important outside of what we need to survive. And the thing that gains in importance in our life is how we can benefit other people. So, if you've never had an opportunity to give away something of value, something that you actually really care about, I would invite you to give it a try.

It will change you forever. It will change the way you view your material possessions. Try to find someone that will appreciate it. But never mind whether or not they appreciate it as much as you did. The point here is that you have freed yourself just a little bit from the silly ties that we have with things in life, while simultaneously building a deeper bond between you and another person.

Most people recognize when someone's sacrificing something for them, and they feel that bond as much as you do. And if they don't, explain it to them. Help them understand. And let them know that the thing means a lot to you, but how happy it would make you to see them get to enjoy it. See, people are more important than things.

And for this lesson, I have the Philippines to thank. And I'll always be grateful that they taught me the value of giving.