Lesson 1- Of thanksgiving and greed

Hi all,

Its been awhile since I last blogged and between that time and now Ive realised that through sports and my own observations on life Ive learnt a lot and would like to share it with you in hope that it will help inspire, motivate and teach the readers of this blog lessons that hopefully will help make a difference (however big or small) in their lives!I also hope to be able to motivate and inspire people with some of my posts in this blog! So here we go...

Over the weekend I was away in Chicago for thanksgiving break. The following day was black friday, which is equivalent to the UK version of boxing day! Shoppers were everywhere buying and buying more! Shopping started at 12am for my friends including me where we headed out to a factory outlet that sold branded items (Nike etc etc). As usual I headed straight for the Pearl Izumi shop to look at the latest tri/cycling goodies that were marked down twice! As in discounted once and then discounted again, as I stepped in the shop I kept picking up items, I wanted this and wanted that and in the midst of my madness and as I looked around me, it suddenly struck me when I realised that of all the things that I was going to buy, how many do I actually/really need? How many of it will I really use?? I felt really ashamed of myself having succumbed to greed and because of the cheap prices and the fact that I could afford it I wanted to buy it all! I picked out the stuff that I really needed, and after somemore thinking, paid and left the store.

As I looked around me, I wondered how many people actually shopping here today bought things that they actually need? Or were they buying it because they could afford it and beacuse it was the sales? As I observed around I realised that beacuse of our culture of "more is better" I can bet you that a lot of people out there at the sales were actually buying more than they needed.


As I thought about it, I realised our culture of greed has actually left us much poorer than what we started out with. If we take a good look at ourselves, how many times have we actually bought something, only to regret it later for being a waste of money?Or when we take a look at our closet, how many of the shirts and dresses that we posess, we make full use of? Greed in a lot of ways have far reaching consequences on everyone (think lehmann brothers, goldman sachs, Bear Stearns and the current economic crisis), because of the greed of the people at the top, countless others around the world suffer.

In sports it is no different, when I look at 2007/2008 I think of people like Marion Jones(doping), Imagine how her teammates feel now that they'll have to return the gold medal they worked so hard to win in the relays, or look at cycling (Ricardo Ricco, Stefan Schumacher, Leonardo Piepoli), look at how greed got the better of them and they doped and when they were caught the whole team of 22 riders + staff suffered and most were left without jobs now as sponsors pulled the plug on the whole team. Because of the greed of one, many suffer. With a lot of things in life worth doing there are no shorts cuts, and the only way to get wherever we want to go is through hard work and as Sean Kelly put it "Guts"!

I also look to the times in life when I got greedy and paid the price for it, especially when it comes to food and sporting goods. Countless time Ive eaten more just because it was a buffet and I paid for it, then to suffer later by feeling bloated or I bought something that I didnt really need just beacuse I thought it was cheap and advertising got the better of me. In that respect I believe I still have a lot to improve on and learn how to make better choices.

As we try to get through life, I hope that we do not let greed get the better of us, everytime before we buy something, let us look back and think "Do I really need this pair of shoe" I know all of us think "hey thats what we do when we shop", but really how many of us really give it serious thinking. I admit that as a self obsessed triathlete its also really hard not to get greedy especially with the media saying if you buy this bike youll be 10% faster or this shoe will make you as good as the ethiopian runner etc etc but I try to look behind all the advertising and try to make my spending decisions based on logic rather than the fact that I can afford it and hence I should buy it.

Our greed is unlikely to cause the next global financial meltdown or anything on that scale. However, it might cause havoc on our lives in some way (think want this but cannot afford it, want that but cannot afford that etc etc)then we suffer because we can't get what we want. I suppose the best way to deal with our greed in life is to think about what we have not what we don't and be thankful that we have those things. The more we think of what we dont have, the more we will want the things that we dont have.

So this holiday season while we shop, take a step back and think. The choices we make in the departmental store when we shop might make use poorer in the material sense but I believe it will make us richer spiritually and mentally in the long run with less craving and suffering.

At the end of the day, let us realise that this world provides enough to satisfy every person's need, but not their greed. If the greed in all of us were gone, we would probably solve 1/2 of the world's problems (war, poverty etc etc).

Dont miss the silver lining because you were expecting gold instead.

Shop wisely,
Yuen

P/s to all who read I would be really grateful if you would leave comments on how to improve my blog and writing. I'll try to post a lesson learnt/ something motivational every week as when Im out running/cycling alone I tend to think about stuff like this!