I am a martial law baby and have shouted my share of chants at rallies and demonstrations as a student, but what I know of Crispin Beltran are only what I read in the papers.
Today I find myself deep in thought at the life of the lawmaker who fell yesterday to his death while repairing his roof, with merely P50,000 to his name and two barong tagalog, a pair of eyeglasses, cabinet shelves and t-shirts listed as personal assets.
Was Crispin Beltran poor? What does it mean to be poor?
There are times in life when you find yourself and your whole value system challenged by a thought, an act, a single event. Ka Bel’s death challenged what I know about being poor. In personal finance, we talk endlessly about being frugal and saving coins in a jar. We hem and haw about where to put our P20,000 windfall and whether we can grow that into P1 million … eventually ☺. We debate with ourselves whether the rollercoaster ride in the stock market is worth the headaches.
At the end of the day, is it just about how much we make and how much we keep? Or is it about how we live our lives, using whatever we have?
I came from a poor family but strangely enough, I didn’t feel poor until I became a moody teenager. I know of another person who, because of poverty, hoarded food in her cupboards even as a successful businesswoman because she was scared of the painful pangs of hunger. Those who had gone through much financial suffering are marked by that experience for life. But take a look at this paragraph in The Philippine Daily Inquirer article on Ka Beltran:
“Despite millions of pesos available to him as a lawmaker, Beltran lived a simple life.”
We all know about “those millions”. In my mind, choosing to be poor that way is noble. In our lives, we will probably come across those kinds of crossroads. Hopefully when it’s my turn, I will have the moral courage to take the path he chose.
There are other kinds of choices that can help us live fully and nobly while reducing the chances of suffering financially. The choice to be responsible with debt. To live simply and save more grandiosely. To delay gratification. To check this blog from time to time. (heh)
Kidding aside, at the end of the day, better money management can also help us do more, serve more, laugh more, and spend more time with family and friends.
I do not know everything about Ka Beltran and his life. But assuming everything that was written about him in the end are true, then he knows something about being poor and being rich that many in this world don’t. I’m inclined to think his was the better choice.
May 22nd, 2008 at 11:56 am
@the husband: i must have typed “pity” at spurt of the moment. he definitely has a legacy that no amount of money can buy, material poverty being almost irrelevant. He’s bukambibig sa aming lahat dun sa UP, and few are even up there in the mountains for Ka Crispin’s cause, such following cannot be quantified in peso terms.
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:33 am
hachiko, I don’t think it’s pity, it’s more like he deserved to have much more than that. I was shocked to learn that he was living that humbly. But it was his choice, a good choice.
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:55 am
I think the ultimate aim of achieving financial independence (becoming rich) - its being able to free up our “time” from being spent on the mundane tasks of working for our next meal to doing something that gives us real satisfaction
because being “poor” takes away the “time” you’d rather spend patiently waiting for hours.. for your baby to take his first step..
being “poor” forces you to leave the warm comfort of your bed to endure a two-hour commute at five AM on a stormy monday morning to a dreadful place called work..
being “poor” puts you in a situation where you have to explain to your 9-year old kid why he cannot join this year’s summer camp..
Ka Bel made his choices.. mine is to ensure that i won’t have to go through these again..
thanks..
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:16 am
“To learn that a rich person is not one who has the most, but is one who needs the least.”
Excerpt from “an interview with god”
http://acgadvisors.blogspot.com/2008/02/interview-with-god.html
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:46 am
crispin beltran died as a poor man. unfortunately,his past actions & outdated ideology made million other Pinoys to live & die poor. Its just natural for him to die poor, because they hate to work & just always complain & blame the government.
its so easy to be idealist & its always poetic to be a rebel, but we all need to work to give our families a decent living.
as a young kid before, i have seen many factories closed resulting to unemployment because of their so called “ideology” that was even junked by the country from where they import it