Legacy

I thank Enrique Dy of Bacolod Visayan Lumber and Dy Home Builders. Inc. for the two books he gave me for Christmas. One of these takes us into and gives us a look inside the bonds market. The book, “Riches among the Ruins” by Robert P. Smith (Amacom 2009) is an inside story of how the world’s finances are traded and even manipulated. I am grateful also to several friends who shared their blessings and sent greetings during the season. May God give them returns a thousand fold.

Smith’s book inspired me to write this column as I read with a sense of irony at the fate of former President Gloria Arroyo, Chief Justice Renato Corona and former Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos. They reached the heights of power and prestige only to be dragged down and to the stock although the charges against them have yet to be proven.

I am not writing what the book is about although it is an interesting and informative one but for ordinary mortals this book would be a bore. So I don’t think many Filipinos would have the patience to spend hours traveling with the author into the world of high risk, international finance and get wealthy from the ruins of other economies, businesses and individuals.

This first week of the New Year is also an opportune time to write of things beyond our mundane concerns for, after all, everything is passing, temporal and soon would be gone, just like the year 2011 is now gone and then this year will soon pass away too.

I was struck by the first chapter of this book that somehow summarizes what all our efforts in attaining wealth is all about and where this quest for riches and power will end up.

Smith made millions of dollars in a flash and then millions of dollars were lost just as fast. He then knows how fleeting everything is and how temporal is wealth and, I might add health. They can be perfect in time and then swiftly gone at the blink of an eye. He calls his journey into wealth as “adventures in the dark corners of global economy” and how the quest for wealth oftentimes, as in the case of the developing countries, leaves them in ruins.

The author tells us “I have used the riches I have found among the ruins to build a theater and arts center at my high school alma mater, the Roxbury Latin School… to build a new student center at my college alma mater… to renovate a synagogue in Bath, Maine, my mother’s hometown; and to set up a foundation to support research in mental illness, specifically schizophrenia.”

These are impressive but for multi-millionaires the cost of these legacies can just be loose change. But I quote this list of his legacies because of the reasons for doing them and this is the message that this New Year would be something all should think about, not the physical structures and endowments but the intentions of his projects that transcend their monetary value.

Smith explained, “This isn’t an excuse or rationalization for wealth. At the end of the day, it’s about doing well and doing good, and in my view everyone who has done well has an obligation to do good.”  

We all want to be wealthy, to be better now than before and be better later than now but at the end, what have we to leave behind? A candidate in Bacolod who had reached some pinnacle of wealth and power was once asked what his legacy would be and he could not make a coherent reply.    

The filing of cases against men and women of power of the last administration underscores once again the folly of greed and what inordinate desire of wealth for its own sake has become a legacy that the future generations will spit upon.

Many years back, while we were traveling for a long journey and had practically exhausted what is there to say, a companion asked what at the time looked like a silly question. He asked, “When you are gone, how would you want to be remembered?”

Years later Fr. Vicente Salgado, about to be ordained bishop gave me a tee shirt. At the back was printed a quotation from St. Paul: “I have done the things He asked me to do and have finished the task He had set me to do.” That is an appropriate response to that question but have you done the things He wants you to do?

People do think of the legacy but what would that be? I remember a book about a small contingent of Germans that occupied a pro-Nazi island close to England. The book ended with a statement that is worth pondering upon: “after all has been said and done, was it worth it?”*

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