Keeping up with the Joneses

Do you know where the phrase “Keeping up with the Joneses” came from? I did a little research, and this is what I found out:

In the 1840s, wealthy New Yorkers began to move from Manhattan to build great mansions along the Hudson River, north of the city. One of the greatest belonged to Elizabeth Schermerhorn Jones, an heiress to the fortune of John Jacob Astor and aunt to novelist Edith Wharton. She spent huge sums of money to maintain her mansion and entertain friends, and her neighbors attempted to match her spending – hence the phrase “Keeping up with the Joneses.”

Even today, envy can be found everywhere. The same goes with Mr. Greed.

I’ve told this story before, but I think it’s worth re-telling, and its moral, worth emphasizing again: A greedy man and an envious man were walking along when a stranger approached them and befriended them. Before the stranger left, he told them that he would leave each a gift. The stranger’s gifts were: a wish come true for the first one to make it; and for the second one, a double portion of what the first had wished for. The greedy man knew what he wanted, but he didn’t want to make his wish first because he wanted the double portion for himself and didn’t want the other to get it. The envious man felt the same way, so he was also unwilling to wish first. After a while, the stronger of the two grabbed the other by the throat and said that he would choke him to death unless he makes his wish. At that, the other man said, “Very well! I make my wish – I wish to be made blind in one eye!” Immediately he lost the sight of one eye, and his companion went blind in both.

Mr. Greed and Mr. Envy are in many business partnerships today. The sad truth is, they can also be found in a lot of other places like your institutions, your neighborhood, your civic organizations and even your schools.

Paul Eldridge says, “What we have not poisons what we have. Our urge to acquire things is due less to the passion to possess them than to the vanity of feeling superior to those who envy our possession of them. Envy transmutes other people’s base metals into gold. Our envy is the yeast that swells the fortune of others. No form of hatred is as keen as envy. It magnifies the importance of our enemy and belittles our own. Greed on the other hand consumes the person. Enough is never enough and greed becomes a cruel taskmaster.”

The thing that concerns me is that, the young generation of today has put a premium on gadgets and creature comforts and of having money, over values and virtues.

“Sign up to work for us, and you get a signing bonus,” says a recruitment ad.

“Unless you wear this, carry this, apply this or use this, you do not belong,” says another one.

When was the last time you’ve seen a billboard that says, “Be content with what you have, but never be contented with what you can be?”

This material is credited to anonymity, but I find this both poignant and revealing:

We read in the papers, we hear on the air,

Of killing and stealing, and crime everywhere.

We sigh, and we say, as we notice the trend,

“This young generation! Where will it all end?”

But can we be sure that it’s their fault alone?

That maybe most of it isn’t really our own?

Too much money to spend, too much idle time;

Too many movies of passion and crime;

Too many books not fit to be read;

Too much of evil in what they hear said;

Too many children encouraged to roam,

By too many parents who won’t stay at home.

Kids don’t make the movies, they don’t write the books,

That paint a gay picture of gangsters and crooks.

They don’t make the liquor, they don’t run the bars,

They don’t pass the laws, nor make the high-speed cars.

They don’t make the drugs that addle the brain; 

It’s all done by older folks greedy for gain.

Thus in so many cases it must be confessed,

The label “Delinquent” fits older folks best.

Sydney Harris says, “The more you have to live for, the less you need to live on.” Those who make acquisition their goal never have enough. And of course ancient writings that have proven to be true all the time says, “Contentment with godliness is great gain.”

Work for gains and not for losses.

(You may click on www.franciskong.com to send me your feedback, or you can also listen to my radio program “Business Matters”, aired 8 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. during weekdays, over 98.7 dzFE-FM ‘The Master’s Touch’, the classical music station.)