Lee Wei Ling: My house is shabby, but it is comfortable

January 4, 2009 by admin
Filed under: Voices of the People 

Written by Lee Wei Ling, for the Sunday Times, 04 Jan 2009
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In 2007, in an end-of-year message to the staff of the National Neuroscience Institute, I wrote: ‘Whilst boom time in the public sector is never as booming as in the private sector, let us not forget that boom time is eventually followed by slump time. Slump time in the public sector is always less painful compared to the private sector.’

Slump time has arrived with a bang.

While I worry about the poorer Singaporeans who will be hit hard, perhaps this recession has come at an opportune time for many of us. It will give us an incentive to reconsider our priorities in life.

Decades of the good life have made us soft. The wealthy especially, but also the middle class in Singapore, have had it so good for so long, what they once considered luxuries, they now think of as necessities.

A mobile phone, for instance, is now a statement about who you are, not just a piece of equipment for communication. Hence many people buy the latest model though their existing mobile phones are still in perfect working order.

A Mercedes-Benz is no longer adequate as a status symbol. For millionaires who wish to show the world they have taste, a Ferrari or a Porsche is deemed more appropriate.

The same attitude influences the choice of attire and accessories. I still find it hard to believe that there are people carrying handbags that cost more than thrice the monthly income of a bus driver, and many more times that of the foreign worker labouring in the hot sun, risking his life to construct luxury condominiums he will never have a chance to live in.

The media encourages and amplifies this ostentatious consumption. Perhaps it is good to encourage people to spend more because this will prevent the recession from getting worse. I am not an economist, but wasn’t that the root cause of the current crisis – Americans spending more than they could afford to?

I am not a particularly spiritual person. I don’t believe in the supernatural and I don’t think I have a soul that will survive my death. But as I view the crass materialism around me, I am reminded of what my mother once told me: ‘Suffering and deprivation is good for the soul.’

My family is not poor, but we have been brought up to be frugal. My parents and I live in the same house that my paternal grandparents and their children moved into after World War II in 1945. It is a big house by today’s standards, but it is simple – in fact, almost to the point of being shabby.

Those who see it for the first time are astonished that Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s home is so humble. But it is a comfortable house, a home we have got used to. Though it does look shabby compared to the new mansions on our street, we are not bothered by the comparison.

Most of the world and much of Singapore will lament the economic downturn. We have been told to tighten our belts. There will undoubtedly be suffering, which we must try our best to ameliorate.

But I personally think the hard times will hold a timely lesson for many Singaporeans, especially those born after 1970 who have never lived through difficult times.

No matter how poor you are in Singapore, the authorities and social groups do try to ensure you have shelter and food. Nobody starves in Singapore.

Many of those who are currently living in mansions and enjoying a luxurious lifestyle will probably still be able to do so, even if they might have to downgrade from wines costing $20,000 a bottle to $10,000 a bottle. They would hardly notice the difference.

Being wealthy is not a sin. It cannot be in a capitalist market economy. Enjoying the fruits of one’s own labour is one’s prerogative and I have no right to chastise those who choose to live luxuriously.

But if one is blinded by materialism, there would be no end to wanting and hankering. After the Ferrari, what next? An Aston Martin? After the Hermes Birkin handbag, what can one upgrade to?

Neither an Aston Martin nor an Hermes Birkin can make us truly happy or contented. They are like dust, a fog obscuring the true meaning of life, and can be blown away in the twinkling of an eye.

When the end approaches and we look back on our lives, will we regret the latest mobile phone or luxury car that we did not acquire? Or would we prefer to die at peace with ourselves, knowing that we have lived lives filled with love, friendship and goodwill, that we have helped some of our fellow voyagers along the way and that we have tried our best to leave this world a slightly better place than how we found it?

We know which is the correct choice – and it is within our power to make that choice.

In this new year, burdened as it is with the problems of the year that has just ended, let us again try to choose wisely.

To a considerable degree, our happiness is within our own control, and we should not follow the herd blindly.

The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.

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3 Comments on Lee Wei Ling: My house is shabby, but it is comfortable

  1. Alamelu on Thu, 29th Jan 2009 11:54 pm

    2. I have to agree with Ms Lee Wei Ling. Conspicuous consumption a la Les Must de Cartier has been aimed at siphoning off the excess cash in the system which could have been used to provide a better standard of living to the working class by increasing their income, to a group of hangers on who are created by the media, which somehow arrogates to itself the right to decide what is important in everyone’s scheme of things.
    I am an Indian, and I have been dismayed at the disproportionate time allocated by media to “news” related to the middle and upper classe/income groups as opposed to the ordinary hardworking working class Indian. It is probably even worse in America, where Madison Avenue decides everyone’s values. Of late, Indian media houses have sold out to MNCs which have a clear agenda. I had to stop my subscription to IXXXX TXXXX as it was so blatantly selling a lifestyle that could only be dreamed of by most Indians. Obviously it was aimed at a few million Indians only, but even so, it was clear to me that inciting so much greed could not be good.

    For other opinions on IXXXX TXXXX and its ilk –
    http://ghulammuhammed.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/a-letter-to-the-editorfrom-amaresh-misra-to-mr-arun-poorie-editor-in-chief-india-today/

    Let us not forget that we need someone to grow our food, and it is the peasants who do this, at the mercy of the vagaries of nature. For this, we pay them a pittance. They are at the mercy of middlemen and cartels.

    Unfortunately the public sector is notorious for its inertia and general inefficiency. Yet, there is, by and large, transparency, and with really meritorious people at the helm, thingsa always proceed in the “right” direction, which one can’t always say of the private sector.

    The service economy has a lot to answer for. If third wave workers decide their own worth, at the expense of first and second wave workers, we are bound to witness the slump that has now arrived with a bang.

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