B00A3OGH1O EBOK (13 page)

In any case, spending money is what eases their pain. And if someone is insecure as well, then he’s spending the money in hopes of validation. This may be someone who people look negatively upon, so his self-esteem is so low that he resorts to showing off his wealth in exchange for validation. Often this is someone who posts pictures of his cash, cars, boats, receipts for drinks at a club, and other spending sprees on Facebook and other social networks. (Note: If it’s a girl, usually she seeks validation via posted pictures of her body in cutesy poses with duck faces, or in slutty, look-down-my-shirt poses with cleavage showing. As an alternative, she will posts picture of her food, pets, baby, niece and/or nephew.)

Almost everyone will once in a while post one of these “validation” posts on Facebook. But the problem is with someone who depends on them.

The problem usually starts when the person’s normal status posts get very little “likes” while his pictures of wealth gets a lot of “likes”. This influences him into thinking that he can only get approval from his friends and strangers if he spends more money and talks about it.

But those “likes” are only temporary, and soon he needs to post more pictures of wealth for more “likes”. Then when he realizes that different pictures of the same thing doesn’t get that many new “likes”, he decides to spend more money and show pictures of that. That’s when the dependency starts. He starts posting only pictures that show off his wealth, and brags about what cool “baller” things he is doing. And every once in a while, he needs a fix and posts more. This is someone who gets addicted to “likes”, and is emotionally attached to other people’s validation of him.

This isn’t the way to live your life. The only person whose validation you need is your own. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone. And don’t be the fool who spends a lot of his money just to prove others wrong.

Lifehack #29: Share your success.

So what purpose does earning money serve? For me, the money goes to benefiting my family and making sure that they’re taken care of. It’s a worthy cause that doesn’t make me feel guilty in the end. Since my brother doesn’t earn as much as I do, I give him and his wife a few grand a month so that his family could live a better life. I figured that a few grand a month would mean more to him than it would to me.

I admit that there are days when I feel guilty about splurging on two flashy Lamborghini’s, with one worth more than double the previous. And there are days when I feel guilty about owning more than one house. But in the end, it’s about what you do with these things that matter the most. Are you buying these things to show off your wealth? Or is there a more moral reason?

The reason why I bought the Lamborghini was that I eventually became overwhelmed with juggling a full time job, creating apps on the side, taking care of my mother, and maintaining a social life. Having a brand new Verde Ithaca Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 was my way of dealing with the stress. I know, I know, I could have just gotten a stress ball for much less. But it was my dream car, and so far, it had done a great job at putting a smile on my face each time I drove it.

The car had also put a smile on everyone else’s face, and helped raised money for many charity events, so it still fitted into my ideals of making this world a better place. Before the car, I never really spent any of the money I earned on myself (I was living with my mother and the Lamborghini was the very first car I bought). My mother, who’s very fiscally conservative, abhorred the idea that I was getting an overly expensive and flashy car. But my brother later told me that when I was taking delivery of my new Lamborghini, my mother had a proud look on her face and even became a little teary-eyed.

And now I have a new one-of-one azure blue Lamborghini Aventador® LP700-4. I saw this car as an upgrade to my LP560, and I wanted to get rid of the flashy lime green color (the azure blue color is a much more classy color). When I took delivery of the car in Orlando, FL, I had brought my mother with me again. It was also her first time in Florida for over twenty years, and it was her first time visiting my new big house in Florida. She never liked the idea that I was spending so much money on these luxury things, but she did not know that I was also spending the money for her.

You see, my mother suffers from catatonic schizophrenia, a very serious mental illness that she had since she was in her 20’s. Stressful events in her life trigger her psychotic episodes, where she would have auditory hallucinations, have trouble expressing herself and become extremely paranoid. These psychotic episodes usually last for maybe a few days, or two weeks at most. Our family mostly dealt with it without medication for decades. Her psychiatrist said that it’s possible that she developed it because she grew up in the slums, and her brother and father used to abuse her.

When my father’s life was unexpectedly taken away from him, my mother’s stress level shot up through the roof. She had become stuck in a psychotic episode ever since. Now instead of having just a week of catatonia, my mother is lucky to have a week where she doesn’t have catatonia.

Probably one of the saddest experiences I’ve ever had was when my mother tried to communicate with me, but the words wouldn’t come out of her mouth. Her lips would quiver and her hands would physically shake as she fought to express herself. But ultimately, she couldn’t, so she started crying. I couldn’t hold back my tears after witnessing this, and I started crying as well. It became common for me to spend close to six to ten hours with my mother, waiting for her to say what she had to say, or waiting for her to eat her food.

Finally, she said something.

“Maybe… maybe… I should stop being a burden to you,” she spoke softly to me in Chinese. I knew what that meant. She loved me enough that she wanted to end her life to save me from being depressed and stressed after seeing her like this and after taking care of her. Something had to be done to save her.

I had tried to get her on anti-psychotic medication, but she would stop taking them after a while and would even secretly throw them away. I knew then that the only thing I could do was to institutionalize her and force her to take her medication, or to try to remove all the stresses from her life. I chose the latter.

I quickly tried to hack away all the stressful events in her life. There was even a fire in the house that my mother rented out a little more than two years after my father passed away. The fire triggered a house inspection from the city. The inspection brought a court order to fix the housing violations. It was stressful for her to deal with, so I took care of all the paperwork for the violations and for the home insurance.

The violations were unfounded. The tenants later told us that the inspector did not even look at the house. He just wrote up random violations that he assumed were there. For example, one of the violations claimed that there was a three-piece bathroom in the basement of the house (i.e. a bathroom with a sink, a toilet, and a bathtub). There was no such bathroom in the basement. There was only a toilet in the basement. The case was eventually dismissed.

But I still had to wake up at six in the morning and take my catatonic mother with me to court to fight the case. I couldn’t just go alone, because I did not have the power of attorney at the time.
I didn’t have it because it was in short notice, and because it was close to impossible to get my mother to sign anything when she was paranoid and catatonic. At the court, my mother kept trying to drag me out because she was paranoid and scared of the unfamiliar place. Luckily, someone else was there who spoke Chinese and helped calm my mother down. But that was only temporary. After the fire, she stayed in a psychotic episode for over half a year. It was the longest she went without ever returning back to normal. I had feared that I lost my normal mother forever.

There were many more similarly stressful and unfortunate events that happened to our family. Each time, I had to stay strong to keep my mother sane and alive. My brother was (and still is) stuck in London with his wife, so I was the only one left to take care of my mother.

Finally, after months of dealing with her long-term psychotic episode, she snapped out of it. I had removed all stressors in her life. I even went out to buy her groceries with her on a weekly basis. On the days when she was too paranoid to leave the house, I would go out and buy the groceries for her. She only wanted Chinese groceries, so I had to venture out further to get them for her. During the days when she wasn’t psychotic, I went down to Florida to buy a large luxurious house. By living in Florida, I reduced my income taxes. In New York City, state and city income tax added up to around 13%. In Florida, there was no state income tax at all. The other reason why I bought a big house was because I wanted to get my mother to live in a more comfortable and relaxing home. We had been living in our small New York suburban home for decades, and it was time for me to spend some money to save my mother.

I finally convinced my mother to come down to Florida recently, and it was one of the greatest moves I had ever made for my mother’s mental health. Her eyes lit up when she saw how beautiful my house was, and she was extremely relaxed and unstressed. She liked the people in Florida better than the people in New York. In New York, the people were ruder and more jaded. Here, in my small town in Orlando, FL, the people were much more polite, and she no longer felt paranoid around strangers.

I took her to Disney World and many other places. It’s been over two decades since she had been to Disney World. She vaguely remembered pieces of Disney World from her past, and it helped bring out the playful and cheerful child in her. I even went on Splash Mountain with her, and she had a blast.

Because of the many amenities in my Florida house, my mother was able to stay more active than when she was in her small house in New York. She used my pool almost daily, even though she didn’t know how to swim. I tried teaching her, and she was willing to learn. She took up interest in billiards and ping pong. I tried teaching her those as well, and she was willing to learn.

Because my mother was feeling lonely after the loss of my father, I adopted a small poodle from the Florida Poodle Rescue organization to help keep her company. My poodle, who I named Lambo, was originally a stray dog from Miami full of fleas. He also had an eye ulcer on his right eye, which would permanently leave him partially blinded. I had nursed him back to health, and now he’s as happy as he could be.

My mother, too, was really happy. I finally got my normal, happy mother back, and I couldn’t be more relieved and glad. I took her to Sea World on her birthday in September 2012. She had never been there before. The day turned out really perfect, because she loved animals as much as I did. During the middle of the day, she kissed me on the cheek. Keep in mind that my mother is very conservative and not intimate at all. She even shies away when I try to hug her. So I cannot emphasize how extremely unexpected that expression of affection was to me. After she planted the kiss, she said to me in Chinese, “Thank you for taking care of me and taking me to Sea World on my birthday. I understand that you could be doing so many other things like working on your programs or your book, but you chose to stick around. If it wasn’t for you, I’d be sitting at home in New York alone on my birthday. Thank you.”

The pleasure is all mine, mom. Thank you for raising me and giving me a chance at a fulfilling life. And thank you, brother, for lending your ear when I needed someone to talk to. And thank you, dad, for giving me the tools in life to be able to take care of others. And thank you, friends and readers, for listening to my family’s story and for supporting my family and me.

Thank you all.

“Real living is living for others. Be happy, but never satisfied.”

– Bruce Lee