Instant and convenient culture

While I was driving through my housing area a week ago, I noticed an advertisement printed on an A4 paper, laminated and hung at a lamp-post which says "Work from home. Earn RM2,XXX to RM4,XXX per month, call...". Then yesterday I read in a newspaper, "Bang Wok (I have changed the name) cannot promise that you will earn RM1 Million, but you can start earning more than RM5,000 per month by ..."

All seems to be easy enough. The notion is simple and attractive, just follow what the advert suggested, and one can earn four digits income. There are also schemes that offer those who join it becoming millionaire within a short period of time by either investing in something that sounds so unbelievable or just recruiting certain number of downlines.

Most of the people whom I know well, had been in one of these schemes, in fact too many of these schemes. After one failed, they will join another, then another if that failed too. Seems that money is not everything to them, it is the dream to earn big money or becoming a millionaire that seems to be much stronger than anything else.

Is it true? Well I don't know because I have not met a Millionaire who had joined these schemes. So far I have only met people who are on a relentless pursuit to become Millionaire or earn big money instantly with a little effort.

For me, this is the product of an instant and convenient culture. Just think, most of the people of this generation had been brought up with the fastest car, the fastest broadband, the easiest remote control, the easiest internet banking, the lightest hand phone, and the list goes on and on. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper can be taken along the street or delivered to the house as well. How instant and convenient.

With this culture, working hard and long is so unattractive to us Malaysian. Everything should be instant and convenient, the money should be big as well, nothing worth it other than big, instant and convenient money. So who then will work hard and long? The foreign workers of course! Cleaners and Domestic helpers are from Indonesia or the Phillipines, Contractors and labourers are from Indonesia or Nepal.

However the reality is not quite instant and convenient. The challenge in life is to attain, maintain and sustain whatever that we do, be it in business or employment. This requires working hard and long. Likewise, I believe all those schemes are true if one is able to attain, maintain and sustain, but I believe it is not instant and convenient, as nothing is so easy.