溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
If the Effort to Grow Rich Has No End, Is That Endlessness Itself Not Already the Answer?
Even knowing that the wish for more has no end, why do we keep running toward that very endlessness?
Do not wear yourself out to grow rich; be wise enough to restrain yourself.
This proverb's observation of the structure of endless desire led to different remedies across later traditions. Buddhism named it craving and offered the Eightfold Path as a way to cut its very root; Stoic philosophers offered the discipline of governing not the object of desire but desire itself. Modern economics rediscovered this structure under a different name — the concept of diminishing marginal utility mathematically proves that the increase in satisfaction shrinks the more one has, yet never actually prescribes stopping the race itself.
Living through this cycle firsthand today — earning more only to want more — this short command not to wear yourself out remains the hardest wisdom to actually practice.
This proverb does not forbid becoming rich itself.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
This proverb does not forbid becoming rich itself. It only says, do not wear yourself out — stop that endless race. I see in this line a precise insight into the structure of desire: gain one thing, and you see two; gain two, and you see four. Wealth itself is not the problem; the problem is burning through one's whole life chasing after it. I too examine today whether the next goal I am chasing truly comes from need, or is merely a habitual race.
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