Thrift

To be thrifty is to not throw away what can still be used. Vietnamese culture has the habit of picking up a fallen grain of rice and eating it instead of throwing it out. That habit teaches many valuable things. Each grain that reaches the table has passed through many hard stages. One grain is tiny, but it carries a lot of work with it. To cherish a grain of rice is to cherish the care and effort that came with it. Morality is just this: valuing the care and effort of others.

Callousness is being indifferent to the care and effort of others. Everyone values their own effort, and everyone finds their own care important. Put yourself in someone else's mind and you will see this, so do not let people down and do not hurt them, and learn to cherish everyone's care and effort. That care and effort is present in every object, tool, food item and coin that has come into our lives. We may not use all of it, but we should not foolishly throw it out, because someone else may still be able to use it, or it may be useful on another occasion.

Someone who is thrifty with every little thing will be led by the law of cause and effect to a life with no shortage. Someone wasteful, who throws away anything at the first sign of surplus, will later fall into a state of always being short somewhere. People who toss leftover food into the trash will one day be digging through trash for food. Someone who spends money wastefully for the wrong purposes will run short of money. Someone who sends servants and subordinates on pointless errands will end up lonely and alone. Someone who tears down a perfectly good house will one day be homeless. Someone who leaves drinking water unfinished will one day find themselves in a desert or parched with no water to drink. Someone who loses their temper and smashes things will later not be able to find a table, a chair, a bowl or a cup. Someone who builds a roaring fire when it is not needed will later lack fuel.

On the other hand, those who carefully save everything will not go without. Anyone who can recycle waste and make an effort to reuse everything that has been wastefully thrown away may even grow rich. Looking at a pile of garbage that still holds so much reusable material, we understand how callous people can be. Whoever recycles makes up for humanity's mistake, so that person is very precious.

Thrift is different from stinginess. Stinginess is refusing to use something when it is reasonable to use it. Hiding belongings away for fear they will wear out. Refusing to pay though you know it is time to buy. Going to a party without a gift to save the cost, knowing it may cost you the friendship. Not even wanting to buy food for your own children at home, let alone help outsiders. A person like that will later be extremely poor.

Thrift is moral, and stinginess is wicked. Generous help is moral, and unreasonable waste is wicked. A moral and wise person finds the right path between thrift and generous help: very eager to help others, and also very thrifty.