A huge roasted pig lay on the table with an apple in its mouth, frozen as if mocking my ignorance. Six-year-old me was both fascinated and horrified. Other kids eagerly grabbed slices of pork and chattered away in Tagalog. All I could do was stare.
It was years before I ate pork again. Conceptually, I knew where it came from, but somewhere in my mind I always imagined happy fields of already-cooked meat sprouting all around like dandelions and sunflowers.
Also known as lechon, this pork is a beloved luxury dish in the region, symbolizing the frugality of life, where people make do with what they have. I’ll never forget the joy of the people there, despite the discomfort. But that was just the beginning of what I learned.
How did we get there?
We were stationed in the Philippines because of my dad’s Navy service. On the first night, a huge typhoon hit the Philippines. We only had a few hours to prepare.
Just as the air grew still and cool and dark, fireflies floated up in my bedroom window and danced for me like little winged ballerinas.
We heard the loud cries of monkeys echoing through the jungle. Then the storm came and the rain lashed us all night. Despite the chaos, we held up much better than other Westerners in the area. My family is from the southeast coast of Florida and we’ve been through some big storms. This was just a normal day at the office. Sadly, many locals lost their homes that night.
This is the essence of life in these parts: the Philippines resembles a tropical island, with towns and cities dotted among rugged jungle mountains and bordering what seem forever white sandy beaches.
We often drove to our hometown in the Philippines to visit our friend Marcos. He was my same age and classmate. My eyes were wide open as we traveled “off base” and witnessed stark differences from the world I grew up in. Large families shared small huts, often without running water or air conditioning. For many children, working in the scorching fields was not an option, but an inevitability. This is not to say that all Filipinos are sad; quite the opposite.
We entered the sprawl of a busy, poor city, where Marcos’s home was a two-story, two-room house supported by thick wooden pillars to protect him from the floods that periodically batter the city. It contained only a kitchen and a small bedroom that he shared with his mother and two brothers. He owned just three toys. I remembered my own box full of 100 action figures. The contrast made sense to me.
Ordinary days in the sun
Our school bus driver wore Terminator sunglasses and blasted Filipino folk music that sounded a bit like mariachi songs.
Whenever he would walk us home, there would always be a half-dozen Filipina maids waiting with umbrellas to guide us in. The maids often lived with military families (including ours), and were very happy to earn $50 to $100 a month.
An umbrella was an accessory that had nothing to do with rain. Color discrimination was and still is a big issue in the Philippines and many Asian countries, which led many to avoid the sun. It took me years to connect these dots.
My dad was a SEAL and served with the Philippine SEAL team at the time. My mom thought it would be fun to organize a group bus trip one Saturday, so she invited some of the guys from my dad’s platoon. In theory, it was going to be a family trip. But when the young SEALs got on the bus, it was obvious they’d brought along prostitutes for the day. I sat in the back seat, and they were amazed at my white and blonde hair (a rare sight in Asia at the time).
My mother was furious, mostly at the men. The women who worked there were harmless and kind. The culture in the 1980s was very different. Prostitution was illegal, but it was largely accepted and common then, and it is now. It was not uncommon for fathers to run brothels and have their own daughters among the employees.
One thing was clear: for the local people, it was all about survival and getting by. There were so many stories to tell and so many grim images to remind us of the small struggles some people go through across the developing world.
Reflecting on the bad in difficult times
Decades later, I was sitting in an office cubicle, working hard to advance my career in finance. Every year, I struggled for the next performance review, promotion, or raise. I was constantly stressed out. I had nightmares about KPIs. I would wake up drenched in sweat to see red numbers appear on a giant stadium screen with the whole company watching.
I sometimes think back to my time in the Philippines, where things were so simple and there were so many difficulties and struggles unfolding before my eyes.
Marcos, and many of the people I came to know, lived desperate lives, lacking much. I recalled the faces of the sunburned farmers, exhausted after working all day in the rice fields. Were they infuriated that I had the audacity to sulk? Resented, they thought, for the high salaries I received?
There’s been a lot of research into the relationship between income and happiness, with one famous 2010 study by Daniel Kahneman suggesting that happiness levels stop increasing once you earn between $60,000 and $90,000 a year (this depends on obvious variables like your occupation and where you live).
According to another researcher, Dr. Killingsworth, “money can obviously be a great help to very poor people. But if someone has an adequate income and is still miserable, the cause of their misery is probably not something that money can fix.”
Whether you’re toiling in the fields behind a cow or sitting in front of a keyboard receiving a huge paycheck, you’re going to experience heartbreak, sadness, disappointment, depression, and just plain old bad attitudes. Some demons just can’t be bought off.
A poor farmer who is a great father, has good friends, and takes care of himself is likely to be happier and healthier than an overweight billionaire in a toxic third marriage.
As a financial analyst, I went through a cycle of perception. I was unaware of what my happiness or ideal life was. I was looking at everything through the prism of money, and only in terms of making more or less money. My life was about making no mistakes and achieving new goals. I was forgetting who I was.
But I saw my future unfolding before me. Some of the senior executives were working long hours every week, their hairlines shrinking and going grey by the day. Some marriages had fallen apart due to all this stress. Were their lives really better than the most modest lives I had seen abroad? I think you will find some people living in small huts who are more grateful and happier than these people.
The age-old dilemma of material things and happiness
Research on money and happiness has revealed that the exceptions to being happy with a subpar salary are people who derive special non-monetary value from their job.
I eventually left finance to pursue writing, and four years later, I’m very happy with my life. Sure, I don’t make more in my lifetime than Sean would have in finance, but I’m living life on my own terms. I have the opportunity to be creative and express myself, and I value that.
Above all, this change is a sign of choosing your own destiny, a blessing that many of us ignore and don’t even recognize as an option. So I turn to you and wish you happiness too. If you are not happy, think about the trade-off between money and passion.
As I learned the hard way, money is only one part of the bigger picture of fulfillment. Money is exciting when it’s new, abundant, and useful. But money is not a unicorn that will wipe away all your problems.
Sometimes, a more frugal lifestyle may serve you better.
I’m a former financial analyst and current author from sunny Tampa, Florida. I started writing as a side hustle eight years ago and fell in love. My goal is to provide non-fiction, story-driven content that helps us live better and reach our full potential.