Accounting for Heaven and Earth

Sometimes I have “insights” that are not fully formed, but I just want to write them down so that I don’t forget the ‘idea’. This is one of those times. I am just saying that what I am about to say may not make sense, not just because the reader has a different point of view, but because I have not clearly communicated my thoughts and impressions. Caveat lector!

I rarely think of my work as being related to spirituality. However, the past couple of days, several things have happened that have made me review or revisit how I look at Accounting. For example, there are times when a report or statement is one Cent off, and I cannot go forward without finding where that one Cent belongs. It is easy to “fix” things, but it cannot and should not be done, because: first, it is wrong, second, it just doesn’t work at times. For example, if you are paying $3 million and the report you printed out says you are paying $2,999,999.99, one may think that you can just give one of the payees 1 Cent. No, not really? If you overpay one of the people, they will come back and ask (may be), but surely if you underpay somebody, you might as well not do it in the first place. What if you narrow it down to a particular person? You see to whom the 1 cent needs to go, do you just throw it in there, on her account? Not really, it may belong to a particular invoice, or period (month, quarter, or year)… Things like this make accounting hell sometimes. You cannot check off something as okay (it foots) when it does not. You can bet on it that it will come back to bite you; well, most of the time. Most of the “checks and balances” that you find in life, have their source in Accounting. For example, if you make $1 million during the year, and you make this money from work, gifts, and businesses, you are expected to report that you made $1m to the tax authority. You may wonder, how would they know if you told them that you made only $0.9m? Well, for starters, your employer tells them how much they paid you. Second, the gift giver is supposed to report how much he has disposed of in gifts. Third, the people that made payments to you need to have backup for the claimed expenses, so there will be receipts with your tax id on it showing money flowing to you. Fourth, if you deposited any money in an interest-earning account, the bank has to report the interest that they paid you, and of course, the money you deposited will show. Last but not least, you cannot spend what you don’t have. By looking at your statements, the tax man can have a good idea of how much income you made. Of course, my list is not exhaustive, but it gives you an idea of how, given time, the tax man can figure out how much you made (or spent).

Accounting has another basic side to it, which may or may not be looked at as “checks and balances”, the double-entry system. For every transaction, there is a debit and credit to it. A simple example would be if you bought a one dollar pen for your business. This is an expense. Your cash would go down $1 (credit your books), your supplies (expense) would go up $1 (debit your books). At the end of the day, your debits and expenses should match.

One last point that I need to bring up, is budgets. It is hard to imagine a functioning business that does not have an accounting budget. This just shows you what you expect to make or spend for the year. The fun is in the details. But as the year goes, you periodically look at items in the budget and see if you are where you thought you would be at a certain point in time. If something is so below/over-budget, you investigate it before the year ends (well, usually).

Well, enough accounting. So I thought about that and I wondered if the principles of accounting are applicable to other non-monetary issues. For example, if somebody hurt my feelings, what would be the equivalent in accounting? If I sinned, what happens in Heaven that is similar to accounting? So here is what I thought of as a possibility.

Assume that we are dealing with Cash, and the normal (or good) balance is a debit. Let’s also assume that good acts are debits. Then if you help somebody out and you feel good and the other person is appreciative of your actions, and Heaven is also rejoicing, then:

Debits: your good account in your heart; the recipient’s view of you; your good accts book in Heaven.

Credits: effort needed to do the good act; the recipient “pay it forward” account; your sin book in Heaven(?).

Similarly, if you hurt somebody’s feelings intentionally for no good reason, you can make the necessary entries.

At the end of the day, how you feel, the financial health of the organization, you and your fellow men, will depend on how accurate and how good your books are. Just like in accounting for businesses, the accounting for both Heaven and Earth, doesn’t lie.

The closest I could come to relating the accounting budget to life in Heaven and on Earth, had to do with expectations and potential. I think that’s what an accounting budget does, it sets expectations for performance with the conviction or commitment that the organization has potential to live up to those expectations, whether it is to cut costs or increase revenues or both. So what are our expectations and potential. On the expectations side: we are expected to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, we are expected to work as if we are doing it unto the Lord, we are expected to discover what we are good at and devote it to the betterment of ourselves and of the human race, we are expected to discover our potential… It is not an exhaustive list. I presume that God and our fellow men, from their exposure and intimate knowledge of us, have a good idea of what we can do/be. That being the case, I do not think it is outrageous to think that each one of us has a budget of good works that we are expected to perform.

What if, in God’s budget, He saw that for the world to be a good place to live, I would have to help one person every day or every week. I would also have to give 20% of my income to my church, etc. If I help twice that number, and give less to the church, I am sure it may throw off the budget, but I cannot say by how much. It is not for me to know what the budget is. All I can do is my best. Just like at a company, the presidential team may have the budget, which the man in the warehouse does not know of. The man in the warehouse just has to do his best; make the best nuts and bolts for himself and the company.

If men can plan things with extraordinary precision, be it accountants, rocket scientists or Chess players, why would God do any less? Why wouldn’t God have a plan or budget for enough food or medication for everybody? Why wouldn’t God have enough leaders and doctors and followers and … for the world to function properly? I believe God has it all properly budgeted. It is just that we don’t take time to figure out what’s important and how best to allocate and manage the resources that we are. We are self-managing resources in God’s budget.

Starting over

It’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote here. I have all sorts of explanations and excuses, but the fact remains that I didn’t write. My other goals were also left unattended and some good habits that I had developed or I was in the process of developing were neglected. Chess has suffered most. My life has not been all bad. I have enjoyed most of it…

So today is the going back day. I just decided to go back to the things that I was doing or wanted to do. My process will be simple… write my journal - update it, and make sure I log in at least once a day, even if it’s for 2 minutes; review my goals before I go to bed tonight; document the progress I have made or I had made; review the many to-do-lists that I have and see what I can knock out in 2 minutes or less, in 5 minutes or less, etc and chip away.

The most important thing is to get back on track. So blogging and Chess and other things are up and running.

The God of New Beginnings

Today at church, the sermon was about the God of new beginnings. One of the Readings was on the Prodigal Son, found in Luke 15. The lost are given a chance if they decide to go back to the Father. During the Sermon, the priest mentioned the politics of the Church in the selection of Pope John XXIII; he was selected as a “fill-in-Pope” because of his advanced age. The Cardinals were trying to avoid “controversial figures” among themselves; people who could bring drastic change to the Church. They reasoned that the old guy would hang around for a couple of years and then die without much “activity”. However, the old guy they went for is the one who brought about significant changes most of which arose from the Second Vatican Council. The priest mentioned that Pope John XXIII believed that each day was a new day, chance, opportunity, to make an impact, to live life fully.

I chose to look at how this homily can be applied to every day life:

1 - When you get up, you can look at your life the way Pope John XXIII looked at his life. It’s a new day. A new opportunity to make changes that can improve your life and/or the life of those you come in contact with. It may be something that you have been putting off for a while, like reconciling with an old foe, or cleaning your desk at home or work.

2 - I have always believed that love gets better the next time around. It’s just a personal belief. It helps me to handle break-ups better. It helps me to love the next person better. It helps me to let go of the past, and embrace the new situation and give it a chance. It helps me to accept people as they are. It is not a grass is greener on the other side attitude. It is just an attitude that you adopt when the grass on this side has disappeared. You don’t spend time going back to how ol’ grass tasted. This attitude can be applied to loss of a job. You can tell yourself that you will get a better one and work towards achieving that. You can apply it to a broken car/computer/etc… after you fix it, it drives/works better.

3 - There are times when you make a mistake or mistakes and you cannot see how God comes into the picture. (He is always in the picture, by the way.) So, you just need to look at whatever happened as a thing of the past. You are starting off anew; wiser, better informed, and determined to not repeat the mistake. You focus on how you want to live your life, henceforth.

The application comes from the fact that we are created in the image of God. If He can gives us a new beginning after we mess up, then we have the power to do the same. We can give ourselves a new beginning in the non-spiritual world.

Time To Say Goodbye

Little by little, we are say goodbye to things… kids going to school, siblings going away, relationships breaking, best friends moving on to better and greater things or not. It may even be something as “insignificant” as getting rid of a favorite chair and getting a new one. Goodbyes are not always bad. The void doesn’t always have to be filled. The void may be replaced or not. The future may be brighter. As you part with one thing, you embrace or reject the next.

If you are have said goodbye, or are saying goodbye, or will shortly say goodbye… and you are excited about the next thing, the video below will speak to you. If you are sad to let go, it will similarly speak to you. If you are just (neutral), it will still speak to you. Finally, if it doesn’t speak to you, you will still hear it speak!

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my pleasure, to reintroduce to you… Mr. Paul Potts, doing: Time To Say Goodbye!

For the Original (Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli) click here.

For the lyrics, click here.

For the video that made me shed a tear - my intro to Paul Potts, click here.

Determination to keep traveling

When I was younger, I used to read Moni Magazine. In it, there was an article by an Anglican Priest(?) and it was titled food for thought. It was interesting. I remember at one time he had written his “profile”. He had worked all sorts of jobs, may be 15 or more. I never thought about it until I saw several excellent blogs and the authors mentioned that they were engaged in a field totally different from the what they are blogging about. One was a Doctoral Student in something like psychology, but he has learnt a lot of technical stuff about blogging and that’s what he blogs about. I am not sure whether he is changing careers or how old he is or…

I was talking to a friend a few days ago and she mentioned that somebody she knew was licensed to fly commercial planes, even though she is a success in a totally different field, and she is pretty young. This led to a discussion of opportunities (or access to experiences and resources). I think that, though important, it is just one of the pieces of the puzzle. How do these people do it?

I think one of the major reasons is a determination, consciously or unconsciously, to keep traveling, to never arrive, to learn as much as they can (about whatever interests them). In other cases, it may be circumstances. For example, I learned to drive a semi-(truck), not because I wanted to, but because I had to. It was a nice challenging experience. I didn’t make a career out of it, and hopefully, I will not use it again! It’s not for me. But out of it, I learnt a lot of things. How to prepare for a trip, the challenges that class A drivers face when traffic is bad, or when they are driving while they are extremely tired and sleepy, the space they need for everything: parking, turning, or braking to stop. I digressed.

So, if some day, you want to be able to say “I can do that” to lots of things. You just have to learn the next thing that you have always wanted to do, and once you accomplish that, move on to the next thing. It can be as easy as touch-typing, to something a little more involving as writing programs. That’s my next project: learn html, css, etc. Some day, I will be able to tell my grand kids, “I can drive a semi, I can teach accounting, I can teach information systems, I can program, I can build websites, I can swim, I can touch-type, I can make you millionaires, etc etc…. but I could not do most of that stuff when I was 25!”

I just have to trod on!

Getting up early

Starting tomorrow, I will be getting out of bed at 6am. I have moved the alarm clock to the living room so that I can walk to it. This is 11:10pm, so I will stop writing so that I can sleep for at least six and half hours before waking up again. Wish me luck!

Goal for the week/month: DeClutter

I just want to be more organized, and have a cleaner look. I am not bad at all, but things could be better.
I have decided to make decluttering my goal for this week and this month. I would like to have a paperless desk at home and at work. Being in accounting (”paperful” accounting) wont make it easy. But I will do all I can to achieve this goal. I have read quite a bit today to know where to start. (Well, I knew some from reading a bit of Getting Things Done, but I never implemented any of it, except the 2 minute question.)
I have archived all my email at gmail and yahoo. I will do the same at work tomorrow. I will then process any email that comes in after this so that I have a clean inbox each day.
I will put all my paper in one pile and work my way down. I need space. I will report on how this goes each day. I have already done this at home. By the end of the week, I will go through my mail/bills and either file each paper away or get rid of it. I will shoot for the same at work. More like 2 weeks at work.

Goal #85: Say Yes More Often (Get out of my comfort zone)

I must start by thanking J.D. over at “get rich slowly” for his post: “The Power of Yes: A Simple Way to Get More Out of Life”. It is a gem! So, I have found my goal# 85: To say yes more often as a way to improve my thinking and get out of my comfort zone.
I am introverted for the most part. This keeps me from doing some things because I do not want to attract (too much) attention. Yet there are times when I want the attention. I think that if I say yes to doing something, then I will be committed to carrying it out. I am a man of my word.

How will it affect my thinking?
I will have to find a way to integrate thinking before I do things, and saying yes before I think about whatever. I think that saying yes will force me to think about how best to carry out whatever I have committed to. In a way, reversing my normal thought process.

How will it affect my life?
I am hoping it will make my life as interesting as it has J.D.’s. Just getting out of the comfort zone is exciting and scary. What’s the point of having a goal if it is not challenging?

$400.00 for … what? (The Heart of Chuck)

Chuck is leaving my company. He got a better job somewhere. Everybody likes Chuck… He is a little serious I think. But he talks to everybody, and I think he is very humble. He is tall, may be in his late 40s… looks like a powerful executive - that he is. (One of the senior coaches. That’s what we call the presidential team at my company.)

Chuck and I talked, but I didn’t consider it special because - I small-talk with almost everybody at the company, so does he. He is up there. I am here. (Use your imagination!) So our talking was just that. Talk. I looked up to Chuck even though I didn’t know him that well. We went to lunch about a week ago because I had won “lunch with a coach” certificate. By the way, I am pretty favored by grace (lol! I don’t want to say lucky…) because of the other two items I wrote (one of them is here.) I win a lot of things, especially raffle draws for the Charity Committee at work. I am not sure why. Grace! Anyway, for the Easter Egg event, I won two certificates, one was lunch with the CEO and the other with the CIO, Chuck. I almost canceled or gave the certificates away because I wondered what we would talk about during lunch. I can make small talk - or talk a lot sometimes - but if I am apprehensive right from the start, I can be pretty tight-lipped. I am an introvert, by the way. Anyway, the first lunch was easy because a whole group of winners went with a whole group of coaches. One (lunch) done, one to go. I never brought it up when I met Chuck. Then one day, he was like, “you know I am leaving in 3 weeks, we need to schedule our lunch…” “Oh, yeah - let me know when you are ready. I am always ready”, I quipped. The day was last Wednesday. He took me to an Italian restaurant. I had decided to ask him about careers, about life, about money (because I am currently reading a lot about personal finance management). So we talked about all sorts of things. The advice he gave me was worth a lot - intellectually, career-wise, emotionally, etc. He asked me a couple of questions that required me to dig deep. There was a time when I asked him if he had a financial advisor. He was like, “yes I do, we do” (he and his wife). “Do you want me to give you his name?” I was like, “No, I don’t think I am there yet. I am just starting off.” He was like, “I take it you mean you don’t have a lot of money. We didn’t have a lot money either when we started with him… and he has guided us through buying and paying off our home, planning for retirement, savings, etc. So it is never too early (or too late) to start talking to somebody. They just have to be good and caring. We were lucky that we found somebody who was good, nice, and not a rip-off” etc. That was food for thought for me. That is not the $400 I received. Hold on! We talked some more … about golf… he likes to golf and fish. We had to go and he paid for the lunch. Today, a week later, B. calls me and was like, I have Chuck on the phone… I picked it up and I go, “Hey CHUCK!” … After small talk, he was like, “can you meet me outside, at the front of the building, I will be there in 3 minutes. Are you left-handed or right-handed?” I go… “right.. Why?” He goes… ‘I have something for you to help me carry, I wanted to know which side you will be on’. Weird! I go and wait for him… and he gets out. Small talk. He opens the back of his Honda SUV, and he pulls out a golf bag- fully equipped - plus glove and towel and balls… He gives it to me. “One of my bags. You had mentioned that you would like to start playing golf… I thought this would be a good start” - I mumbled a lot of Thank yous and other whys and … he didn’t care. The stuff is used, but in very good shape. He had 3 sets, so you can tell that he didn’t use this one much at all. I had talked to a few people and they told me that I could get a decent set of clubs, bag, etc for a little over $300. I was not going to get anything as good as what Chuck gave me. He wanted me to go put it in my car… (I guess because he didn’t want people to know that he had done something that good to me). Lucky enough, I didn’t have my car keys. I didn’t know I would get something to take to the car! So I had to take the bag inside, and since I talk to a lot of people at work… everybody was asking me about the golf bag/set/ … so I opened it and got lectured on what club was what, when to use it, the cute socks covering the drivers etc etc etc. So I am wondering why I have received over $400 from Chuck - the golf set is over $400.00, the lunch cost quite a bit, the advice and guidance was also great,… he introduced me to his wife at his happy hour last Friday… I was shying away and I thought I would get away with just waving at her. Chuck kept “beckoning”. I had to go and meet her! What have I done to deserve all this? I am not sure. I just thought I should write it all down. Get it off my mind and come back to meditate on it for a couple of days, weeks, months, years…

Some people are just good! Who is your Chuck? Are you a Chuck to somebody? So here is my next goal. Goal# 84: Be a Chuck in my own way. It doesn’t have to be big to make a difference… it is the heart of Chuck that matters.