Respect or money, Which is important?

“A person should not run after money in life, it should be respect he must look for and try his hardest. Money will come eventually.”

This was a statement said to me by one of my close friends. But is it really so, I wonder sometimes. In this era of materialistic life and money-minded people, can respect be earned if you don’t have money?

I personally think otherwise. I have found through my experiences and by watching others lives, that when we have money, we get respect. And even if you earned good respect while you had money, once it’s gone, your earned respect will also start to fade away from people’s hearts. You would wonder why I would say this. So let me give you an example.

One of my acquaintances, a very good guy by nature and character, worked in a firm. He earned enough to make his life comfortable. In his 8 months of working, and a year since I have known him, whenever a friend of his needed some help from him he would run to his aid. Be it money, time or his advice, he gave it to whoever of his friend’s required it. As far as I have known him I found that he earned pretty good respect. Among us friends, he was a person anyone could rely on anytime. But suddenly, a problem occurred in his family. In an accident his father got severely injured. He had to put in all his money and savings for his father’s operation. He had to leave his job and be by his side. None of his family uncle’s came to his father’s help.

Now operation was done, but the medical bills exceeded all the money he had with him. He needed more money. He asked for it from his uncles who refused to help. He turned to his friends. But even those friends, whom he helped without a second thought, did not even try to help him. I and some of his close friends visited him regularly and helped him financially too. But still more was required. But it was 2 out of ten who helped him. After a lot of struggle he somehow managed to arrange the money. We paid the bills and brought his father home. His father would take two months more to recover from the injuries.

Even after this incident, the problems for this guy did not end. The people who gave him money now kept asking him to give it back. He had to start working and only after a month could he pay his debt, but not all at once. The money he borrowed, leaving me and his close friends share aside, he had about 3 times to pay what he earned in a month. That way it would take 3 months to pay what he had borrowed. We knew what he has gone through. So we never asked him to return the money we gave him. But only a week after he brought his father home, people started calling him and asking him to return the borrowed money. He had to wait for a whole month, and even after that he could only a third of his debts. But people started saying unnecessary things to him, calling him a cheat and ungrateful bastard.

Even his roommate started to ignore him. Normally those two would make food together. But now, his roommate would cook his own food, enough only for one person and eat it without even asking him for it. I know that he sometimes had to go without eating for two days. And he still worked. I personally helped him clear his dues as much as possible and I know just one more person who did so. We never asked him to pay back. Somehow, what would have been paid in 3 months, we managed to pay in 2 months. With the other dues cleared he had to give our money back. We never asked him but kept paying us monthly what he could arrange. I ensured that he had enough to eat before he gave us any money.

His crisis was over, but it hurt me to think that the guy who never let any of his friends down, who always made sure that all his friends were well fed when they were with him, had to go without food for days. I came to know about this later when the two of us were talking. That friend of mine changed after this incident. There was a good enough reason for that. Whenever he met his other friends who lent him money, they would treat him like some kind of inferior being. Many others tried to avoid him in fear that he might ask for more money.

My friend changed so much, that the guy who was once star of any party now became a loner. He preferred solitary moments and would open himself to only a few people. I was lucky enough to be one of them. I know how hurt he was with the world around him. The world he loved so much, the people he cared for, had hurt him. I always tried to bring him back to his old self but he was far too hurt to trust anyone now. I still try though.

After witnessing these events I started to think, is it respect that earns you money, or is it money that earns you respect. I came to only one conclusion. Only if you have money can you get respect from others, because this world has become far too materialistic and untrustworthy of people.

So, I change my statement to,

“A person should run after money if he wants respect, because respect alone can never be yours."