Why What I Pass On Matters More Than What I Collect

Life Is Quietly Counting Down While I Am Busy Counting Up

Every celebration is a countdown.

14 January 2026. 10.30pm. Teega Condo. I was climbing stairs (100 floors) instead of walking the dogs. We had just celebrated my mum and my aunt’s birthday. They are no longer young, and that changes the weight of a simple dinner. When you are younger, birthdays feel like milestones you can count on. When your parents are no longer young, birthdays start to feel like fragile windows. You still celebrate, but you celebrate with a different kind of awareness. You celebrate because you are grateful, and because a part of you knows you might one day wish you did one more, even if you were busy, even if you were tired, even if the timing was not ideal. And then another thought followed, heavier than the first.

Every celebration, done or missed, is also a countdown.

It is not only the moments I show up for that count. The moments I skip count too. They count down quietly without drama. The road does not pause just because I have reasons. I can justify almost anything when I am exhausted. Comfort seeking might breed excuses a resentment. It is never short of logic and explanations. Comfort is always ready to tell me why later is wiser, and why next time will be easier, and why I deserve a break.

But the older my parents get, the less I trust later.

Time has a way of making me think I have more of it than I do, and then suddenly I do not like the way the year feels when I look back. Sometimes the year feels full when I am living it, but thin when I remember it. I am not even talking about major tragedies. I am talking about ordinary life. Busy life. Productive life. Days that pass quickly and leave me with a strange emptiness when I try to recall what mattered.

Tonight, in that stairwell, life stopped feeling like a calendar and started feeling like a long one-way road. I cannot walk it backwards. I cannot replay a step. I can only keep moving forward, step after step, year after year, until one day I reach the destination that every human being reaches.

And along that road, something keeps appearing on the ground.

Diamonds. Trash.

I realised again, in a way that felt very personal, that I will be defined by what I choose to pick up, and what I choose to multiply, because in the end, even if I reach the destination like everyone else, I will not arrive carrying the same things.

70 Steps, Diamonds on the Ground, and the Cost of Squatting Down

In my mind, life looks like 70 steps.

Not because 70 is an exact number, but because 70 feels like the size of a human lifetime when I stop pretending I have unlimited tomorrows. 70 steps, 70 years, 70 chances to notice what is right in front of me.

Each step has a diamond.

I can walk past all 70 and still reach the destination. The destination does not change. Only what I carry changes. I can keep walking, eyes forward, focused on getting somewhere, and then arrive at the end with nothing in my hands except fatigue and a strange question I do not want to face, or I can choose, every single step, to squat down, pick up that diamond, and keep walking.

That squat is the cost.

The cost is not money. The cost is effort, inconvenience, presence. The cost is choosing the uncomfortable thing when comfort is available. The cost is saying yes when I could have said “next time.” The cost is doing the hard thing when I have reasons not to.

Tonight’s birthday celebration was one of those squats.

It was inconvenient. It was tough bringing all of my children and setting aside the time. We were busy and tired. We had every reason not to do it. It would have been so easy to walk away. It would have been so easy to tell myself I am a good son anyway, that I am doing my best anyway, that my mum understands anyway, and that I will do something bigger another day.

But I have noticed something about “another day.” Another day is often a story I tell myself to feel less guilty about choosing comfort. Another day becomes a soft blanket for my conscience. Tonight I did not want a blanket. Tonight I wanted a diamond.

So we went. We did not do it perfectly, but we did it. And in the middle of it, I felt something simple and strong. I felt like I had squatted down and picked up a diamond before the diamond was gone.

Because once the step passes, it is gone.

This is where money entered my reflection, not because I was thinking about finance, but because money is such a clean metaphor for flow. Money, like water, is meant to move. When water stagnates, it smells. When money stagnates, it loses its purpose. When it flows, it creates life around it.

Economists use the phrase multiplier effect, and I found myself returning to a very simple street example.

First Scenario: Imagine a street with 5 stalls and no business, no money injection, no movement.

Then a foreigner walks into that street, accidentally breaks a window of the first shop, and pays $100 as compensation. Now the first shop has $100. If the first shop spends that $100 at the second shop, the second shop now has $100. If the second shop spends it at the third, the third receives it. If the third spends it at the fourth, and the fourth spends it at the fifth, suddenly $100 has churned through the street and created $500 of income activity.

Nothing magical happened in the wallet. What changed was movement. The same hundred dollars created more impact because it kept moving.

Then I imagined the second scenario. The first shop receives the $100, but decides to save $30 and spend only $70. If the second shop does the same, and the third and fourth and fifth do the same, the flow weakens, and the impact shrinks. The multiplier discounts itself, and the street stays quieter than it could have been.

The moment I understood that, I could feel it landing on my life without me forcing it.

Because life has flow and leakage too.

The Multiplier Is Not About Money, It Is About Stewardship

Here is the question that keeps sitting under everything I said that night.

What am I going to do with all the diamonds when I leave this world?

If I look at my life and believe it ends here, and there is nothing beyond it, then yes, a person can argue that there is no point. Why collect anything? Why make effort? Why build memory? Why honour? Why sacrifice? Why squat down, when walking straight to the end is easier?

But I cannot live that way. It does not fit the way my heart reacts to life. It does not fit the way love feels. It does not fit the way legacy keeps whispering to me, especially when I am with my children and I can almost see time passing through my hands.

When I believe life is larger than myself, then the diamond becomes meaningful, not because it is shiny, but because it can be multiplied.

The multiplier effect only works when I believe I am not the only shop on the street.

If I believe I am the only shop, I will keep 100% of everything that comes to me. I will hold it. Protect it. Save it. Guard it. Control it. And the flow will stop with me. The blessing ends at my doorstep. It becomes a private trophy rather than a public river.

But if I believe I have responsibility, calling, passion, and a role in something greater than myself, then I pass it on. I do not pass it on because I am trying to be noble. I pass it on because I understand the logic of life. Things multiply when they move. Blessings expand when they flow.

And there is a strange mystery in flow. Sometimes what I give returns. Not always in the same form. Not always in the same timing. Sometimes it comes back through people I did not expect. Sometimes it comes back through my children when they become adults and I realise I am now living inside the fruit of decisions I made years ago, decisions that felt small at the time, decisions that felt like ordinary squats.

I kept thinking about how the multiplier works in two directions.

Horizontally, it moves across my spouse, my friends, my community. When I share joy, the joy grows. When I share honour, honour becomes culture. When I share sacrifice, sacrifice becomes normal. When I share truth, truth becomes a way of living, not a weapon.

Vertically, it moves across parents, grandparents, children, and the next generation. It becomes an infinite loop of blessing across generations, not because I am trying to control the future, but because human beings are shaped by what they repeatedly see and repeatedly experience.

When I look at what I am enjoying today, I know that every invention, every blessing, every philosophy came from ancestors who sacrificed and contributed. They paid costs I never saw. They carried burdens I never felt. They risked their life, let go of comfort, and built something they would not fully enjoy, simply because they wanted the next generation to live in a world that was a little more peaceful, a little more abundant, a little more stable than the one they inherited.

That is why gratitude is not just a feeling for me. Gratitude is a recognition of multiplication. I am living inside a compound effect created by sacrifices that I did not personally make.

And then I have to face the uncomfortable question.

If I am now holding what they passed on to me, what am I going to do with it?

Am I going to multiply it, or am I going to stop it?

And then I remembered something I said in my reflection that I did not want to forget.

Good and bad coexist.

Our ancestors have created blessings, and they have created curses too. It is true. Good and bad travel together. Somewhere in the world it is sunny, and somewhere else it is dark. Along the 70 steps, there are diamonds everywhere, and there is trash everywhere. I did not choose where I started. I did not choose what I was born into. I did not choose what kind of family systems I inherited. I did not choose what pain came before me.

But I do have power over what I pick up.

Because if I pick up diamonds, I can multiply diamonds.

If I pick up trash, I can multiply trash.

And there is also the third scenario:

I can multiply diamonds, but at a discount.

I can keep some, and pass some.

I can save 20 or 30 percent and still let 70 percent flow.

That is still acceptable. That is still life.

The problem is not that I keep some diamonds. The problem is if I collect hundreds of diamonds and only pass on 10 or 20. Then the multiplier weakens. The next generation receives less. The flow slows down. The street gets quieter. The family story thins.

This is where my reflection became even sharper in 2026, because the world is now multiplying faster than it used to, and not only through humans.

AI multiplies too, both good and bad.

Recently in Malaysia, there has been an uproar about using Grok to generate porn content. I do not say that to sensationalise it. I say it because it is a modern example of the same principle I was wrestling with in that stairwell. A tool that can generate content can generate dignity or humiliation. A tool that can scale creativity can scale harm. A tool that can multiply blessings can multiply trash, and it can do it faster than one human being can.

That is why the question “What am I multiplying” is no longer only a personal question. It is a leadership question. It is a parenting question. It is a cultural question. It is a community question. It is a generational question.

Because in a multiplier world, small choices do not stay small.

What I circulate, I multiply.

What I forward, I multiply.

What I normalise, I multiply.

What I laugh at, I multiply.

What I tolerate, I multiply.

The multiplier is not only about money. It is about attention, culture, truth, shame, joy, dignity, and the invisible things that quietly shape a child’s understanding of what kind of world they live in.

This is why I also kept thinking about one more distinction that came from a conversation with a wise man, a distinction that helped me see priorities more clearly.

Salvation is when a person is drowning, and I throw them a floater so they stop drowning.

Abundance life is when they get out of the water, and I give them a blanket to keep them warm.

The order matters.

Because we live in a world obsessed with blankets. Comfort. Pleasure. Approval. Pleasing. Image. The opinions of people somehow become very important, and somehow we forget that the priority is the floater, the urgent thing, the thing that saves life, the thing that prevents drowning.

But I also know something else is true.

I cannot force someone out of the water.

I cannot pull them up against their will.

If a person does not even think they are drowning, I walk away. If they are happy with their life, what right do I have to interfere. Unless it is my child, where I know better than them and I have authority over them, and responsibility for them.

For everyone has their own weight, their own burden to carry.

That boundary matters to me, because it keeps my love from becoming control, and it keeps my leadership from becoming interference.

It keeps the multiplier clean.

What I Do This Week to Multiply Diamonds Without Turning Life Into Performance

When I bring everything back down to something practical, I do not want it to become a checklist, and I do not want it to become performance. I do not want to be a man who talks about legacy and then lives like comfort is king.

So I return to one simple image:

70 steps. Diamonds & Trash on the ground.

And I ask myself a question: What is one diamond I am willing to squat down and pick up this week?

Not 10. Not a long list. Just 1.

One moment of presence where I do not multitask.

One family meal where I do not keep glancing at the phone.

One conversation with my mum where I ask a real question and listen without rushing.

One act of honour that is inconvenient, and therefore meaningful.

One moment where I throw the floater, not the blanket, because love is not always comfort.

One moment where I choose truth over image.

Because I have noticed something about the “diamond habit.”

When I choose one diamond and repeat it, it becomes culture. It becomes predictable in the best way. It becomes a family signature. It becomes something my children can rely on, not because I am perfect, but because my priorities are consistent enough to be felt.

And because AI is multiplying both good and bad around us, I also want a filter that is simple enough for daily life, a filter that can sit quietly in my mind when I am about to amplify something.

Before I circulate content, I want to ask myself,

Is this a diamond or is this trash?

Because what I circulate, I multiply. What I multiply will eventually shape someone else’s world, even if I never meet them.

My Life Becomes Meaningful Not by What I Hold, But by What Keeps Moving After I Am Gone

Legacy is not accumulation. Legacy is flow.

What stops with me dies with me.

What moves through me lives beyond me.

That is why my mum’s birthday mattered tonight, not because the dinner was fancy, not because the celebration was grand, not because I captured perfect photos, but because I picked up a diamond before it disappeared, and my children watched me do it.

They watched me choose effort.

They watched me choose family.

They watched me choose honour.

They watched me choose a pattern that will one day shape how they honour me, how they honour their spouse, how they handle inheritance, how they handle conflict, and how they handle comfort when comfort offers them easy reasons to walk away.

The real inheritance is not money.

The real inheritance is culture.

Culture is simply repeated choices that become normal.

Tonight I did my part to celebrate. It was tough. It was inconvenient. It was effort. It was a squat. But the memory is now in my children’s hands, and they will carry it, and one day they will pass it on, not as a speech, but as a way of living.

And that blessing will be multiplied to generations to come.

I want them to know we are a family that lasts fourteen generations, that carries overflowing love, and that will always honour God.

That is not a slogan I say at the end of a reflection.

That is the kind of life I want to multiply.