Wealth without worth

By Herman M. Lagon

There is a moment in every oath-taking ceremony when the room falls into a different kind of quiet—not because the program says so, but because someone says something that lands straight in the gut. At the recent induction of newly minted doctors at SMX, that moment came when the speaker said, almost gently, “Some people are so poor that all they have is money.” The hall stilled. Outside, the news cycle was once again filled with billion-peso flood-control scandals, denials, and drone shots of unfinished slopes beside rising mansions. The line did not feel like poetry. It felt like a diagnosis of our national condition.

Wealth, which should free people from scarcity, often exposes a different kind of hunger when chased without purpose. Sociologists like Greenfield (2018) write about how excessive accumulation isolates people from community life, but teachers, most specially those from exclusive and affluent schools, have seen this long before the journals did. There is the student who cries in the faculty room because her parents no longer speak to each other over an inheritance dispute. Another whispers, “My father works abroad, but I do not really know him.” These stories never reach graduation speeches, but they remind us that a full wallet does not guarantee a full life.

This is why the line—whether from artist Patrick Meagher, reggae icon Bob Marley, or whoever said it first—refuses to fade. It hits even harder in a country where billionaires bankroll campaigns while teachers sell longganisa after class to buy cartolina. Behavioral studies show how extreme wealth can blunt empathy while extreme poverty sharpens it (Keltner, 2016). In our terms: may kwarta, pero wala sang kalu-oy, wala sang pinanilagan. No wonder corruption repeats like a lesson the country keeps refusing to learn. The poor sell votes because hunger has no patience. The rich buy power because power tastes sweeter than restraint. Somewhere in between, ordinary citizens drown—sometimes literally—in flood-control projects that crumble faster than explanations.

The current scandal hurts because it is not only about missing billions. It is about people. Teachers walking to school with plastic-wrapped shoes. Families climbing into the second floor, if not roof, of their homes as gushing brown water rises. Students missing days of class because their barangay turns into a lagoon after a twelve-minute rain. The Ombudsman’s task force sounds promising, and the promised pre-Christmas arrests make for bold headlines. But people have heard versions of this vow before. What they long for is simple: the stolen money returned to the public. Poet Rudyard Kipling once warned, “Someday you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are.” Watching the hearings, one wonders who is poorer—the family who lost their home and hustle to a flash flood or the official who lost his soul and self to kickbacks.

Yet the quote about money and poverty does not only sting; it also frees. I remember a doctor I met during a project in localization of SDGs in the university that I am with. She worked in a rural health unit with limited supplies and endless complaints. One afternoon she told me, almost shyly, “Sir, wala kami kwarta, pero kabalo ko nga may nag-ayo tungod sang akon.” She did not care about branded bags or foreign fellowships. She cared about healing someone’s child that day. Studies on well-being show that meaning consistently outweighs income as a predictor of life satisfaction (Steger, 2013). We understand this instinctively. We feel it each time someone chooses kindness over convenience.

Teachers live this contrast every day. Their salaries will never match those of influencers selling collagen gummies, but they hold a different kind of wealth. A former student who returns to say thank you. A quiet child who finally recites. A parent who whispers, “Ma’am, salamat gid.” These moments do not trend, but they nourish. They also highlight the poverty of those who treat governance as a business and politics as a family heirloom. Some dynasties in this country are so old that children memorize their surnames before they learn “Lupang Hinirang.” Despite their wealth, many of these families look terrified—afraid of losing power, prestige, or control. Poverty can take many forms. Sometimes, it looks like fear wearing a barong.

It is easy to moralize from a distance, but the harder task is to ask what wealth is for. I once had a student whose family owned vast land in Aklan, yet they barely ate meals together. “Ginahambal nila nga may ara kami tanan, pero wala man kami gaupdanay,” she told me. Her words return to me whenever a new scandal breaks. How much does it cost to be whole? How much to sleep without guilt? Money can build many things, but it cannot repair a conscience cracked by greed. First American billionaire Rockefeller once admitted that the hunger for “just one more dollar” never ends. In a society obsessed with “lamang,” it is no surprise that corruption feels inevitable.

Maybe the antidote is not a sermon but a quiet habit of checking why we chase what we chase. In leadership circles, they call it alignment—when what we do and what matters to us stop contradicting each other. The most respected leaders I have encountered, whether in Iloilo or elsewhere, are rarely the wealthiest. They are simply the ones who sleep soundly. They do not steal because their measure of success is not anchored in material trophies. They do not flaunt because their self-worth does not need an audience. They understand that dignity grows from the inside out, not the other way around.

Which brings me back to that ceremony at SMX. As the young doctors raised their hands, I wondered how many understood the weight of that quote. Some people are so poor that all they have is money. It is not a scolding. It is a mirror. It is a reminder that wealth without purpose caves in on itself. It is a warning that material success without moral grounding rots institutions. And it is a map pointing toward a kind of richness that does not collapse during storms or hearings or Senate investigations.

We live in a country where money can buy almost anything—votes, silence, influence, even asphalt that melts under the sun. But there are things it cannot buy: a community’s trust, a child’s respect, a citizen’s dignity. These are the riches that matter. They do not erode like substandard flood walls. When the noise fades and cases are filed, only one kind of wealth will matter: the wealth that can survive scrutiny, memory, and consequence. Because the poorest people are not those with empty pockets. They are the ones with empty lives, padded only by full accounts.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.