Dylan Wilk - the purpose driven life.

What does the ninth-richest man in UK, who travels by helicopter to work and owns a Ferrari 355 Spider, a Porsche 911, a BMW M3 and BMW M5, do with all his millions?

Well, he gives them away of course...isn't that expected of a mortal man who doesn't need so much in one lifetime for himself and his family? 

Dylan Wilk is the name, and in the Sunday's article by Wong Kim Hoh, Dylan said: "I realised there was a big difference between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure, whether it's a new car or nice clothes, always has a price tag. Happiness comes from your relationships and knowing there is a purpose to your life."

Dylan had a tough childhood. He was born in Bradford to a musician-cum-writer father and a housewife. 

He said that his earliest memory of his father was him kicking his mother. But his father left them and Dylan described the period after as the happy years. 

Yet, that did not last when his mother took to the drink. The years of abuse and trauma turned her into an alcoholic. 

Dylan said: "To insulate myself from the trauma at home, I stopped feeling a lot of emotions, stopped feeling a lot of things." He soon engaged in self-mutilation at 16 by "cutting his left cheek with a knife."

Thereafter, his sister was given to a foster home and he was passed around from his aunt in France (whose husband was also an alcoholic) to his maternal grandmother back in Bradford. 

One day, he was told that his father wanted to meet him and Dylan travelled all the way to California to see him. "There was anger but I also wanted to get over it and see if anything could be built from the ashes," he said.

When he met his father, he was holed up in a tiny shack in the Mojave desert, struggling to make ends meet and bitter. His father said this to him: "I don't think you'll ever amount to anything. You're ordinary, you won't go very far. You will never get rich working for someone else.

"Well, the last sentence woke Dylan up - "you will never get rich working for someone else." 

That was where he started his business selling computer games by mail. He sold it dirt cheap earning only $1 from each game sold. 

But business expanded quickly in mid-1990s.By the fourth year of business, he earned enough to buy all those luxury cars and helicopter for his personal transport to work. 

At one point, the valuation of his business was £600 million. He was only 25.

But he came to a defining crossroad when he held his dying grandmother in his arms. He recalled that "it was a very powerful moment because I remembered everything she had taught me, which I had forgotten as an adult."

This was Dylan's turning point - that is, his grandmother's simple yet honourable life. 

"She was an orphan and a refugee from Poland and started working as a household helper when she was four. She had a really tough life but was the most giving person I knew, and when she died, I suddenly realised what a selfish person I had become."

That led him to set up Human Nature in 2008, it is a company "with its own team of scientists who have developed nearly 250 products - from shampoo to laundry detergent - which are sold in the region, the Middle East and North America."

Human Nature employs workers from the poorest in the country (that is, Philippines where Dylan settled down, and married with six children) and pays them above-average wages with no firing policy. 

On his past, Dylan has this to say: "I went home and looked at the brand new BMW I had bought and started to feel sick, because the car was worth about 80 houses in the Philippines."

Lesson? Just one. 

Wong, the article writer, asked Dylan in the interview whether he misses his cars. He laughed and said:-

"Sometimes, so when I'm overseas, I'll rent a nice BMW for a few days just to reminisce. But I will never buy one again, because one Ferrari is 200 houses where I live. And I just can't do the maths in my head anymore and come out on the side of the Ferrari."

Mm...I realise that not everyone does their maths the way Dylan does his. Some of us do it by addition, that is, to add more material things to our life. And as the appetite grows, it progresses to multiplication, that is, happiness equals wealth times possession. 

Still others do it in similar fashion but by square root, that is, happiness equals the square root of wealth, fame or power. 

Dylan has done all that mathematical pursuits in a bid to find meaning, and it ultimately led him to the maths of simple division whereby he made the life-turning decision to divide his wealth and possession to all who needs them more. 

His mental calculation led him to sell off his sports cars and "shares (in the business) and started travelling the world to find meaningful things he could do with his money."

He said: "I've realised money can be a path to happiness by enabling other people to have it, more than me getting it myself. And I have enough."

Dylan's life made me realise that the pursuit of money is not the nurturance of love, contentment and hope. These are virtues that money can never satisfy. 

For you can buy companionship, but never relationship. You can buy a good time, but not a lifetime. You can buy friends, attract them, tempt them and bend them to your will, but never developing any depth, loyalty and authenticity along the way. 

So, money, when used for self, to grow self and enrich self, only alienates self from others. But, as Dylan's life has shown, when money is given away for others, invested to grow and develop the lives of others, the wealth one gets from such sacrifices far outweigh the riches one gets from endless hoarding, possessing and striving.

What worse is that the blind pursuit of money infantilises her beholder. And when a society gets consumed by it, we turn it into a society that fantasises total immediate gratification at the expense of personal growth, maturity and integrity. 

It is a superficial society that is kept busy at the surface, but is empty at its roots. 

Victor Hugo once said that "the mind is enriched by what it receives, the heart by what it gives."

Alas, we need a society of more heart and soul, and less greed, envy and extravagance just for show. We need more of the freshwaters of generosity, and the less of the parch lands of avarice. We need a river that flows out to nurture the land and not one that flows into a private oasis no different from the Dead Sea.

And it starts with us, wherever we are, in our home, workplace and society at large, to transform ourselves so that we can make a difference in the lives of others. We may see ourselves as just a drop in the ocean, but every drop counts because it raises awareness that collectively empowers society for enduring change. 

As falling dominoes have shown, it takes just one to start a chain reaction. And when the last domino falls, it reveals a complete picture of how a society of heart can overcome one of greed and self.

On this, the life of Dylan and many others, like a drop and a domino, have led the way for others to join them in our own unique place and time. Cheerz.