How to Read “There is nothing easy about making money and curing a fatal illness”
Kanemōke to shiniyamai ni yasui koto nashi
Meaning of “There is nothing easy about making money and curing a fatal illness”
This proverb means that nothing is more difficult than making money and curing a fatal illness.
The world has many difficult challenges. But these two stand out as especially hard to accomplish.
Everyone wants to become wealthy. But actually building a fortune takes more than ordinary effort.
Similarly, curing a life-threatening disease can be impossible. Even with the best care, some illnesses cannot be overcome.
People use this proverb to express how difficult something is. It works especially well when something looks easy but is actually very hard.
The proverb’s meaning remains relevant today. Economic success is still difficult to achieve.
Even with modern medicine, some diseases remain incurable. These truths haven’t changed.
This saying clearly shows us what real difficulty in life looks like.
Origin and Etymology
The exact origin of this proverb is unclear. However, it likely spread among common people during the Edo period.
The structure pairs two major life difficulties together. This creates a powerful expression.
“Making money” and “fatal illness” seem completely different at first. One involves economics, the other involves life and death.
But they share something important. Both represent difficulties that human power alone cannot overcome.
Edo period merchant culture produced many sayings about business hardships. “Trade is like ox drool” and “Business never gets boring” are examples.
These expressions emphasized the continuous nature and difficulty of commerce. This proverb likely emerged from that same tradition.
The “fatal illness” part reflects a different reality. In an era of undeveloped medicine, people feared incurable diseases deeply.
They felt powerless against them. No amount of wealth or power could guarantee survival.
This recognition of human limitation is embedded in the proverb.
By pairing these two difficulties, our ancestors expressed life’s true challenges. Their wisdom shines through these words.
Usage Examples
- After three years running my business, I truly understand “There is nothing easy about making money and curing a fatal illness”
- Working as a doctor, I feel the weight of “There is nothing easy about making money and curing a fatal illness” in my bones
Universal Wisdom
This proverb has endured because it captures two fundamental human desires. It also shows how difficult these desires are to fulfill.
The first is the economic desire to “become wealthy.” People everywhere have always sought better lives.
But no matter how hard you work or how clever you are, there’s no guaranteed path to wealth.
You need both luck and skill. Sometimes the times themselves work against you. This uncertainty is what makes making money so fundamentally difficult.
The second is the attachment to life itself—the desire to “keep living.” When facing a fatal illness, human powerlessness becomes most clear.
No amount of wealth or power can control life itself. This harsh reality has always humbled humanity.
What’s interesting is how the proverb treats both difficulties equally. It places money and life side by side, even though they shouldn’t be comparable.
This paradoxically highlights the weight of both. People seek money to live, yet money cannot buy life.
Within this circular relationship lies a fundamental contradiction of human existence.
Through these two difficulties, our ancestors may have seen the very essence of life itself.
When AI Hears This
Making money and curing disease both share something fundamental. They’re both “battles against information.”
Entropy simply means “degree of disorder.” The universe naturally moves toward disorder. This is the second law of thermodynamics.
Money naturally scatters if left alone. It leaves your wallet, unexpected expenses pile up, and your balance decreases.
This is economic entropy increasing. To grow wealth, you must fight this natural flow. You must gather resources in one place.
This requires reading market information, judging faster and more accurately than others, and taking action. From an information theory perspective, this equals “extracting meaningful signals from a noisy environment.”
Only a few percent of investors succeed. This is because information extraction is extremely difficult.
Disease has the same structure. A healthy body is a low-entropy state where cells function in an orderly way.
But disease is cellular disorder—entropy increasing. Treatment means identifying the disease cause from vast biological information.
Then you intervene precisely to restore order. Finding one cancer cell requires detecting abnormal signals among approximately 37 trillion body cells.
This information processing difficulty determines medicine’s limits.
Both challenges defy the universe’s basic laws. Both require scooping correct information from a sea of noise.
Lessons for Today
This proverb teaches modern people the courage to accept reality. Some things in life are fundamentally difficult.
Modern society overflows with messages like “effort always pays off” and “knowing the right method guarantees success.”
But this proverb speaks a different truth. No matter how hard you try or how correct your methods, some things won’t go as planned.
This teaching doesn’t recommend giving up. Rather, understanding difficulty’s true nature helps us approach challenges more realistically and sustainably.
Knowing money is hard to make, we value steady accumulation over get-rich-quick schemes. Knowing treatment is difficult, we see the value of prevention and health maintenance.
Most importantly, this proverb teaches us to value the process, not just results. The act of challenging difficult things has meaning.
Even without complete success, the effort is never wasted.
Face life’s real difficulties, yet keep moving forward. This proverb teaches us that kind of strength and flexibility.
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