One of our major mottos in life is to have more - more money,more fortune,more fame in least possible time.What we have adequate, we want in abundance.We want to own the latest iphone or ohhh is it already passe?The luxury Rolex watch looks good on our wrist.So does the Louis Phillipe shirt on our back.And yes, the new i-20 is way better than Santro.We want more loyalty from our friends, a damsel/hunk beside us is very reassuring & an unconditional support from our parents is our birth right. In short, we want life to be fair & just by all means. But the question is have we been fair to life?If we do a little bit of self-introspection,we can realize we have almost done nothing for people around us.Forget about others, how many of us have truly been fair to our own potentials? What then, makes us eligible for these possessions?You want something & you have to be worthy of it. It's o.k. to dream. But what we mistakenly take as our dream is nothing but our greed in disguise & it is so boundless & collosal that we slowly get immersed in it.We forget who we are. We forget to fly.Gandhiji once said-"the world has enough for our need but not enough for our greed". One of my friends sent me an sms the other day on similar lines.It read-"what makes you rich is not the abundance of your wealth but the scarcity of your needs".So the key to happiness is very simple. Alter your needs, lower your expectations & be happy. You must learn to be content. You already have enough. Just look around.The ever elusive happiness you are looking for is in your backyard.Have you experienced the joy of reading a book on a rainy day with a mug of coffee in hand?Or spent idle afternoons watching clouds change shape?Or simply have had a heart to heart chat with your mom & dad with whom you hardly interact beyond need & choose to abuse at the drop of a hat? Go right away.The dust clad book in the shelf corner you bought last year but never read, the monsoon cloud up in the sky & your lone mother is waiting for you.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
what makes me rich is the ability to dream,what makes me dangerous is my ability to dream, for I do dream with my eyes open..
ReplyDeleteWell I must admit, your blog was splendid and a romantic piece of delight. However, life, as it is in your portrayal, is not really that simple. Its not unidirectional, neither homogeneous. There is a thin line of difference between this all-encompassing motto to have more and more and more and to grow, grow as an individual, as a human and as a being. It is of course a different issue that how will one assess this growth.
ReplyDeleteYou think of the first human being on earth, naked, uncivilized (in our modernized term), incapacitate to do anything more than just the basic functions of eating, excreting, sleeping and reproducing. Think about the thousands of years that were spent to bring us in this form so that we can even create a blog as a medium of our expression. Think about all the stage we crossed to come here and reflect on the development of a CD player or an iPod from a gramophone, from wheels to the superstructure of i20, from thread to Louis Phillipe and so on. It was this relentless search for something better that brought us here and if you tell everything of that was greed then it puts a question mark on the continuation of humankind. Every invention has an element of bettering our life, making it easier and comfortable. There is no harm in that. There is no harm in going for more. It might only harm if we do this at the cost of our moral values, at the cost of peace of mind and happiness of self and others.
If you introspect you will find that though there have been ceaseless changes in our life, human beings have not changed much. Today we talk about rapes, murders, killing of human by humans for greed, personal ends and motives. But is that something new? Is that some recently acquired character of us? Humans have fought the self-species for eras after era, at times it was for conquering new land, for extending empires or in the name of saving one’s motherland. And who creates this notion of motherland and all? Suddenly a wire in between the same earth can create my mother and brother land? It is we who define such divisions, in different names to disguise the purpose. Who gives value to all these supposedly non-existent concepts? Who says Allen Solly defines a man better than a Sarojini Nagar stuff? It’s the same human brain that designs an iPhone and directs to go for it. To follow it or not is your choice.
How will you define contentedness? What is enough? Is the yardstick your own standards or is of those who toil in the field for the whole day to earn two square meals a day? Or is it of the fellow who is seating at the top of some business house? What is enough to you might be luxury to others or might not be enough for some one else. What happiness will your one year old book provide to someone who is still to identify the letters owing it to a burdened childhood and how will the parents comfort when they disown their children for marrying someone of their own choice? This is not so simple; you are dealing with human beings. They come in all shapes, sizes, colours, and forms. They are the creator and destructor of their own fate. If we ask human beings to be satisfied with what they have, then we first have to deny our present state of existence. It’s thus better to “allow the world to live as it chooses, and allow yourself to live as you choose.” Lets not decide between greed and a need. Lets not define happiness. Life in every phase of development has gone though this dialectic of moral-immoral, happiness-unhappiness, enough-more. Let it follow its own course and let us be open to anything that comes our way. Open not in accepting but at least in considering and understanding.
Let us be the door that hinges on opening to the knocks of understanding
I never tried to delineate in my blog what should be the true measure of need & greed. I just tried to convey that we are more often than not, motivated by 'materialist' reasons where as happiness more often than not is not dependent on them. I agree with you that'there is no harm in going for more'but there's a question of deserving there.You do not only deserve a thing because you have money. You are as good as blind if you have money but lack knowledge and finer tastes of life. With increased cash flow all over the world, one who has money can buy anything. The subtle motto of my write up was against this maddening commodification, endorsed by larger than life advertisements & conspicuous consumption because you have to be what you are not under the influence of these. If everyone thought like you-“allow the world to live as it chooses, and allow your self to live as you choose,” then there would have been no revolutions in this world. There would have been no Gandhi, Netaji or Che. And if I allow myself to choose the way I live, my choice can very well be not to allow the world to live as it chooses.I might want to change & alter certain parts of living, which I think is not appropriate. I find having a blaze attitude is nothing but the easiest thing to do in life: escape.
ReplyDeletethe question is how much is too much? the question is are we equipped to say this much and no further? On one side is the need to check rampant ambition which is hurtling mankind to doom (e.g. Global warming fuelled by consumerism) and on the other, do we have the right to do moral policing..
ReplyDelete