Hello my dear friends, today I wish to discuss with you all a very common and personal topic, which I am sure all feel for and have strong opinions about. But we often don’t bring this out in the open as we do not want others to judge us. But all of us do have a feel for this.
Friends, we all aspire for good things in life. We all want to live a good life with good materialistic possessions and affordability of a certain lifestyle which is aspirational for all. Depending on where you are in life’s ladder of economic accumulation, we always look up at people above us in economic classes and aspire to join them and reach that level. If we have a motorcycle today, we aspire to have a car someday. If we have a Maruti 800Alto, we aspire to have a decent saloon, maybe a Honda City. When we reach that stage, we dream of owning an SUV and then a Mercedes……on and on it goes. Our dreams and aspirations are never satiated. We always want more as we look all around us at the people who own more than us.
The point is, we all want to be RICH – materialistic richness gives us the power to afford things that were beyond our reach. They give us the affordability and spending power to join the ranks of people whom we used to look at and aspire to be like. But it is always materialistic richness which we aspire for and which we admire in other people.
But friends, in our pursuit of materialistic happiness and satisfaction, have we even once given a thought that there is so much to learn from others apart from admiring their materialistic possessions and aspiring to own them like the others do? Have we ever wondered what are the good points in the person’s character, nature, behavior or lifestyle which I can imbibe in my own life. We never bother to aspire for these traits of people because we are too deeply engrossed in the dazzle of the materialistic charms.
Also it never crosses our mind that even these so called “Rich” people are still not happy. They still aspire for more. Despite having it all, if one keeps aspiring for more – the meaning is plain and simple. Being rich does not satisfy your needs and wants, although it may appear to be so when we aspire to have what others have. We always feel that if I have a bigger car, I will be happy. Then when the bigger car comes, the point of happiness is pushed to having an SUV and so on and so forth.
Friends what we do not realize is that “Richness is not in earning more, spending more or saving more……Richness is when you need “NO MORE”
We all need to try and reach that frame of mind, rising above this materialistic greed for richness and try and attain a stage where we don’t need anything anymore – i.e. a stage where you are happy with what you have. And that is the day when you definition of Richness will be complete and you will be truly rich.
Again I know that it is easier said than done, but at least if we think in this direction and at least if we are aware of these small things in life, our life can take a major turn for the better someday if we try hard enough.
Dr. Rajesh Mankani
