"Money makes life comfortable, but along with comes the stress also.
I always feel that it is better to vote for peace of mind rather than this mad race for money”
I could attribute these words of my colleague to the context in which he told. I had been to Tiruvannamalai a place where lord Shiva is worshipped in the form of a mountain. And it is considered auspicious to do a circumference by walk to the sacred mountain.
After finishing my work at the local branch office, I have decided to go for the same. And my senior colleague also wished to join. We were in the middle of the same when he uttered those words.
It was a late evening and the weather was so pleasant. We have the huge mountain on our right hand side and there were several small temples across the path. We had already visited a few temples.
It was more like a physical but philosophical journey and I could easily understand why he said, it is better to have more peace of mind than more money.
I just smiled and offered no further discussion. After walking another half a kilometer we found a small colony of houses beside the road. It seemed to be a colony that belonged to poor to very poor people. We could see the small, one room houses, children playing in the open, all the people sitting on cots that are laid literally on the road side and the ladies cooking meals in the open. My colleague stopped there for a while which I thought was to give a little rest to the paining pair of legs.
But he stood there to watch the people around more closely.
“Look at the faces of those people, they might be poor but they are not un happy. They might not be having even the basic facilities that we enjoy but they are happy. Why can’t we be content and live life rather than running the race of life?”
I did not interrupt his flow of thoughts because my flow of thoughts already started.
Many a times we may see the people who get into this ” temporary satisfaction syndrome” for a short period of time and life never changes post that.
I just tried to answer two questions that seemed important.
1. Is it money that brings the stress along with it
2. Can we be happy in life with less amount of money ?
Money is just a tool that can be exchanged for something we need or desire.
We need or desire for more money only when we have more needs or more desires.
As a human being anybody has certain basic needs that doesn’t need a big fortune to take care of.
But it is a gradual enhancement in our life style that makes us hungry for more money.
In earlier days too people used to earn lot of money. But there weren’t any significant changes that could be seen in their lives. I never found 80 inch wall hanging televisions, ultra modern furniture, designer kitchens. Even a toilet is a toilet, there were no branded toilets. We lived without fabric conditioners, one minute noodles, microwave popcorns.
When all these became our basic necessities then earning more money has become a necessity. It is no more an option.
Most of the time we blame rising prices but there is one more culprit, rising needs.
Earning money is an option. It is our needs/desires that decide the degree of our earnings.
Once you are on the top of consuming cycle there is no way that you can slowdown your earning cycle.
My second question is can we be happy with lesser amount of money.
People can be happy irrespective of the amount of money that they possess as long as basic needs are taken care.
It is not that the amount of happiness is directly proportional to the amount of money that your wallet carries.
As long as we can live with the minimum needs we can be happy.
But does our modified life style allow us to be happy?
Certainly not.. let us think more…
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