If we look around the world to analyze some of the poorest and most powerless people and some of the richest and most powerful, we would instantly be able to see that while for the poor, need is limited to food and shelter, for the rich, need has expanded beyond imagination. He feels that he needs air conditioning even in the toilet. A palatial house also does not satiate his need, and he needs a home at a hill station to rest, and a house in different parts of the country where he wants to spend his vacation. The most expensive watches and clothes are his needs. He needs cars worth crores of rupees to travel, and a private jet becomes essential to save time.
Any and everything may be justified in the name of need. But can we observe what is happening in the process? Every time we justify some "greed" in the name of "need", we sell our freedom cheap. How? The moment we set our target on buying an Audi or a Mercedes, or a flat in a posh locality, that means we have packed our schedule with the engagements necessary to get money to buy these expensive items. A salaried employee will buy a house on instalments of 10-20 years, and for that time, his mind will always be occupied with the loan, and all his decisions will be centered around the repayment of the loan. That means we have sold off our freedom for our temptations. Job has become our compulsion, and we can't leave our job even if we get bad treatment at the office. If we have factored in promotion and increment in our calculations, even getting those increments becomes our compulsion, and that compulsion makes us weak, and often people stoop quite low and make their existence undignified.
Does that mean that we should not have ambitions at all? Will that not make us lazy? Yes, that is correct. Often, people become lazy in the absence of ambition. It is because they have never contemplated the meaning of life. Life is not about "spending time", rather it is about "living" to the best of the possibilities. Many people get comforts on a platter and never work to develop competence, and in the process, they become more and more incompetent. Since they have grown used to certain comforts, they start growing insecure about the perpetuity of those comforts. They become so used to these comforts that they do not mind being shameful and letting go of their dignity to get these comforts. That's the primary reason behind so many family disputes in India. Each sibling wants a greater share in the property of the parents. Incompetence coupled with greed for comforts makes people fight for property. Relationships become just a means to get these comforts.
So, ambitious people give away their freedom, and lazy people give away their dignity. What's the way out? I feel that the moment we understand the purpose of life, everything falls into place. The purpose of life is to explore. The cosmos is expanding every moment at the speed of light, and since we are also comprised of the same forces of nature, we too have a natural urge to expand. That's why we want to explore new things. We are quite happy when we go to a tourist place for the first time, but not so happy when we go there for the second time. It is because we want to explore new things. Love and sharing make us happy because we are all connected at the core. That's why when there is unadulterated sharing, we feel quite happy. We feel fearful and insecure in the company of non-transparent people. We feel uneasy when we spend time with people who make contradictory statements. When we share somebody's pain, that makes us strong from the inside. Love, compassion, and freedom are the basic driving forces of life. This body and mind have been given to us as a tool to be used and exploited, rather than to keep them in a comfortable place. A farmer uses the tools to do the farming and not to keep them in an air-conditioned room. The difference is that the farmer does not feel the pain of the tools, while we feel the pain of the body.
That means pain is the root cause of the entire problem. We want to avoid pain because we feel that, and that's why we want to make our body comfortable, and that's why we want to gather so many means of comforts, and money plays so much importance in our lives. But can we actually observe the cycle of pain and pleasure? The more we become comfortable, the more we feel the pain. When we used to travel in sleeper class, we craved for AC 3 tier, and now even AC 2 tier looks painful. Nothing has changed, except our mindset. The threshold of the body to tolerate discomfort has lowered. That's how we have made our lives miserable. The more we make our lives comfortable and the lower our threshold of feeling pain, the more fearful and insecure we become, and the more miserable our lives are. When we are born in a poor family and do not have these comforts, we develop a high threshold for pain naturally. However, as we earn money and invest that money to make life comfortable, knowingly or unknowingly, we set a very low threshold for feeling pain for our kids. That's the worst gift parents can give to their kids. Due to this low threshold, they tend to take safer options and do not explore their lives.
We can observe that when our pain tolerance decreases, we start to label our greed as a need. More life energy is spent on making the body and mind comfortable. We want to earn more and more money to acquire comfortable objects. We seek to maintain a constant supply of these resources, which is why we expend a great deal of time and energy obtaining social validation, because social validation assures us of a steady supply of these comforting possessions. Additionally, we invest significant energy in relationships, as they either provide us with these comforts or make us feel secure about their availability in times of crisis. In our efforts to ensure a constant supply of these comforts, we neglect life itself. We fail to explore, which is why we crave enjoyable trips. We do not realize that our soul yearns for exploration, and our lives have become so limited due to our low pain threshold that all of our time and energy is wasted on crafting plans A, B, C, and all the way to Z. Yet none of these plans ever bring us happiness. No amount of money is sufficient. We may buy the most comfortable house known to us, yet when we start living in such a house, we get to notice even better houses and feel dissatisfied. We choose the best colleges for our kids, but when kids get admission and we get to meet different parents, we see that there are better colleges and feel disappointed with our decision. We feel constant dissatisfaction because we are seeking satisfaction from something that can never satiate us. We feel hollow and insecure inside. As life slips away from our grasp, we find ourselves wishing, while lying in an ICU bed, that we could have truly lived our lives. The solution lies in being aware of what's going on inside us rather than brushing that aside.
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