I am fed up of the money mindedness of the world around me. Everything begins and ends with monetary considerations. Decisions relating to education, career, marriage, relationships, future - all are linked primarily to financial pay-offs. There seem to be absolutely no acceptance for the unconventional/non-conformists. Life, it appears, is only about adding more moolahs to your wealth by focusing only on monetary aspects of the world. I have been asked quite a lot of times by friends and relatives as to why I have not bought a house yet. It's as if that should be the key aim in life. Get a house, a car, then a bigger house, then a more lavish car. Gosh, where does this all end! Marriages are based on financial status. Sure, money is important. But so much that you become obsessed with it? You forget your human fabric in the quest for financial dreamworld?
My fellow professor beautifully described the virus: It is always about financial and mental strengths. Moral strengths are hardly looked for. So very true. Character and the strength of your values ranks a distant third or fourth may be to your ability to amass more wealth. And then utilise that wealth for things that you never really need or use. And then, propagate the same way of living to every one around you. Crazy.
Why can't someone dance to a music that the world neither hears or understands? Why can't an individual strive to do things that he believes is right? Why must he be always judged on social norms of wealth and assets? Why should the efforts of being a genuine human being not rated as highly as efforts to create wealth? Why must things be loaded on to him without realizing his preference or core beliefs? Why must a person with lesser bank balance be seen as less successful?
The longer these crazy ways of measuring happiness exists, more difficult it would be for the younger lot to create their own set of values. We are pushing them to be stereotypes, to be followers rather than leaders. We help them to learn the tricks of making money but not the ways of growing as human beings. We includes me and I cannot hate myself more for it.
Let me share an incident here. Something that happened few weeks back and will probably chase me for the rest of my life. While returning from my trip to Kerala, a family friend with me had a very heavy bag containing stuff bought from there. They seeked the aid of a railway porter for carrying the bag. The porter who came forward was a visibly weak, 60+ years old person. I could not imagine how he would carry that bag all the way through the long series of stairs. So I offered to carry that bag and give him my light bag to him instead. To that, the family friends and parents asked me not to since it is his job to carry it. I tried to insist but gave it up to avoid creating a scene. And for the next 10-15 minutes, I cursed myself seeing the old man carry that severely heavy bag and struggling for breath. I could have forced others and took the bag myself. I could have not listened to anyone. Instead, I chose to let him carry that bag.
The face of the man and his desperation for the 50Rs. he was doing the work for makes me feel ashamed of my lack of ability to change things around. Rational, educated people look away from such 'trivial' things perhaps. And that is precisely the reason why I am starting to hate the way a lot of us are, more so myself. Selfish, self-centered pigs are all what a lot of us are.
