In real life, it appears that people enjoy most what they run after and possess egoistically, like a prestigious position or a beautiful spouse or material wealth. So how does it all lose value leading to ordinariness?
This is evident from the fact that they soon begin running after and chasing other objects. The millionaire who dreamed of having millions and gets it does not sit at rest. He begins a new chase for many more millions and billions. Millions that seemed too important and too big becomes worth pennies. He is afraid of losing it, wants to secure it as well as grow. The man with a beautiful woman by his side starts chasing other women or takes her for granted now, she whom he so deeply valued, is now his own. That is why most happy courtship and dating do not necessarily turn into happy marraiges. It is as if you got what you wanted and now you must have more. One could multiply examples of possessing houses, cars and everything else. Besides all these things decline in their value as time flows, the purchasing power of a million decreases, the beautiful woman grows old, the new houses loses its shine, the car becomes outdated. And so the vital whose nature is to jump at every new things gets restless, dissatisfied, stressed out chasing the new rainbows. It is the story everywhere. People lose peace, the joy turns sour, the happiness bitter, frictions, divorces, broken families, clash and strife, fear and anger or emptiness and hollowness, depression and boredom is the prize of this race to possess more and more. In fact one begins to shrink through selfish greed and the more one shrinks the more one loses the natural joy of life, the joy of creativity, the joy of love. One apparently progress but it is a horizontal movement in circles like a bullock tied to an iron rod with only its rope getting longer to roam. But the vertical progress, the deeper plunge all goes missing and as death approaches, one feels deeply sad. He tries to fill his sadness with more and more artificial things such as new objects, new cars, new properties, new seats of power, parties, makeup and makeovers and fashion and all that rotten stuff which cannot equal a moment of true inner joy, a touch of true love, a surge of creativity. One loses the most precious things of life, – love and knowledge and moral strength, spontaneous happiness, spirit of beauty, peace, harmony, Godward aspiration, things that last and endure.
I am not saying all this based on theory. God has shown me the entire spectrum of life of spare wants in the village and the life of endless artificial wants created by the modern civilisation. It is truly a misery, an inner poverty amidst outer plenty. The flaunting off of the houses makes the riches even worse as it looks like a crown on a pig’s head. These fellows who do are advertisers of hell. The falsehood runs deeper. Capitalism creates endless artificial wants and then they become ‘needs’. Communism makes it worse by bypassing the law of effort to snatching your desires by force.
I am not saying everyone fits into the same shoe. There are exceptions as always but the general truth stands. The more you have, the more you want and down one goes spiraling towards the endless abyss. That at least has been my experience with a variety of people over decades.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
