Take less, Give more and be Happy…

We are all engaged in a rat race on how to acquire more of anything. We are all after material assets believing that it will give happiness. Nothing is away from the truth. It is true that material things may give us happiness but the fact is that it is short lived. There is every possibility that it becomes a burden later. I wish to illustrate this with the following true story. There was a merchant who left his property to his children. The merchant died a few years back. The children who inherited the property started fighting over a small bit of land. All of them were married and their wives played a leading role in instigating their husbands to fight each other. The eldest son was employed abroad leaving his wife back home. Her relatives started instigating her to call her husband back. They insisted her to pressurize him to resign and return back with a reason that she could not live alone.

The eldest son inherited some property. The second son had encroached the eldest son’s property which had resulted in creating family conflict. After this incident two families stopped talking to each other. The elder son’s wife wanted to file a suit but her husband was not willing to go ahead, which created a rift between husband and wife. Here we see that a small piece of land had destroyed the entire family relationship. There are several similar stories with which I am personally acquainted with. Going after wealth ignoring all other values will destroy everyone. I remember a story by Leo Tolstoy wherein a farmer had been given a chance of acquiring as much land he could by running in all four directions and marking the boundaries. The man started early morning; running faster and faster he had covered a couple of miles. By the time the sun reached about 30 degrees he started running to his right. He ran for a couple of miles again. By the time it was midday he thought he could run little more and reach the point from where he started before sunset. But his greed did not permit him to make a turn around until it was 4 O’clock in the evening. He thought he could reach the starting point before sunset but he could not. He fell midway and died. All he needed there after was 6 feet of earth to burry him. I trust, people who are running after wealth should remember this story and guard against excessive greed of acquiring more and more.

“Children will not remember you for the material things you provided but for the feeling that you cherished them” - Richard L Evans