Needs

In my opinion, human beings are the greediest creatures. Need is something we can never control and the greed follows by. We are continuously in search of something. It’s so funny to see that there is always a next step to our requirements. To give an example, if one lives on streets, he will long for house and food. Once he gets the house, he needs amenities. This requirement is fulfilled and soon he’ll be in search of some luxury!

When I was going through my job search process, I had almost the same approach. To tell you all the truth, I was never sure of finding a job. It was a depressed economy back then and which still is, I was an alien resident of America and was on a Student visa. All hard conditions! But then, I found one in a good company. Then after a while, when I had lesser work than usual, I started looking for some better company which would give me a whole lot of work, then with better pay and so on. This is in the human nature and if they had not been needy and greedy, they would still be living in jungles and wearing animal skins.

It is however very essential to know where to stop. We make mistake when we are never satisfied in what we have. This affects our mental and social behavior and gradually leads to crime. Knowing your limitations is the most important thing. If one dreams of becoming a governor of some state, he is aiming high. At the same time, this is probably not a good example to give because he just needs to fulfill 3 conditions to become one- you should not be educated enough (even until fourth standard is fine in some states), You should have committed at least one crime (So that you can bully people to vote for you as you will be used to committing crime) and you should be extremely voracious for money and power!!

Jokes apart, if someone is really in pursuit of his goal, he should definitely be trying his level best to achieve that. At the same time, please remember that every person has some limitations and some of them are beyond control. So, when I say having satisfaction in what we have, I mean that you should not regret about putting those efforts because you could not achieve goal and one should not be upset because of his limitations. Acceptance of those is the key to having what you want.

This is a vicious circle. If we are not satisfied in something, we will search and find more and we are satisfied in something, we get a peace of mind. There is an excellent phrase in my mother tongue Marathi. It says “Garaj Hi Shodhachi Janani Ahe”. Edison quoted the very thing in his words as- “Necessity is the mother of invention”. Probably evolution of technology followed this path. We needed to have things around and we found ways to fulfill those needs. So, the truth lies in being happy and feeling what we have is just enough at the right point. It’s like a break even point. Beyond that point, we tend to either loose peace because we keep searching or we are so satisfied in what we have that we loose all the motivation of putting any efforts. Judgment of this break even point does not come by teaching. This is also one of the facets of human nature to have a good judgment. Just that we need to know how to handle it!