HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH ?
There are few questions whose answers are not universal but subjective. "How much is Enough ? " is one such poser for a human life.
Isn’t it strange that how circumstances can change the perception ? The same question - before and after Covid - has a great paradigm shift in our
understanding.
If we divide our lives into few quadrants - it could be as follows:
1. Biggest quadrant is where we spend most of our lives - earning - maximising financial gains, professional growth, mundane activities, worldly formal deeds. This could be subjective - but is most likely to be anywhere between 70 to even 100 percent !
2. Second quadrant is your quality time given to your loved ones.
3. The time you have used in giving something back to community, helping others selflessly.
4. Living truly for yourself - beyond money making - reading, fulfilling your dream hobbies of childhood ( eg. learning music, painting, dancing etc)
5. Time allotted for a spiritual quest - to seek answers of human existence.
As it happens, most of us spend majority of our time in first quadrant only. We realise at the fag end of life what George Bernard Shaw once said : “ You will be more disappointed by the things you did not do than what you did”.
Earning money is very vital and crucial. No one can argue on that. But one needs to know - How much is enough? If we don’t ask this question , we will consume our life in first quadrant only.
Covid has opened up our eyes to the “fickleness” of human life. Most traumatic era ( we are still not out of it) of this century has taught us to live with ourselves. The love and importance of family & community has sunk into us with great conviction. Covid needed to happen to make us understand “Money alone is so futile “.
I am reminded of a short story by Khaled Hosseini, ( author of Kite Runner).
He writes: “That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms.”
Covid is not here to stay forever. But I hope the lessons Covid taught would be itched in our mind and heart forever. I sincerely hope that we shall live our life keeping in mind the quadrants other than the first one.
Ultimately It is only upto you to decide -
“ How much is enough for you ?
Dr Hemant Antani
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