Ye dil maange more

A friend of mine just sold their house. It was a beautiful house and lucky for them. But they wanted a bigger house and they found one. When we went for their housewarming, I congratulated her on her beautiful, spacious house. Her reaction was “next time we are buying a bigger one because this one doesn’t have ensuite washroom with every room. My friend just bought one which has”.

What? I could not believe my ears. They had just moved in this house and already they were thinking of selling this and buying another, bigger house. But they are not alone. Most of us do the very same thing. We want this, we want that, we want something because our friend has it.

We are not satisfied by what we have but upset by what we don’t. And that makes us unhappy, stressful and dissatisfied. When we do get what we want, we immediately want something else and fail to enjoy what we just got. So we create this vicious cycle of unhappiness. Is there a wonder we have so many heart attacks, strokes, and hypertensions?

But I have the remedy for this. It requires a paradigm shift though but actually it is very simple. Instead of focusing on what we don’t have, we start focusing on what we have. This will make us happy and will teach us to live in the moment. Instead of thinking our jobs were different, our spouses were different or if we could take a vacation in some exotic land, think how stable our job is, how loyal our spouse is or how much fun we have playing scrabble at home, we will be much happier.

I grew up playing hopscotch with my friends in our lane and we were totally happy. Kids these days have the latest phones, laptops, and video games and are still unhappy. That is because they imbibe that from their parents. Plus keeping up with jones mentality has seeped in so deep in our thinking that we have to have the latest gadgets, a bigger house and all the ‘in’ things.

If we are grateful for things we have, we will find that we get more. Because even God wants to listen ‘thank you’.

So thank the lord and be happy

So be it !!!