‘Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing’

Oscar Wilde wrote this in The Picture of Dorian Grey. I wonder how these great writers can see things we cant even think of? Even if we think we cant express. They can express the obvious and what is not so obvious to us in the most natural manner.

Seriously, isn’t this true. The world, they say, has become a global village and today we have access to goods from far-flung corners of the world. We are aware consumers and we know what price to pay. We are bombarded with the price match and bargains on order to run the large-scale production economies.

We have more comforts and luxuries in the history of mankind, we have technology, which was unthinkable even a few years ago, and we have satellites to help us predict right from weather to how much crops we would grow.

But do we have friendships that last a lifetime? Do we have family that stands by us in our times of need? Haven’t we forgotten the value of people in our life? We have more friends on Facebook than real life. We wish all those strangers happy birthday but don’t pick up the phone to connect with a high school friends because he has not ‘Made it’.

We go out for dinners with our bosses because we want to be seen at the right place at the right time to get that promotion but we forget to play with our kids. We celebrate our anniversaries in an exotic resort so that put pictures on Instagram for the world but forget to sit and just talk with our significant ones. And then we wonder why did our marriage fail. Why our kids don’t listen to us?

We remove the embroidered horse that our mother made from our wall because it doesn’t go with our décor. We bring a painting by a famous artist so people can envy our living room but we don’t have time to call our mother.

Knowing the value of things is something we have forgotten or at least have put on the back burner in our race to be better than the others. It is the value that we put on things and relationships that become our strength during our low. The friends who stand by you because you have nurtured the friendship, your family because you have been involved, your colleagues because you have helped them.

I would go the extent of saying that if you don’t value yourself, you will not value others.

So do you value yourself? Then value the people and relationship.

So be it!!!