“What is the point of this discussion?” I asked my mom in
anger as the discussion on whether financial independence is a primary or a secondary
quality in a potential groom. She obviously is of an opinion that it is very
important for a successful marriage, but is it really that important? No,
before you start guessing the background of my mother, let me tell you she
comes from a well-educated, open-minded (as cliched as it may sound) Sindhi
family, so much so that she was married off to a Gujarati boy very happily in
the early 90s after dating him for good 7 years.
I don’t deny that money is important, but does that mean you
can compromise on the understanding. I have seen couples earning lakhs together
and yet so unhappy. Does money decide your happiness? She argues, you cannot
knowingly jump into the fire. But maybe knowingly jumping will hurt a little
lesser than getting a shock later. If there is no emotional attachment, no
understanding, how do you think will you ever be able to earn to be happy?
Earning money isn't easy, why? Because most of us don’t earn to live, we earn
to survive, we earn because of a lot of external reasons. Society, People,
Luxury, Peer pressure etc. And then we call this HAPPINESS. What are we really
confused about? Definition of money, definition of earnings or definition of
happiness? I wonder, as I think about all that I hear each day. Is being materialistic
a cool thing these days? Why is there such a wide gap between poor and rich?
Because we have created that rift, right? Poverty is when you can’t afford the
basic things in life, and rich is when you can afford everything in life. But
do we really need everything? NEED? Maybe our WANTS have taken over our
happiness. We look for happiness in that one dinner we spend on in a luxurious
hotel and check-in to show the world. We look for happiness in choosing to
travel by flight where we can easily travel by train. We look for happiness
when we buy imported cookies instead of those Parle-G biscuits. I don’t say, all
this is bad. It sure isn’t but do these things decide how happy we are? They
don’t. I don’t know how people without all these comforts of life survive but
the belief that we will survive and remain happy without all these temporary
things is real happiness.
