Needs and Wants

“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.