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| (Image courtesy : Google) |
Today evening as I hit the mini market after my evening stroll, I saw a man and a kid in the store. The kid was tugging his father towards the toy section to show him some thing which eventually he will make him buy. But the father, a poor man by his attires was trying not to pay attention and was acting busy so as to ignore the boy's intentions. slowly the scene started changing. the boy started hitting the man and when his new trick also failed pathetically, he began to call his father, names but not long since the man slapped the boy hard, so hard that the boy fell down. The man stood staring at the boy. his gaze was sharp and held a lethal warning "Boy, you gotta stop this or I will make sure you will never ever repeat this". A minute later, the boy started crying, and crying to the top of his voice. The man became the center of attraction, People started cursing him for not attending the boy'd needs, Finally fed up with his lunatics, the man dragged the boy to the toy section and let him pick up the red car! Minutes later, I saw the man keeping many items back at the cash counter. He did not have enough money! The boy was still standing there with the red car tightly held close to his chest. When I looked at him, he gave me a little smile, a smile of a victor!. In a moment, he
took me back to my childhood days. A less privileged, but happy childhood.
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| (Image courtesy : Google) |
As a child, I had a lot of requirements which, at that time, I thought important. But many of them were turned down by my father which, at that time, I thought was an injustice. With time , I got used to those rejections. Needless to say, as I grew up, my requirements were molded to suit my fathers ability or my capacity to fulfill them. Later in my life, when I grew up, up enough that I started earning an income, all these suppressed desires slowly began to surface. There were no more sleepless nights, there were no second thoughts! When I wanted something, I had it. But it was then that I realised that my requirements grew with time. It never stopped, It grew day by day to such a formidable extend that I could not afford to have the luxury of many of them and of the numerous eye candy items in my acquisitions,many were lying useless, lot of them unused, some left aside after a couple of uses and some completely abandoned as unworthy!. It was then that I remembered my father, things he said in person, back some years, which at that time I regarded as a bridge less generation gap, which now strikes me as golden words, or for that matter a golden rule for any individual's life. We live only once, and to make that living happy and ever worth remembering, there was this one rule , simple and plain. Call it a rule or a kind of discipline, his words were " Understand the difference between need and want". A simple rule, yet a powerful one! I started following it, life became less complicated, the road seemed to be easy and smooth. A simple life had its own benefits!
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| (Image courtesy : Google) |
Time passed by and my needs also increased. Wants off course were sky high and I could never touch it. It drifted away day by day, but I was still happy, all my needs were fulfilled. In fact I understood that they were all in my achievable limits and my wants aka wishes kept me going. Life was a long ride!
Now imagine a man with out a wish, not a single one, for him or for others. I would say he is long dead! I believe, wishes keeps us going. It gives us a target, a destination, a direction, an aim, a reason to live. We will have to work towards fulfilling our wish , if not for us, for our dear ones. But it must always be there at the back of our minds that it is just a wish and a wish is always a wish.Similarly a need is a need too. Never let your need turn in to a wish, It will make your life miserable, insignificant and less appropriate. Life suddenly becomes not worth living, Not worth at all!
