Daily Mirror - Print Edition

NEVER ENOUGH!

01 Apr 2020 - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}      

  • Go for medical check-ups even if not sick.
  • Drink more water, even if not thirsty.
  • Learn to let go, even if faced with grave problems.
  • Endeavour to give in, even if you are in the right.
  • Remain humble, even if you are very rich and powerful.
  • Learn to be contented, even if you are not rich.
  • Exercise your mind and body, even if you are very busy.
  • Make time for people you care about

In our world today, enough is never enough!!!  So many reasons for lack of satisfaction – mainly due to coveting what other people have, it is sadly a very deadly trend in Sri Lanka, but it is a world-wide phenomenon too based on greed, avarice, jealousy, the compelling need to be higher, richer, more glamorous, well recognised (though most of them don’t deserve to be) to be the best, to receive adulation at all times, even though it is not deserved.  Yet, what these sycophants don’t realise is that their stupid compulsion for adulation, for hoarding for almost everything, invariably ends in nothing.


They hoard their money in the banks, but when they die their money remains in the bank.  When they are alive, they complain they don’t have enough to spend.  Not a dime to give towards a poor cause, yet the newspaper headlines scream of the billions in profit they have made.  In reality, when they are gone there is still a lot of money not spent.  We wonder for whom or what they are hoarding it.  One business tycoon in China passed away and his widow was left with $1.9 billion in the bank and ended up marrying his chauffeur.  Apparently his chauffeur had said, “all along I thought I was working for my boss, it is only now I realise that my boss was working for me!!!  
The cruel reality is that it is more important to live longer than to have more wealth – instead of striving to hoard wealth; we must strive to have a strong and healthy body.  You hanker after a high end mobile sometimes not even realising that 70% of the functions are useless.  Likewise, in the expensive car that you covet 70% of the speed and gadgets are not needed.  You are dying to own a luxurious villa or mansion, when you do, 70% of the space is most often unused or unoccupied.


Let’s take a look at your wardrobe of clothes – how much of them do you actually use and what about shoes, how many do you really wear?  Jewellery?  Is it ever enough or do you just keep on hoarding till someone gets to know and talks about it through utter jealousy and robbers get insane ideas.
We spend our whole lives working and earning not for ourselves but for others to spend.  Shouldn’t we really sit back and ask ourselves an all important question “Is it really worth it?”  Instead of striving for more, more and more, when enough is never enough, we should learn the value of real contentment, a person satisfied with little is a truly content human being.  He or she learns to protect and make full use of the little they have and are therefore truly content people.  They don’t live in fear of robbers entering through the roof, being held at gun point, thieves snatching their chains or bags and making off with it.  They are content with what they have, that is the cardinal virtue of their lives – true contentment, because of which they fear nothing so they have peace of mind.  
Why is it that for some people, enough is never enough?  Because they have not learned the value of letting go, because they are constantly at war within themselves, greed and dissatisfaction are always beckoning, more, more, more!! In the Buddha Dhamma, Lord Buddha himself preached the priceless value of detachment, letting go and being at peace, a peace that surpasses all understanding.  

 

 

"The cruel reality is that it is more important to live longer than to have more wealth – instead of striving to hoard wealth; we must strive to have a strong and healthy body.  You hanker after a high end mobile sometimes not even realising that 70% of the functions are useless"


There are some cardinal rules that we can practice to keep our minds and ourselves at peace:   
Don’t be upset and get caught up with things or people that cannot change.  Move on, let go and focus on what you are able to change, especially the things that enhance your life.  You deserve to be happy.  Remember that the beauty of life does not depend on how happy you are, but on how happy others can be because of you.  In the context of the virus in our world today, there is a prediction I would like to quote from the book ‘END OF DAYS’ by Sylvia Browne: “In around 2020 a severe pneumonia like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and the bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments.  Almost more baffling than the illness itself will be the fact that it will suddenly vanish as quickly as it arrived, attack again ten years later, and then disappear completely.”  This prediction was made in 2008!


I would like to end with this very interesting saying “Life is a journey with problems to solve and lessons to learn but most of all, experiences to enjoy.”  So let’s learn to be happy, to be satisfied and live, to be happy with what you have, to keep working on what you love and to always remember that a happy life begins by thanking God for what we do have.  Happiness is not about getting all you want, it is about enjoying all you have.

THE VOICE