"A rich man is just a poor man with other needs"
I remember a story I read... There was a sage who was looking at other sages around him and found that none of them smiled. So he tried to find out why. He asked a bearded, scholarly, eternal-bachelor who was in a brooding world of his own why he was sad and the scholar replied, "So much to learn and all I have learnt is just a drop in the ocean... what is there to be happy about?" "An ocean to learn!" he exclaimed and walked by gripping his book even tighter. Through the day the sage kept walking, asking different people the same question, "Why are you not happy? Why do you look sad" and everyone had so much to learn, so much to do and so much, much more of unfinished business that just kept them too busy to be happy.
Just then as he was passing through a brook, he saw a simple woman in tattered clothes, cheerfully whistle a tune, smiling all the while as she squatted on the floor doing a mountain of dishes outside her humble hut. He stopped in disbelief and like a man surprized to see light in the darkness, after a moment of puzzled silence, proceeded to ask the woman, "How come you are so happy? What makes you so happy???" She looked up, smiled again and like a school-going girl, giggled and shyly said, "Oh great one! you see, water here is so scarce and if I get a bucket of water to wash my bum, I am happy any day... so very happy!" and today she was!
The sage didn't have a word to say and walked on running the montage of people he had seen earlier that day in his mind and wondered "If only they had..."
How happy are we? With always having more to learn, more to earn, more to do, more to burn, more to turn, more to woo and with our endless list of things to do, sinking with every want, more and more into our world of chronic dissatisfaction and suburban drudgery. And all the while we think money makes us happy?! If only it does...
