Assets and liabilities in life

We had attended a Swamiji’s (from Chinmaya mission) lectures in Manipal way back in 1981. The point that stuck in my mind was the difference between ‘Preya marg’ and ‘Shreya marg.’ Preya marg is doing things in life that gives immediate pleasure, but leads to agony later. For example smoking, over indulgence in sweets etc., Cigarette smoking gives real pleasure to many and in several instances it can lead to life threatening diseases like cancer. Eating too much sugary stuff can cause obesity, diabetes and heart problems.

On the other hand Shreya marg is doing things that don’t give immediate pleasure, but they do bring joy in the long run. Like exercising daily for keeping the body in shape and healthy. It may be raining and you feel like sleeping in the warm bed than to get up and go for jogging, but jogging is what you do if you are on Shreya marg.

Running blind in the rat race

The Universe provides nourishment and necessities for every being. But we humans think that we have to struggle hard to achieve things. I want to make it clear that I am not advocating inaction. As long as we are alive, we need to act, but if we do it in a balanced and nonattached way, we can enjoy every moment of life.

Neglecting one’s body and sleep, not giving time and attention to family, with the common argument “I am doing this to make our life secure, to give you better future’ (which are lame excuses anyway) will back fire in the long run.

When one looks around, everybody is in the rat race. It needs real spiritual foundation to step aside and lead a balanced life. Let us take a look at the assets one creates and how they transform into liabilities over time.

HUGE house, your ‘Status symbol’

There is a trend to make huge houses, with inbuilt home theatre and gym. After about two years of living in that house, it is seen that they hardly get time to watch movies in the home theatre and oversleeping is so enjoyable that the home gym is mostly unused. When it becomes difficult to get domestic help, the huge house turns into a liability as it is difficult to clean.

With the craze to send children abroad, we get to see large number of houses where only the parents (who are senior citizens) are living. They just lock up the rooms except their own bed room and kitchen. Prolonged closed spaces attract negative energies and the parents suffer from problems which the allopathy approach can’t diagnose.

There is the current fashion of false ceiling and intense lighting in the house. False ceiling creates dead spaces in the house, not a good thing for the inhabitants’ wellbeing. The lighting in the house is very strong, there is no balance of Yin and Yang. I feel uncomfortable in some of our friends’ houses as I am sensitive to the energy level around me. They stay in such a bright atmosphere till sleeping time, which is detrimental as after sunset presence of melatonin is supposed to induce sleep and bright lighting doesn’t facilitate melatonin synthesis. Then they take sleeping pills to drift into a drowsy slumber!

I have seen bath tubs in some houses accumulating dirt and becoming storage place for things like brooms. For the sake of status the bath tub was installed in the house but over time it is not used for baths and keeping it clean becomes a tough job.

So you can see how a huge house is turning from an asset into a liability.

Enormous bank accounts

 We all should have savings to meet emergency situations and for old age. But the trend to amass money beyond limit will bring liabilities. As one ages and memory starts fading, it is difficult to remember where all the money has been stacked! When the owner of such unlimited money develops parkinsonism, his signature is distorted and the bank refuses to accept and honour the cheque.

I know of families where the husbands didn’t have any time for family, working around the clock to swell bank accounts. The compromised health leads to their sudden death, and the wives have no knowledge about the different accounts. So the families are now economically suffering.

Accumulating vehicles

Vehicles used to be for transportation and convenience but now it is more a status symbol. If the neighbor is owning two cars like you, you should definitely buy the third one for the one up-manship, right? As one ages, keeping multiple vehicles in running condition and attending to their servicing schedules become a liability!

Unlimited wardrobe

The amount of clothes people amass today is appalling. It is always designer clothes for functions and a huge amount is spent on that. The current trend of using too much cloth for a dress is a burden to the mother Earth. Since the photos of functions are uploaded on facebook, there is no question of using the same dress again for another function. Once I asked a friend (I genuinely wanted to know the answer) what she does with all the designer clothes, because these  dresses, unlike what I do with my saris and simple dresses, can’t be handed down to the maids. She told with a painful expression, “That is the problem Beena, they are just dumped in cardboard boxes and kept in the house. That is when I noticed the cardboard boxes in several corners of the house. You need to know that her house is a huge one.

Is it worth?

One needs to really consider if it is worth sacrificing today’s joys to perceived ‘security of tomorrow’. What you lose in terms of health and relationships in the rat race can’t be retrieved with all the money that you have accumulated.