There Is No Finish Line In Life
By Aditi Munot
25 January, 2009Countercurrents.org
From the very cradle on, we are taught about and trained for the rat race. In fact, from the womb, the schooling for the competitive, materialistic world begins.
Life is about doing financially well to be able to own all material pleasures. It is about working hard, slogging your ass off in aspiration of some material goal.
For a toddler, good behaviour is rewarded with a candy. For a school-goer, it is a bicycle or vacation in lieu of good grades. Once in college, good grades are associated with motor-bikes or more pocket money. And thereafter, it’s a full life of working harder and then harder for a little more of something. Once the present goal is achieved, there is another ambition looming in the horizon. It is slogging for my car, then for my house, then for my washing machine and microwave, then the latest plasma television and I phone, then for vacations abroad, children’s education and so on. And then eventually, it is about working hard for the sake of working hard….. because I don’t know how to do anything else…. All my life I have done only this, believed only in this. I know only how to work, not how to live.
Today, if an average, middle class person were to be given Rs.1 crore (10 million ), will he stop running? Will he sit back and enjoy life? No. He will instead invest that money to make more money and himself continue sweating his brow to add to that money. The whole point is, money has ceased to be a means to an end, it has become an end in itself.
We are all driven by this uncontrollable urge to work hard, buy more, earn more and spend more. If I have a house in the suburbs, I want to have one in South Bombay. If I have a Ford Icon, I want to own a Honda Accord. If I have gold ornaments, I want diamonds. And I am prepared to spend 30 years of my life running to be able to possess these ego satisfying goodies. So, the idea is not to have a house to live in or a car to travel…. But the locality I live in or the size of the car I travel in. And if this is the need, it can never be satisfied, because there is always the next level. There is always something better than what you have.
If you sit back and think carefully, where did this need come from? Did it always exist or has it been created? Why at no point in our lives can we be happy or content? Who gains from our dissatisfaction?
The answer lies in our capitalist system. This discontent and dissatisfaction is harboured in individuals by a profit thirsty system. And the tool employed to diffuse this unhappiness is advertising and media. These tools are used very carefully and precisely to create a restlessness and discontent with the things you own, with your lifestyle in general. Your mobile phones or plasma televisions are deliberately made obsolete within months of entering the market. When a product is launched in the market, the next three variants and advanced models are already in the line-up, but are brought in the market in phases. So it is basically no new technology, it is just a sales strategy. It is purely a game plan to make more money by making you buy more of everything.
This use and throw culture….. where did it come from? Of course it was very carefully planned and engineered into our day to day lives. All this has got to do with sales figures and volumes and turnovers and profit margins. A need is created, then it is amplified, percolated to every strata of society. The idea is to increase consumption and never let you be happy. Because the moment you are happy, satisfied….. you will not want more, buy more…. And that affects a lot of big cash registers.
But this is not only about big corporations or systems. We all are a part of this system, so it is about the attitude if each one of us. In some way, we all have chosen to run this race for more of this and a little more of that. We are not happy with a walk in the park, but two hours in the mall give us joy. A couple of hours alone with a book are not as enjoyable as watching a movie in a multiplex. Playing ball with my child is not as much fun as watching him playing an expensive video game. Bare feet on the grass is not as pleasing as Nike in my feet. A shower in my bath is more fun than playing in the rain.
By choice, we have ceased to find joy in small day to day things. Life has become more of a goal than just life itself. We have consciously chosen to run this race. We have consciously chosen to not live life in depth, enjoy life completely. And till the time we do not chose to stop, the race will go on. In this race, there is no finish line.
‘I thought again of life, which has no obvious end, except the process of enjoying this particular moment in this particular place, and the joy of meandering. I am in no hurry to reach the end point of my life, nor to wish away any of the time in between. I don’t want to live life efficiently, nor cause others to. I want to live deeply, broadly, richly, with resonance, in full enjoyment of my own particular life.’ – Derrick Jensen.
25 January, 2009Countercurrents.org
From the very cradle on, we are taught about and trained for the rat race. In fact, from the womb, the schooling for the competitive, materialistic world begins.
Life is about doing financially well to be able to own all material pleasures. It is about working hard, slogging your ass off in aspiration of some material goal.
For a toddler, good behaviour is rewarded with a candy. For a school-goer, it is a bicycle or vacation in lieu of good grades. Once in college, good grades are associated with motor-bikes or more pocket money. And thereafter, it’s a full life of working harder and then harder for a little more of something. Once the present goal is achieved, there is another ambition looming in the horizon. It is slogging for my car, then for my house, then for my washing machine and microwave, then the latest plasma television and I phone, then for vacations abroad, children’s education and so on. And then eventually, it is about working hard for the sake of working hard….. because I don’t know how to do anything else…. All my life I have done only this, believed only in this. I know only how to work, not how to live.
Today, if an average, middle class person were to be given Rs.1 crore (10 million ), will he stop running? Will he sit back and enjoy life? No. He will instead invest that money to make more money and himself continue sweating his brow to add to that money. The whole point is, money has ceased to be a means to an end, it has become an end in itself.
We are all driven by this uncontrollable urge to work hard, buy more, earn more and spend more. If I have a house in the suburbs, I want to have one in South Bombay. If I have a Ford Icon, I want to own a Honda Accord. If I have gold ornaments, I want diamonds. And I am prepared to spend 30 years of my life running to be able to possess these ego satisfying goodies. So, the idea is not to have a house to live in or a car to travel…. But the locality I live in or the size of the car I travel in. And if this is the need, it can never be satisfied, because there is always the next level. There is always something better than what you have.
If you sit back and think carefully, where did this need come from? Did it always exist or has it been created? Why at no point in our lives can we be happy or content? Who gains from our dissatisfaction?
The answer lies in our capitalist system. This discontent and dissatisfaction is harboured in individuals by a profit thirsty system. And the tool employed to diffuse this unhappiness is advertising and media. These tools are used very carefully and precisely to create a restlessness and discontent with the things you own, with your lifestyle in general. Your mobile phones or plasma televisions are deliberately made obsolete within months of entering the market. When a product is launched in the market, the next three variants and advanced models are already in the line-up, but are brought in the market in phases. So it is basically no new technology, it is just a sales strategy. It is purely a game plan to make more money by making you buy more of everything.
This use and throw culture….. where did it come from? Of course it was very carefully planned and engineered into our day to day lives. All this has got to do with sales figures and volumes and turnovers and profit margins. A need is created, then it is amplified, percolated to every strata of society. The idea is to increase consumption and never let you be happy. Because the moment you are happy, satisfied….. you will not want more, buy more…. And that affects a lot of big cash registers.
But this is not only about big corporations or systems. We all are a part of this system, so it is about the attitude if each one of us. In some way, we all have chosen to run this race for more of this and a little more of that. We are not happy with a walk in the park, but two hours in the mall give us joy. A couple of hours alone with a book are not as enjoyable as watching a movie in a multiplex. Playing ball with my child is not as much fun as watching him playing an expensive video game. Bare feet on the grass is not as pleasing as Nike in my feet. A shower in my bath is more fun than playing in the rain.
By choice, we have ceased to find joy in small day to day things. Life has become more of a goal than just life itself. We have consciously chosen to run this race. We have consciously chosen to not live life in depth, enjoy life completely. And till the time we do not chose to stop, the race will go on. In this race, there is no finish line.
‘I thought again of life, which has no obvious end, except the process of enjoying this particular moment in this particular place, and the joy of meandering. I am in no hurry to reach the end point of my life, nor to wish away any of the time in between. I don’t want to live life efficiently, nor cause others to. I want to live deeply, broadly, richly, with resonance, in full enjoyment of my own particular life.’ – Derrick Jensen.
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