Okay. Here comes a new thought and an perspective for me to blog on. A simple thought and yet something with some complex interpretations.
So yesterday while driving back home, I started pondering on money - more specifically on when exactly is money (that ones has) really enough! A realization dawned in the immediate next traffic light where surrounding me were a range of living emoting human beings. On one side I had a BMW 5 series and just a little ahead of that was a municipality bus with at least 100 specimens for my study. On the other side I saw a young couple with a small child stuffed neatly between them. A little ahead of them was a Gen Y or Z specimen trying to take a U turn. Further ahead was a cab driver with an almost exhausted beaten look - having dealt with the traffic all his day long. So in nutshell, I saw all around me people of different living scales and perhaps different aspirations of how they think they would like their ideal life to be!
Well I figured "enough" does not have a definite single answer. So that rolled me to think on what would "enough" be in different context and situations.
Now for the sake of preventing this from becoming a complex quadratic polynomial equation, I assumed a few constants and even fewer variables!
The constants I kept were - things like my kind of personality, my kind of temperament , my kind of aspirations or simply put my lifestyle!
The variables were different "settings" or locations as you may choose to call!
So If I were residing in a country like US, perhaps I will answer as somewhere around 4000 to 5000 US Dollars (post tax) a month as what I would consider acceptable "enough" (without trying to be too frivolous or too much spend thrift). This roughly translates in Indian currency to 2.5 Lakh to 3 Lakh a month. I assume similar looking number is what I will have if I were in any of those developed countries.
Now if I was residing in a country like India and in a city like Delhi, Mumbai or Bangalore, my response would change to 1 Lakh to 1.5 Lakh a month.
Now if I change the location to a city like Mysore or Coimbatore, the same "enough" would perhaps come down to 75 thousand to 1 Lakh a month.
Further if I change the location and setting to a smaller town like "Palaghat (my home town), then even 50 thousand a month will become "more than enough"!
And mind you, I am making no compromise to my so called lifestyle - just reducing the options of expensive and frivolous spending. (I assume flipkart and amazon will still serve to let me shop online for all the fancy unwanted stuff I need)
Now lets look at the "happiness" or "satisfaction" quotients of these options. I believe that satisfaction (and happiness) is directly proportional to you having "more than enough" relative to the context or situation you have chosen to be in.
In other words - a person with a "feeling" that he or she is having "more than others" gives the same satisfaction in all settings - only the numeric value of "how much that is " differs !
So where is that leading me to?
I think its leading me to the age old fact that the choice you make is what will define how much is "enough". And extending that to the happiness quotient - wherever you are and whatever you have - as long as it is just a bit "more" than whats considered "enough" in that setting, it will eventually give you all that you need - happiness, sense of accomplishment and perhaps ever sense of worth!
What do you think?
