Don’t you think that love and blessings are the two things in this universe that always fall short, no matter how much you have them already. You always seem to crave for them no matter who you are, where you’re from or what you do since love is what powers our world making each moment of our life worth living. A loving heart is what makes our world beautiful and joyful. Irrespective of everything else, you always want an overwhelming amount of love and blessings throughout your life as these define you and make you what you are. Without love and blessings, your life would be dry, senseless and an unpleasant experience, devoid of all happiness, joy and excitement. Any amount of love and blessings is never enough, you always seek more of it, never feeling thoroughly satisfied with what you possess. You might argue that one can grow out of love with someone. It is true that one can fall out of love with someone but the reality is that you would still seek love at another door, won’t you? At no point in time would you remain or wish to remain loveless, be it the love of your parents, your spouse, your friends, comrades, even nature or pets as well as inanimate things such as books. Haven’t you heard of people who are diehard book lovers? The more love you have, the more you want and that’s a reality. For it is love that propels this universe, including you and me. If life is meaningful and ecstatic, it is definitely because of the limitless and bountiful love that we hold within ourselves. Love is a constant craving and any amount of it proves awfully less. Ask yourself, is having plenty of love and blessings better than having good enough?

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Is this the case with all other worldly things and material possessions too? The feeling called ‘greed’ is the most basic of human emotions. You don’t have to teach a child to be greedy, it always is. A child is born greedy and it only increases with age. Therefore, acquiring and hoarding worldly wealth, material items comes naturally to us all. It is true that people try to acquire and hoard as much as they can in the expectation of using it later or saving for one’s children and family. It is actually not so much of a wealth that one tries to acquire but it is the necessities of life, the comforts and the luxuries that money can buy since wealth represents a storehouse of great power, power to buy everything that can be bought with money. It is not a sin to chase and acquire wealth over your lifetime as long as it is done to procure necessities of a decently comfortable life but beyond a certain point when it goes out of harmony with peaceful living, starts disrupting normal life and affecting your own wellbeing as well of those around you, then surely it is. The same thing that inspired and motivated people to higher levels of achievement may become the reason for their own downfall. Acquisition of more and more wealth may make you high headed, arrogant and haughty that may drive a wedge in your personal relationships. Differences in social status between you are your near-and-dear ones are bound to arise that may become the cause of strained and sour ties. You also run the risk of seeking expensive pleasures and indulging in extravagant ways which could be immoral, profane and wicked. I am not at all hinting that you would surely fall into this quagmire, I am merely suggesting that you should contemplate a situation if at all you happen to fall this way then where do you stop? If accumulated wealth fails to uplift people and alleviate their plight what good does it do except to fuel dangerous obsessions? Ask yourself, is having too much wealth better than having good enough?  

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Gone are the days when you would get just a few choices of items or products in the market. What we find today is a surfeit of variants from a huge number of manufacturers. Vow, that gives us a whole lot of choices to satisfy ourselves. I look at this situation slightly differently. You too will soon realise that having too many choices is good as well as bad at the same time. Do you recall the kind of options the pizzas and most recently the coffee, come with? Do you feel a little uncomfortable is making the right choice when the person at the counter asks tens of questions before punching the order? When it comes to having too many choices of items and products, the situation gets a lot more cumbersome. Think of a situation where you are required to choose two out of two thousand? It is all a matter of psychology that overtakes and decides our behaviour, what will please us and how much satisfied we feel with the choice we exercise. Let us assume you plan to buy a face cream or a shampoo. Having very few choices of an item, say just two, will surely put us off. The situation does not enthuse us. We might not feel compelled to buy at such a shop. We try looking out for an outlet where there are more choices. Let us suppose we step inside a departmental store and find a larger number of choices for the item, say there are seven choices. Our mind tells us that it is a pleasing situation and that you would try to check all of them out. You actually read the product labels of all seven of them word by word. After a few minutes, you might be inclined to buy the one that meets your expectation and closely resembles what you had in mind. The situation we confront today, is that there is an overwhelming number of options of almost each and every thing that we intend buying. A simple looking shampoo or a face cream could come in hundreds of variants and from too many manufacturers. You might feel happy that you will get to choose from many more items that could be better than your regular brand. But you soon realise that your happiness is short lived. You discover that you cannot read through all the product labels and cannot make out much of a difference among most of them. After a while, you give up reading any more since you just can’t be reading the labels throughout the day. A simple task of buying a shampoo or a face cream has turned into a complicated task! Instead of making an informed choice, your decision making has just got paralysed. Ask yourself, is having too many choices better than having good enough?

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Let us now devote some thoughts about leading a virtuous life and maintaining good health. Are these two things really important and appear higher up in your list of priorities? How committed are you to live by the virtues such as compassion, love, universal brotherhood, simple living, high thinking etc. and maintaining good physical health? Sticking to a regular workout regime ensures disease-free healthy body. It requires monumental resolve to refuse or cutting down on mouth-watering and delicious food that is high in sugar, salt, spices, saturated oils and trans-fat that is sure to spoil your health. Should you adhere to a regular workout regime and virtuous living as much as you can? How many of us show the kind of commitment that will save the day of us? So, ask yourself, is showing greater commitment towards your own health better than keeping little or no commitment at all?

[ Also Read: Life is ours we live it our way ]

We as human beings possess a highly evolved and dynamic mind that churns extraordinary ideas and thoughts and are also endowed with abundant feelings and emotions. We are sensitive, sympathetic and compassionate towards the plight of our fellow beings. At times we are happy and at others sad. At times we are enthusiastic and eager and at others dispirited. We revel in the glory of our achievements and also break down when we face failure. Whatever be the situation, there is a dire need to keep immense faith in our own abilities and God. We also need to understand that just as good times do not last forever, in similar manner bad times are transient and ephemeral too. If we keep our faith in the Almighty intact never letting the flame in our hearts flicker or burn out, we would surely live to see the dawn that we had been waiting for. Ask yourself, is keeping immense faith on our own selves and the God better than having little or none at all?