Enough Is Not Enough
“By God’s grace you have everything, just enjoy it” said a character in a show called Made In Heaven to her daughter-in-law. I couldn’t disagree more.
I hung up on the phone call with one of my many girlfriends and got back thinking that she kept saying during our conversation, what use is it working hard, what good is this hustle, why give so much into things only to end up disappointed and at the same level as everyone else. I politely agreed throughout the conversation, but I kept thinking about the same for some days that followed, and I realised the extent to which I did not agree to the notion of settling down for whatever we get.
OnePlus, a Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer has a signature tagline that says, Never Settle, which is one of the most pithy yet profound aphorisms for me. We live in a world that has some people who are running wildly ambitious after their dreams and some people who are satisfied with whatever life offers to them. The latter cohort never goes beyond the resources and achievements it has possessed until a certain point in life and the former cohort never stops, never. Let’s call the former cohort, group A and the latter group B. The group A is looked upon as crazy, sometimes selfish ambitious group of people by the group B. The group B loves to keep iterating that this life is a gift of God, whatever we have been given until now is enough for us to live, and that there is a life beyond the hustle and bustle arena where we can find peace and ultimately stay. All these things sound good to the ears and are a treat to our imaginations, but it is just that I want to ask this group where this world would be if every human being ever born on this planet got used to this idea of “settling down for smaller things and not going further to explore the life that lies beyond our imaginations”.
Imagine the lives we would have been living had every person ever born believed in this idea of not being wildly ambitious, innovative and being in “peace” with whatever they had at a certain point in life. Some of the scientists, researchers, engineers, doctors and in fact people from any field of work have worked day and night, to give us a life that is full of comforts and happenings. If each of these people would have been beguiled by the notion that what good is working hard, there is no point in going beyond the ordinary and that it is okay to settle for the less for so-called peace, we wouldn’t have had the breakthrough discoveries, innovations and the kind of evolved lives we live now.
Somewhere down the line, while humanity was going through rapid changes to reach the current world, where everyone could be running wildly after their dreams, there was another group of people that said it was more important to run after peace than this rat race. I do not completely disagree with the latter notion because someone wise said, “The problem with rat race is that at the end of it, you are still a rat.” It is hence important to strike a balance between finding peace and chasing innovations. However, it cannot be denied that the best way to give your life profound purpose is by being wildly involved in life, by chasing things beyond your comforts and limitations. Working hard towards a definite goal all the time can never be worse that getting up every day, working within limited boundaries, gossiping about people, regretting your lifestyle choices at the end of the each day. If the amounts of regrets of one who has simply “Netflixed and Chilled” his life away and someone who has run wildly after his dreams are compared, the former’s regret would outweigh the latter’s by huge huge amount.
To have certain things and simply deciding to lead our entire lives enjoying them, couldn’t be the best way to live, especially for us humans, who have been given the best of talents and resources amongst all living creatures. From now on, every time you are tricked into finding peace over finding hustle, try to chose the latter because eventually hustle would give you the peace we are all seeking.
You may reach out to me at sdshivanidubey@gmail.com.
