I came home from listening to the young girl who had left her job as a merchandising manager – her life among the Guccis and Pradas and all things higher up in the ‘most desirable list.’

She renounced the world. Just like that and became an ascetic … hardly interested in any worldly possessions. In her discourse she mentioned how she was getting sucked into the material abyss and how she had daily tussles in her mind between what constitutes the need and where to draw the line to keep the want on the other side.  The one thing that she said among many struck a chord with me. “We have to stop needing people or objects to make us feel happy.”

We are want-bound.  More is better. Expensive is better. Showing off is better. Indulgence seems to be the key to happiness. Complete immersion into the materialistic world is the norm.

We are not unaware of our desires of fancy things and we don’t have the will power to leave that wonderland completely. While not all of us have the strength or the higher calling to renounce worldly pleasures, it is within all of us to set our boundaries and work a system where objects give us happiness to only a certain extent. More pleasure should be derived by our inner self, by setting some boundaries to our desires and by being at peace with ourselves.

It definitely is not easy but worth a try!

The lines above was written many years ago. Then 2020 happened!

A deadly pandemic hit the world completely crippling the global economy, baffling the medical and scientific world, closing schools and businesses, and leaving married couples flabbergasted in each other’s ugh-ust company.

We scrambled for things like toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and our pets’ attention. The fanciest we needed to be was from torso up for virtual meetings. The desperation to connect with people became pressing rather than how they perceived our looks. 

Bustling metropolises like  London, New York City, Mumbai, and Paris lost their hijinks and became skeletal remains of their pre-COVID selves.

Today is the first week of January 2021 and we are still in the throes of the pandemic. We are a bit more hopeful than in the past few months because a vaccine has been created.

And … we are a bit more cognizant of the frivolity of owning too many possessions. To have a living, breathing body has became the goal and Tiffanys and Chanels lost their charm and I am thinking of the girl who liberated herself from unnecessary desires long ago … long before we realized what matters!