KNOWING THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING AND VALUE OF NOTHING
Pic.: Sherry Haridas
“A
cynic is a man who knows the price of everything,
and the value of nothing.”
I first learnt
it in our Economics text-books: that, the ‘Price’ of a commodity is different
from its ‘Value’. But, as I have gone about my life, it has become more and more
evident to me, that, the price and the value of each and everything in my life
are different!
A glass of water when I am dying of thirst...
A piece of cloth when my honor is at stake...
A bottle of blood when I am struggling for life in a
hospital...
A little oxygen... A kidney... Some sperm...
To know the value of water, someone has to put me in a
desert...
Similarly, to know the value of my breath, I need to be put
on the ventilator in an ICU...
My money will be, always, ‘MY MONEY’... till someone or
something takes it all away from me... Or, it looks utterly pale before the
imminent death or destruction!
While a reasonable amount of concern about my future and my
financial security is justified, too much of it can be a neurotic behavior. When
I constantly keep securing and protecting myself, it, actually, keeps me more
and more insecure, imprisoned... Isolated. I live in a constant state of distrust...
fear... lack...
Yes, I become suspicious, skeptical and petty-minded...
Cynical.
Everything in life should be beyond its ‘price-tag’... It
should be ‘priceless’. When I value the value of a value, in my life... probably,
that is my greatest source of security:
GERALD D’CUNHA
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-- Bharat Reddy