Wealth and extravagance and then some...
This was my response to a chain of emails about how people especially celebrities tend to have "filthy displays of extravagance" !!
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Couldn't help but make a foray into the cyber-discussion.
I think Uncle Mathur has touched on such an interesting point. The mention of "medium" is the key. Don't we spend our entire lives seeking a medium, a balance? And who is to decide what that balance is?
I ponder about the ties that wealth, financial that is, shares with balance. It seems as if the less money one has (especially to waste) the more "balanced" they are. And vice-versa the wealthier do seem so much less "balanced". (Except Bill Gates, but that is a TOTALLY different discussion).
And it’s all relative too.
I think I am balanced because I don't strut around planning 7 day weddings or those that will cost 65 million dollars, but alas for Rayshawn Bright, a 7 year-old who can't find his parents and siblings after Katrina, and Halima Ali Anjum, who shared the same fate, only post-tsunami, I am "wasteful" for driving a SUV, buying some of the latest running apparel and putting aside finances for a forthcoming project. My filthy display of wealth allows me to eat out ever so often, spend endlessly on computer games and have over 1000 CDs and DVDs of "intellectual" things such as Shah Rukh vs Hrithik: Dance-a-thon!! But really, am I wasteful? No. My dog doesn't have an 8000 dollar collar ala Britney Spears and my last vacation didn't cost 175, 000 dollars ala Paris Hilton. Unfortunately to Rayshawn and Halima I might be perceived no better than those two. (Perhaps I am better looking and have a better body then them, wink)
Just when it seems there is no end to the stupidity, or extravagance, or as Uncle coined it "filthy display of wealth". Well actually there is. Death.
Spender, waster, enjoyer, hedonist, grinch, complainer, intellectual, socialite, miser, Chatwal, Mittal, Hilton, Rayshawn, Britney's dog, all will one day be on the same playing field: the pages of history and memory.
The wonderful song from Kabhi Kabhie (correct spelling, since the Chopra's want it like this) says it beautifully and I loosely translate: "tomorrow there will be better listeners than you and better orators than me...I am a poet of a moment or two, my story is only a moment or two, a moment or two is my status, my youth is also a moment or two".
And so beautiful is life because in that "moment or two" we must all find a balance between inner peace, happiness, hedonism, intellect and salvation and in my humble perhaps naive opinion that alone is the real wealth one should seek, and can afford to "display" with sheer extravagance.
Regards,
SRM
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Couldn't help but make a foray into the cyber-discussion.
I think Uncle Mathur has touched on such an interesting point. The mention of "medium" is the key. Don't we spend our entire lives seeking a medium, a balance? And who is to decide what that balance is?
I ponder about the ties that wealth, financial that is, shares with balance. It seems as if the less money one has (especially to waste) the more "balanced" they are. And vice-versa the wealthier do seem so much less "balanced". (Except Bill Gates, but that is a TOTALLY different discussion).
And it’s all relative too.
I think I am balanced because I don't strut around planning 7 day weddings or those that will cost 65 million dollars, but alas for Rayshawn Bright, a 7 year-old who can't find his parents and siblings after Katrina, and Halima Ali Anjum, who shared the same fate, only post-tsunami, I am "wasteful" for driving a SUV, buying some of the latest running apparel and putting aside finances for a forthcoming project. My filthy display of wealth allows me to eat out ever so often, spend endlessly on computer games and have over 1000 CDs and DVDs of "intellectual" things such as Shah Rukh vs Hrithik: Dance-a-thon!! But really, am I wasteful? No. My dog doesn't have an 8000 dollar collar ala Britney Spears and my last vacation didn't cost 175, 000 dollars ala Paris Hilton. Unfortunately to Rayshawn and Halima I might be perceived no better than those two. (Perhaps I am better looking and have a better body then them, wink)
Just when it seems there is no end to the stupidity, or extravagance, or as Uncle coined it "filthy display of wealth". Well actually there is. Death.
Spender, waster, enjoyer, hedonist, grinch, complainer, intellectual, socialite, miser, Chatwal, Mittal, Hilton, Rayshawn, Britney's dog, all will one day be on the same playing field: the pages of history and memory.
The wonderful song from Kabhi Kabhie (correct spelling, since the Chopra's want it like this) says it beautifully and I loosely translate: "tomorrow there will be better listeners than you and better orators than me...I am a poet of a moment or two, my story is only a moment or two, a moment or two is my status, my youth is also a moment or two".
And so beautiful is life because in that "moment or two" we must all find a balance between inner peace, happiness, hedonism, intellect and salvation and in my humble perhaps naive opinion that alone is the real wealth one should seek, and can afford to "display" with sheer extravagance.
Regards,
SRM
posted by SIAII at 11:57 AM
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