Our entire life is planned and executed on expectations. We expect our partner to be loving and wise and that he/she should read our minds and fulfill our wants without our expressing it; our bosses to understand our work and give us raise without our asking, our children to be the ideal ones without any effort by us; our homes to be neat and clean without doing the actual cleaning, for us to be powerful and famous without any hassles, to have endless wealth without effort and be well-known without the drawbacks of popularity. Our expectations are not always fulfilled and we are in misery and pain.
We live in the era of credit finance. We earn a fixed amount but spend more than we earn due to plastic money. We are forever in debt. Our homes and lives are filled with useless things which do not give us the joy that we expected from them when we bought them. And now we have to pay for them and we do not have the money for it. Every month we are in deeper and deeper debt as we cannot control our spending and we do not have money to pay for our splurges. The trading on the Wall Street, the government expenditure with borrowing from overseas, empty expenditure without earning - all result in spiralling prices, more misery and debt and growing crimes at the national and world level.
We must simplify our lives. Definitely, we should live in comfort but not at the cost of increasing debts. We must learn to prioritize our desires and let go of those which we can live comfortably without. The advertisement world is geared up to increase our wants. Let us learn to choose wisely without falling into their trap. We must live and spend within our means and also save for a rainy day.
We must not live in the clouds without working for it in the present now. Also our calculations and expectations must be realistic and not rosy. If we live in an inner dream land without the right work and understanding, we face a mighty crash. We see this phenomenon in all the countries of the world. Let us see a small story of expectations and its lesson:
Sonu and Keshav were bear hunters. Once, it was a bad season for them and they were not able to get any bear skin for sale. They walked to a village at the edge of forest and searched in the forest for bears. Four days passed and the fifth too. They saw nothing and got nothing. All their money was spent and they had pledged a part of the sale of the bear skin (which they were going to get by hunting) against the cost of their lodging and boarding. On the sixth day they spotted a huge bear. Sonu was very nervous. He had no courage to face such a huge bear. Keshav was also scared but put up a good show. He said he would take on the bear by himself.
So Sonu ran off and climbed the nearest tree very quickly and Keshav stood ready with his gun to shoot the bear. As the huge bear came lumbering nearer, Keshav grew more scared and he began to tremble. He mustered up enough courage to raise his gun to shoot but his hands were trembling so much that the gun went off and he missed the bear.
Keshav remembered the old hunter’s trick – bears do not touch a dead body. He threw himself flat on the ground and waited for the bear to come near him. He held his breath and went stiff. The bear came up to him and sniffed all around him and lumbered off. Sonu watched the entire incident perched on the top of the nearby tree. He came down running and helped up his friend. He congratulated him on his narrow escape. He was very curious to know something. He had seen the bear sniff around Keshav’s face and the bear seemed to whisper something in Keshav’s ear. He asked his friend: What did the bear whisper in your ear? His friend replied: Don't sell the bearskin before you have caught the bear.
This is a very important lesson for us – We should not sell the bearskin before we have caught the bear! We should learn to live within our means. We should have realistic expectations in life in everything – relationships, work, earnings and dreams.
