Prices we pay

Things seem more expensive now a days, especially since I started earning. But jokes apart, we seem to be paying more for all our purchases. And most of the time we may end up living beyond our means. Things cost more however they are not held any more precious.

It seems that today we know the price of all things but the value of nothing. Including our own lives. People commit suicide at the drop of a hat or due to seer boredom. The recent suicide committed by a top model has everyone confused.

On a more personal note, when my mother had been admitted to a hospital recently, the patient in the next bed was an old lady who had tried to end her life by talking sleeping pills. All to the dismay of her own family and of all those who had known her. A terrible thing to have happened to an old lady.

It is not only students, estranged lovers or psychopaths who are taking this extreme step but also the apparently happy people. People who seem to be like you and me. What is the root cause?

And the obvious answer would be the changing lives in the metropolis. It is no longer the age of farmer suicide, of a man driven to desperation. Those cases are few and far in between. The modern age has other problems. The problem it seems, may not only arise from too little but also from too much. Or it may be due to the decline importance of people in general. It may seem life is too high a price to pay for prosperity or our moder life. Like a worm eating at root of a giant tree, our inner world is slowly dying.

People today are resources a means to an end for making more profit. We are thought to professional, to be distant from people. Basically to not care either about ourselves or of others. People work like dogs ignoring families and their personal well being. As a consequence men today are far more lonely then they ever even thought they may be more prosperous. The plastic smiles of false people are recognizable by one and all. They mock us till we realize we may be looking at a mirror.

The solution to this may come only when we start valuing people. Whether it is our family, our friends, our neighbors or the person who delivers milk at our doorstep. It is time we started valuing people for their labor and not merely seeing them as a factor of production. It is time we remembered something we all learnt a long time back,
"A smile costs nothing but is worth a lot". A genuine smile is something we all crave for today. Smile is one of the truly precious gifts we can give others and to ourselves. A simple gesture may change many things or else we will pay a to high a price for our indifference. For the world will be indifferent to us tomorrow.