A Letter to future Girlfriend

Dear Future Girlfriend,

I think I have figured out what I want to do with my life. My boss doesn’t pay a lot, but he thinks the paycheck is enough for me to make myself happy.

I was a little up in the air when I first joined the job. But now, I might not be able to afford all of the expensive stuff that I once thought I would be able to buy you when I jumped into my career.

Is that okay?

Will you still be mine if I am poor? I promise I will learn to budget or else let you budget whichever way you please!

Love you,

Me

(source: from internet, edited by me)

Can Money buy Happiness?

We often hear a proverb “Money can’t buy happiness”. What do you think? Is this correct or not totally correct?

 

Ok before jumping into the topic, lets google the phrase “Money can’t buy happiness”, and you would probably come across many things/links/phrases/paragraphs/poems etc. etc.. I have listed here only some of them:

"Money can buy material things, but real happiness must be truly earned”.

'Money buys everything, except morality and citizens”.

“Money can't buy everything, Money can't buy friends' Money can't buy love, etc.” .

blah blah blah

Well after googling, I came to know that this proverb first appeared in ‘William & Mary College Quarterly’- a publication which started in 1892.

Ok, lets dump those google factors.

 

So is it really true that money can’t buy happiness? Well, I often do agree with this, but sometimes I can’t take a full stand.

 

Money is a logical thing. How? Well a same paper piece of same dimensions, quality and print but of different countries have different monetary value. How is that possible? Ok, being a student of maths in the past, I have a habit of assuming things. So lets assume that an alien has fallen from some part of universe into earth. He happened to fall directly into a vault in Switzerland full of $$$. What would he do? If he is not told about its value, then he might probably use those papers as toilet paper.

 

You need another example? Ok, don’t assume too far. If you give an a child some paper money (of different colors/currencies), how would s/he pick the note? Probably if s/he don’t understand or is not aware of the logic about money, s/he would pick the note of a color/size that pleases him/her.

So money is logical. Its not physical term. It’s a promissory note and its value is attached with a logic.

 

And what about happiness? Well, Happiness is an also logical. But I would like to say it more relative than logical.

Happiness is relative. How? Today you are happy for a thing, and tomorrow you might not be happy about the same thing.

This month I bought a camera. I was so very happy for a week, that nothing could make me sad. But now I am not that happy as I were during those days. Now I think I would be happy if I had a “SLR”.

 

The more you get, the more you wish and the more you wish, the lesser you become happy. But I don’t argue to wish less. It’s a nature of human. Human needs more. More beautiful, more money, more power, more knowledge, more fame, more age, more property etc. etc.

So if happiness is relative, its often attached with the physical objects. I know you might argue that there are many types of happiness:

Materialistic Happiness (the happiness attached with a material object. Often said as the happiness of the body or mind.)

Spiritual Happiness (the happiness attached with the god. Often said as the happiness of the soul or the true happiness.)

I don’t know how to get the “true” happiness. So I am talking about the happiness of the body. The happiness you get by the satisfaction of m/any of your senses or/and the mind.

 

Ah!! we were discussing about the relativity of happiness. So happiness is often (but not always ) related with a material. If you have money, you can buy that material. So I assume that money can buy happiness.

Proved? I already said that “sometimes” happiness is related with material thing, and when you get that material thing, you become happy for a while. So happiness can be supported or even be purchased with money.

 

Not satisfied?

Ok, lets take another example. Some of your family member is really ill. You have money and you can afford the costlier checkups and medicines, then you both feel happiness deep inside you heart. Here you don’t have a physical object, but still you feel happy, because you have a sensation that you achieved something. So your money gave you happiness.

In short, I want to say that sometimes we are very sad and we wish to get something/ do something/ achieve something which may or may not be purchased with the money we possess. If it could be bought, then we go forward for buying it. And we are aware that we are buying those thing for our happiness.

Obviously, money is logical and happiness is relative, so the tie between them is not always strong.

If someone want to say that the happiness I have supported, is not true happiness but only the ‘ego’, then I am happy to agree on it. Because I am a common person and common persons’ happiness is often misunderstood as “ego” by the rare spiritual people.

5 min at Aason

Friday 9.00 AM-9:05 AM- 14th Jan,2011

Today is the first day celebration of the “Visit Nepal Year 2011”. Everyone is attracted to the celebration events going on at Dashrath stadium. But I decided to have a look at the preparation of the local people here. So here is what I saw.

Aason is busy as usual. Some people are moving to their office carrying their office bag, I couldn’t see many a students, because there is a public holiday for the celebration. Many people are busy on shopping, especially on vegetables shopping.

Plastic Bag!!!

Almost all people who were purchasing vegetables, were using plastic bag to carry the vegetables back to their home. Those who were buying kitchen items, incense, cosmetics, spices etc were also carrying plastic bag. So it seemed as if plastic bag is compulsory for shopping.

What I Inferred

From the 5 min view of the habit of people, I came to conclude that plastic bag has became an integral part of our shopping habit.

Why is this a harmful habit

Compared to other substances like glass and metal; plastic has a very limited and of course lengthy process for recycling. Plastic bags are not bio-degradable, means they don’t decompose in the soil. However there are a number of other ways that plastic can be processed. But the problem is that plastic bag also contains additional materials apart from plastic polymers; like dye. The manufacturers often use these type of materials so that the production cost of plastic goes down dramatically.

So, processing plastic becomes a very expensive process. Of course there are also cheap methods for plastic processing, but they tend to produce a lot of environmental hazards. In short, using plastic is very easy but disposing it is a great challenge.

What now

Of course I won’t recommend the ban in plastic bag. There are a lot of recent developments in the plastic industry that makes plastic bag environment friendly, but they are much expensive.

So the best solution would be to limit the use of plastic. It would be extremely good if we could remove the habit of “plastic shopping”. However for now, here are some simple tips we could follow:

1> There might be some old shopping bag in our home just lying there to be thrown; made up of jute or fabric or other materials other than plastic polymer. If we got one, then why not carry them for carrying vegetables?

2> We should avoid using plastic when there is a cheap alternative. Suppose there are paper and plastic packaging of a same product, you could opt paper package rather than plastic, given the cost has a minimal variation.

3> Even if we don’t have alternative bag at home, there could be some plastic bag lying somewhere. We could carry that for our shopping, until the bag is torn. That way we could re-use the same plastic bag again and again.

4> Ok, lets say we don’t have any bag with us but has to purchase many things right now. So what we could do is, use a single bag for carrying many items, as far as the bag can handle.

5> And remember, the torn bags can be recycled in other forms as well, like making dolls out of it, and so on…

6> And not to forget the ultimate solution, to discard the plastic bag forever.

Why is this important

The culture and civilization of a place is reflected through the habit and thinking of the people living there. The utmost problem that almost all the cities of Nepal is facing are – road management and garbage management. I would write about the road (traffic) management some other day. But for the time being, lets consider the wastage.

The everyday garbage of Kathmandu consists of about 60% kitchen wastages (degradable), 20% plastic items and remaining are rest of the materials. So what we can do is, use the degradable (kitchen waste) for compost manure inside our home and minimize the plastic waste. If we could only manage to do these 2 things, we would not be hearing budget allocation on waste management anymore in near future. Can you imagine how would the city look then?

Lets promote the Visit Nepal 2011 Year

We are welcoming 10 lakhs tourist this year. Are they coming here to see the “wastage mountains”? Are we calling this event the “Dumping site tourism?” No…

Lets not forget that 10 lakh people are coming to see us, to see our culture, our thinking, our tradition and of course our environment and nature. So we should not let go this golden opportunity from our hand. Lets make our home clean, our society cleaner and our environment safe.

So, the next time you are going to shop, keep your environment in mind………………..

 

-Ramesh Parajuli