Inflation in our Everyday Life
Everyday the newspapers are abuzz with the rising rates of inflation impacting the country’s growth and structure of economy. The analysts worry their heads off dissecting the trend and its projected implications, the socialists scream their throats hoarse over the adverse effects of inflation on common man, and the ever-frightened, cornered-to-the-wall aam janta watch and wince in helpless submission. Inflation in the economy is the dragon that breathes fire to consume the peace and calm of the public mind. But peace and calm do we really have?
Just for a while let us imagine there is no impending gloom of disaster threatening to destroy our economy, there is no discord in the general functioning of our economic system, the uncanny hikes in the prices of the essential commodities are not causing our brows to knit in a fixed expression of displeasure…. Are we still at peace and in harmony?
Let us for a change, now, shift our focus from the inflation in our economy to the inflation of a more serious concern, let us look within and find out how the effects of inflation sip into our very soul, albeit, this inflation, though more lethal, is of a different nature.
In today’s world, we suffer from inflated ego, a common disease that kills us in silence. We never see it coming, don't notice it taking control of our brain and heart, can't realize when it grips us in its deadly embrace. Now families are small, so our ego is nourished and pampered right from the childhood. We make too much of the I and tend to forget about the rest in the world. Even in the family, the concept of sharing and making sacrifices is fast disappearing. The inevitable consequence is a lot of psychological issues that darken our world today.
Let's now talk about the inflated competitiveness of this generation. Right from the very birth a child is pitted against the ambition of parents. It directly enters from the mother's womb to the racing track to leave behind others of its age in looks, growth and performance. And the race continues. Schools, colleges, jobs, careers, hobbies, even marriages witness the same mad rush to have an edge over the others. Once again the resultant effect is terrible in the psychological sector.
The most alarming of inflations is perhaps the inflation of greed in our system today, that has corrupted our all other faculties in ruthless precision. Our insatiable greed for more… be it money, fame or power, has left us perpetually thirsty, a victim of discontentment. We hoard and aspire for more and in the process lose the very essence of life, the simple joys of small things that life offers for free.
Ego, competitiveness, greed are but a few to name, the list of inflations causing major imbalances in our lives is long. These are links of the same chain, clasping each other closely together. One effecting the other and together impacting our lives in a massive scale. They are perhaps far more worrying than any crumbling economic system, because they directly connect to our soul and rob it of its peace and happiness. No graphs show their rise and fall, no equations project their impact, but they need to be watched. We need to be wary.
The solution of this situation is there right within us, as is the problem. We can control, we can overpower, we can crush it altogether. Awareness is the key...we need to know that we are being the victims.