Understanding the concept of Package of Life

This time the topic on which I have framed my article is quite unique and is seldom discussed. It is on “Living life as a package” and this article is to share some information explained in my own way. Though you make up some kind of an agreement with your employer for whom you work but you have no agreement of any kind made with God on “How we should be spending our life on earth?”  and hence, this life can be kept quite busy with freedom and full of pleasure. But, hey, several people are still not happy and all through their lives they are not able to figure out why they are unhappy. Several among such people are men and women who have excelled in studies, have accumulated fame and have also been earning well in the cities where they always dreamt to live. Stress related disorders are so common nowadays that no one gives a heed to them. To know more on Stress & Coping you may please refer to my previous article that can be accessed through the blog link: http://devesh0102.blogspot.com/2013/03/stress-and-coping.html. So this is where I spent a lot of time introspecting and reading to create an article on the Package of life.

           A question which you might hear people asking each other is “ Hey, What’s your package?” Literally, what they mean to ask about is how much does your employer pay you that you still enjoy working for them. This kind of monetary package is just a number that is the sum total of Basic salary, House Rent allowance, other allowances and perks etc. This number may be big or small you may still hear people complaining about what they are not getting. This is a strange situation. People want something and when they get it even more than full they complain about it. In reality they may not have introspected well to find out what exactly do they want in  their lives. A good life package should convert to genuine happiness and peace but it does not do with money as the factor of consideration. Let’s try to find what is the kind of package one should be looking for because it certainly isn’t just money package that would serve to gain happiness in life. ‘Package of Life’ here is the basket of heterogeneous needs a human being has and how they should be earned. Two points are very clear about this basket that firstly, this basket will be different for every human being because of heterogeneity of self defined needs and secondly, this basket has to be earned with acts similar to how package of money is earned by working in an office for defined hours every day. The irony is that people do take into account for the number of hours they work every day but give no importance to the time that is required to be spent on the activities which form their basket of needs of life or package of life such that they can maximize happiness.

With some diligent study that I performed in this area I noticed several interesting findings. Happiness and Peace are the ultimate currencies of Package of life and that is how one should evaluate his/her life’s richness. It is meaningless if an individual compares his/her possession of this kind of currency with another individual to find out who is richer similar to how people do with money based richness. This currency needs to be earned with lot of commitment , discipline and hard work. Before I proceed it is critical to first list down a generic basket of needs/preferences which humans have so that the Package of Life can be evaluate by an individual for himself/herself. It would not be wise to have a very small list of preferences in life and which are constant too. As life progresses this list of preferences/needs should change as well as increase in various meaningful domains.

Such preferences/needs of humans that forms the ‘Package of life’ are given below:

1)      Money: Money has not been created by God but by humans and it is for a specific purpose. It is also an important component of Package of life but it is certainly not the only one.

You should refer to my article to know about money through link http://devesh0102.blogspot.com/2015/02/how-does-money-impact-human-lives.html

Cash money is just a paper to which an ascertained value has been attached and hence, it acts a store of value. It holds a certain value so that a person is able to exchange it for goods or services he/she wishes to possess/experience. This is what we call buying of goods or services. If a human possesses preferred goods or services through spending money then they derive satisfaction out of it but this satisfaction is not ever expanding. This is due to decreasing marginal utility associated with consumption of one more unit of goods or services which together contribute to the basket of preferences/needs or Package of life. To understand more about marginal utility in Economics  you may please read about it by accessing this link from the famous information source Investopedia: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marginalutility.asp

What this ultimately means is that if you don’t have heterogeneity in your basket of preferences/needs and have more money then certainly you won’t feel happy with possession of more volumes of goods or services as they follow reducing marginal utility. Hence, you need to diversify your interests and preferences so that you can maximize your satisfaction level in life. Secondly, if your only focus is on earning money then you may still feel unhappy and dissatisfied in the following instances as shared below:

a)       You don’t get time to spend that money as your working hours may be too long or it takes a lot of time for to-fro journey between your home and work place. After reaching home you may have to perform some household duties as well.

b)      You may have chosen to work far way in other cities inside or outside your home country and hence, your family members & friends are not with you. You don’t have your loved ones and friends around you with whom you can spend that money and enjoy. This is because spending money just on yourself can be make you happy only to certain extent and after sometime it might appear unwanted.

c)       You live in a place where nothing that you wish to possess or experience is available for buying. So your money will just be left in banks in savings account and you won’t feel happy.

d)      Timeliness to get your weekly or monthly income is yet another aspect. Some people tend to less appreciate that their employer pays them before the beginning of the month and on a certain date. This allows a person to plan well for the commitments which need to be met by monthly or timely payments of money. Untimely receipt of money from the workplace whether business or service would put the person into unnecessary stress.

e)      Certainty about the amount of money is another aspect. In some kinds of businesses and jobs there is no surety over the amount of money to be received per month due to major component of variable income and in such cases a person may not be able to plan for expenses as there is no defined income. This always involves some element of probability in the money to be earned and puts some stress in life. Hence, once one must define his/her risk taking appetite and should decide the earning sources suiting that appetite.

2)      Health: It is always said that ‘Health is the true wealth’. There is no doubt about it that health is the true wealth and if it is challenged then a person may have huge amount of money and material possessions but the person is left with no other option but to wait to spend the additional sum of money for the next treatment. The situation may be worse in case of chronic health ailments. Money may exist as the source of happiness only after the assurance that the health of the person is manageable otherwise it is of no use other than spending it for consecutive treatments. So, health is the most crucial component of the package of life and we must strive hard to ensure we are in good health to enjoy our Package of life.

3)      Networking with people: Networking with friends and acquaintances around the world makes to feel truly alive. By networking you get to know others more, get to share your joy and help each other when required. It also allows you to gather more information which you otherwise won’t get easily and such information may allow you to be more informed for better decision making and that keeps your life’s stress level really low. Life becomes really interesting when you have your live network of friends and acquaintances. Some years back keeping relationships live was not that complex a task as it is today. With all kinds of new handholding technological devices with humans today the relationships remain live with past friends and acquaintances primarily on social networking sites but not in real life. Today’s networking is more in number than in quality. There can be varied opinions of some people but this aspect cannot be ignored. Though technology has offered alternatives to stay in touch with hundreds of people around the world with whom you may have met may be just once in life but justice to old friends and acquaintances does not get done as they are merely treated as one among hundreds of your friends. It is said that ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed’ and hence, when you will be in need you are likely to have may be less than 5% of your acquaintances to actually help you come out of the trouble. Hence, you have the responsibility to treat such special individuals with distinguished respect. Social networking has just left you with options to not meet old friends and acquaintances and sometimes not even have telephonic conversation. Any Human to human relationship follows a very simple logic that there is no alternative to meeting someone live if you actually feel special about that person. The best way to nurture a relationship is meeting someone live in which you can give heed to someone’s body language, voice, tonality and words. This establishes mutual trust. The environment in which you meet someone also plays a crucial role in having that meeting become fully effective. When you take out time to meet someone it acts as a gesture that you treat your friend as special unlike other friends from some social networking site. A little less effective method is talking to someone on phone where you get to feel the spirit of the person from voice and tonality although you don’t see the person. Skype or video calls may also be a decent option. Third, and the least effective way is staying on word chats of social networking sites where you tend to give the same treatment to all your acquaintances. It puts an individual with a lot of responsibility to first define priority of a relationship with another individual and nurture it with focussed efforts by giving distinguished treatment where necessary. Networking is also a component in your package of life as it keeps life ever vibrant.

4)      Nurturing creativity: Besides what an individual does to earn for a living there are diverse interests which he/she had in childhood and what happens to those interests in general is that the person stops to nurture them due to super tiring work schedules. A human does not get born merely to work in a particular role of an industrial sector and earn for others. Being born as a human is itself an extremely big gift and mostly people just take it for granted and stop nurturing their creative activities and ideas which make them feel as a happy human. They land in the trap of earning and showing how much more money do they have compared to their neighbour and do what it takes to achieve it even at the cost of their creative interests, health and preferences of life which form the Package of Life. The fact is that no matter what you earn you will always have someone who is earning more money than you. Hence, there is no need to rush beyond your capacity at the cost of your health and interests. Many among the richest in the world start giving back to society after feeling tired of running this race of monetary richness for which the ultimate trophy one will get is the definite end of life some day. So it is essential to make the best use of your time on earth as a creative living being. You may be creative in writing, painting, singing, dancing and many more interesting activities and so you should nurture them all through your life. These focussed creative activities make you taste the real joy of human life.  More physically and mentally demanding activities such sports, Martial arts, Yoga, Tai chi and many more may also be considered to development unique capabilities as a human being. In fact, this article that I am writing on my blog is one kind of a creative activity that I like to do in free time.

5)      Time for family: No one would deny the high importance of family in one’s life. This direct family includes Parents, Siblings, Spouse and children. They literally make up your world in which you like to enjoy with them and wish to make their life fulfilled. But, ask yourselves a question ‘How much time are you giving them per day?’. This is a crucial element that adds a lot of value to the Package of life because not all get decent time to spend with family while intending to grow fast in career to earn more money and fame. It is hence critical to not forget to take out time for family while being busy in career.

6)      Travelling : It is a well known fact the some of the most renown Philosophers and teachers around the world were active travellers. Planet earth is so big that it has visible diversity in Fauna, Flora, Landscape, and also the way humans live and communicate with each other. Sitting in your cozy rooms will keep you away from experiencing this diversity yourself.  Not only are these diversities beautiful but they also empower humans to realize their full potential with development of new perspectives about how life can be made truly meaningful. Believe me if you are among those who like to travel a lot then you are already wise enough to appreciate the gift of life on earth. Addition of journeys and expeditions in your package of life would allow you to utilize all capacities of your powerful human mind and derive pleasure in small yet distinctly beautiful things around you.

7)      Giving to the society : Giving to the society does not necessarily mean that you take up full time role as a social activist leaving all that you do today but it actually points over your intention to do something for the society in which you live and which has also played its role in shaping you whatever you are today. We must not forget that the hunger for earning money never satiates and as you earn more money the responsibility to spend it wisely also lies on you. The key is to first define what are your current needs and if they get fulfilled then you should do something for the society as well. Undoubtedly, your needs will change a bit with time but the same serving attitude focused here should be maintained. Given all your needs are met then whatever excess you get may be given to the struggling class of the society in which you live. This might include providing food and basic resources to the poor. It is not just about providing monetary support acts of kindness towards the society’s struggling class also count. This may include teaching kids from poor families, entertaining old age people in old age homes and also, strengthening confidence of those who are staying weak due to some kind of serious setback they had in the past. The irony is that all agree that if we do good then we feel our life as worth living but still humans have become so self obsessed that they overlook the weak class of the society  and are busy in failing to entertain themselves. Instead, if they also try to entertain those who are struggling in the society and do good to them then surely they will succeed in entertaining themselves as well. Hence, keeping focus on giving to the society also helps in maximizing our package of life.

Key message:  In this article I have tried to holistically cover those major elements of life to which happiness is closely linked in some way or the other. Surely, there may be many more elements which one might bring out and add but these shared above have a significant weightage to our overall well being and hence, they add a lot of value to the ‘Package of Life’. Try to bring out what forms your package of life and focus on each of those aspects to ensure that you feel about your life as never boring and worth living. Only humans have the privilege to form a self defined package of life and live life as a package of all sources of happiness and hence, no opportunity should be missed in trying to do so. Please never forget that there is no way to find out what is the exact purpose of Life that God has given you. You might read several posts which guide you on how to find your life’s purpose but that’s futile to try to find it through such complex ways. Life is too short to spend a lot of time to search why you were born but what is truly essential is to empower yourselves as time progresses and decide what you can actually do with your capabilities of human body and mind. Living life in search of peace in itself is a great purpose and to highlight about that is my motive of creating this article.

I will welcome comments and related discussions on this topic.

Author of article:

Devesh Sharma

devesh0102@gmail.com