Finding Satisfaction Beyond Materialism

Many of us know the popular story about a management consultant who, after seeing a sheep herder on a mountain, pitches his strategy for building a big business out of this small thing — sheep herding. He advised to sell these sheep at a better price, buy a few more, increase the profits, etc.

The sheepherder then asks, what’s the benefit of doing all that thing? The consultant responds by saying, you will get rich, which will make him happy. The sheepherder then replies he is very much happy now as well.

If we look at human history, for many centuries, human beings lived the same way as other animals.

Just basic needs — food, shelter, and reproduction. But when we came to know about the agriculture process we stabilized, forming communities, and here we are.

Then it started all things like hoarding, wealth, money, status, laws [few considered even above the law], hierarchy, and many materialistic things that are unnecessary.

As mentioned in the Sheep Herder and the Consultant story, the consultant insists that the sheep herder get into something, whose objective is to attain what already is with the sheep herder which is happiness.

If we look at what we need as a human being, it’s just the basic needs, but then we get into the things that we take pride in, making ourselves more important, and powerful.

When we stabilized as a community, the culture came, and clothes, jewelry, big homes, vehicles, weapons, and power started coming in.

Earlier, we used to barter things and then Man devised a thing called “Money”. Money — a piece of paper that holds an important position in the society. The more you have, the more status and power are with you.

The barter thing stopped and everything started trading against the money. With lots of it, one can employ people to his service, he can be powerful because he is able to give you what will make people buy for their living, which was otherwise available with the barter.

That created a hierarchy in the kind of jobs one is in. Everything gets counted in money terms. The various ways with the help of shrewdness, logic, technology, and clever ways of doing the work, slowly put the physical skills backstage.

People wanted more to gain from less and started automation.

Technology came for convenience — transport, logistics, communication, everything to make life easy and relaxing.

Then we started chasing more convenience and to get that we needed more money. Earning money is the only motivation now. Even if we have much more to live a fulfilling life, we still want it more.

This ‘more’ is because of the competition with others, who have more money than us. It started a new game of ‘status’.

More money, more conveniences, and more assets mean a big status. We don’t stop here, then we chase the power. More power comes from how we mend, and amend the things, rules, and people around us with the help of all these materialistic things.

All this we want to make ourselves happy and to get the satisfaction.

Now, is there any difference between the satisfaction of that sheep herder, sitting calmly and enjoying his time, and the one who has achieved everything with all the means?

I feel we can’t differentiate between the two, happiness, or satisfaction. That feeling is the same.

Then why do we run behind something, which is not at all necessary? Why do we get deceived, knowing that all this is of no help in the end?

Why should we fall for this trap? I don’t know, but I would like to mention that I too am in this race, unfortunately, and mostly as a compulsion.