The king, the professional and the rabbit!

He had virtually everything. For starters he was a King. Of a reasonably large kingdom. He had a beautiful Palace which had more than a hundred rooms.

He had a beautiful queen and charming children. He ate in plates of gold and slept in beds made of the softest feathers. People were happy under his rule. His country was prosperous.

And then came a Minister who told him about the need to expand his Kingdom. Well, otherwise, his Kingdom might be swallowed by the other kings.

The King was hardly 30 at that time. He went out on an invasion spree. The first Kingdom to fall was that of a friendly neighbour in the North.

The King went ahead and started annexing kingdoms in all the directions.

As a result the King could not return to his palace. He could not enjoy the love of his queen. Nor could he see his children growing up.

Historians say that the King was on war till he was 58. He used to live mostly in the frontiers of his country.

He would always sleep in the make-shift camps and at times even on horse backs. And the pity was that he died in one of those camps. He never returned to his Palace.

A historian wrote that a King who wants to expand his kingdom can never afford to enjoy the pleasures of a Palace. He had to live only on the borders of his kingdom.

Do you pity the king? Are you furious over the king? But that’s what most of the professionals are doing today.

They work for fourteen hours a day. Yes, they own a large house. (readalace) But they are constantly travelling.

I have a theory for the super-rich. The larger your house lesser will be the time you’ll spend there.

They don’t have time for their wives and kids. They acquire a second house overlooking the fact they have not yet put the first to its full use.

I know many NRIs who have many gadgets; the pity is they do not have the time even to open the package, let alone use them. And yet go on an acquisition spree.

They may not exactly die at 58. But then they will have to retire which for most of them is worse than death.

The King as well as the professionals have a funny theory of life. That once you acquire a given number of kingdoms or earn an arbitrary sum of money, then you will stop and start leading a happy life. But that never happens at all.

There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.

I know a boy who is a CA plus an IIM MBA. He is hardly 28. He works for Goldman Sachs. His hours are from 8 in the morning till mid night not counting the time he spends checking mails during his off time.

And he works seven days a week. He says that he will work like this till he is forty. And thereafter he will get lots of happiness.

Wrong. He will get hyper-tension, diabetes melitjus and a host of stress-related diseases.
Happiness is not in the list. Sorry.

Economic historians now agree that the people in the US were the happiest somewhere in 1957 or 58.

The country was prospering. They had large houses, large cars and all kinds of household gadgets. And then the corporates hypnotized them into a kind of mindless, heartless consumerism - second and the third cars, larger refrigerators, second homes, larger TVs and many labour saving devices.

Then both the husband and wife had to work. The family culture was gone. Marriages were on a shaky ground. The irony was that with more and more labour saving devices they had lesser and lesser leisure time.

If you still can’t understand the hidden lesson, listen to this story.

Once a rabbit was employed by a lion.

“You will have to work hard. I’ll just give enough food for you to survive. But when you retire you’ll be given an ample reward of your choice. Thereafter you can enjoy life without working even for a day.”

The rabbit agreed and spent all his young years serving the lion. He could never play in the sun, run in the forest, be happy with his girl or taste nuts, something he relished.

He had to survive on some tasteless stuff and work for fourteen hours a day.

He grew old enough to retire. The lion asked him what did he like the most. ‘Nuts’ told the rabbit. He had hardly tasted half a dozen nuts all his life.

The lion gave him three large sacks of nuts and wished him a happy retired life.

The rabbit retired to a safe cave away from the prying eyes of other animals. He was jumping over the bags of nuts in sheer happiness.

It was only when he tried tasting the first nut did he realise that he had lost his teeth and that he could not eat any of them.

He sat on the bag of nuts and was crying for a long time.

Needless to say that you cannot grow fresh teeth just by crying.

Let’s not delay living till we retire. Let’s taste the nuts when we still have teeth. Have a great week-end.