Price Tags

"Most of the things in our lives are illusions. Happiness in one of those

– Capt. Shoukat Mukherjee"

Someone sent me this over Whatsapp the other day and it really set me thinking. The message went like this:

I woke up today, having dreamt early morning at 4 AM. I was in the biggest DLF Mall of India looking to buy a pair of socks and a neck tie.

As I walked in, I noticed a sweater with a price tag of                  RS 9000 .Next to the sweater were a pair of Jeans for Rs.10000 .The socks were Rs.8000 ! And Tie for an astonishing 16,000 /-

I went looking for a salesperson and found one in the watch department

He was showing a man a Rs. 225/- Rolex watch. I looked in the glass case and there was a 4 carat diamond ring also on sales for Rs.95/-

Shocked I asked the salesperson "How could a Rolex watch sell for Rs.225/-? and a cheap pair of socks sell for Rs. 8000/-"? 

He said "Someone slid into the store last night and changed the price tag on everything ".

"Everyone is confused; people are acting like they have lost their sense of value". "They are willing to pay lots of money for things of little value, and very little money for things of great value”

"It’s like they don't know what is really valuable and what's not”. I hope we get the price tags back-on right soon, I really pity, seeing people paying way too much for things of little value”

I woke up startled & confused and thinking since then...

Maybe our life is like this dream.

Maybe someone slid into our lives and the changed the price on everything

 Maybe they marked up the value of competition, position, titles, fame, promotion, show-off, money and power!

...And put a huge discount on the value of Happiness, Family, Relationships, Peace of mind, Contentment, Love, Knowledge, Kindness, Friendships...

 Maybe We are all living this dream...

I hope...... we wake up, well in-time

Imagine each of our professions had a ‘Price Tag’ attached to it? Some sort of tag which would tell you how much ‘happiness’ that particular profession would generate? Well, did I use the word generate? Makes me think how it would be if we could create a happiness generator! A machine which generated tons and tons of happiness. Wouldn’t that be great? Each of us would then strive to buy that machine for our homes? Wonder how much price tag that machine would have? Would it be only for the rich or would it be available for all sections of the society? Would the sale be regulated by the Government which would then choose who bought that machine and in turn who would be happy and who would be not?

Isn’t this is a dream? No, its not. Actually it’s a stark reality because these machines, the happiness generators exist. if you look around, our perception tells us that these machines exist everywhere. It exists in a car showroom where you think you would be happy if you purchased the new BMW. It exists in the airports where, if you think if you take the international flight to the next holiday destination, you would be the happiest man on earth. It exists inside the shopping mall at each corner; at the luxury watch section; the fragrance section; each one of these department have a happiness generator. You are actually buying this generator the moment your make your purchase. But alas. You soon find out that this generator hardly ever works beyond a specific time. So, though your watch keeps on ticking, the generator of happiness stops after a while and you cease to be happy anymore with the watch. It becomes a part of your ‘collection’, a show off price on your wrist. It’s still an ‘awe object’, but it hardly ever makes you happy any more.

This is what happens to us all when we get fooled into buying something material and thinking that it would bring unending happiness to our lives. We do not realise that the pursuit of happiness is an illusion. There’s nothing at all we can do to reach the island of happiness. But that should not stop us from sailing towards it, because all of us deserve to be happy in our lives. What we need to understand that there is no one single moment of happiness. This is because it is not a destination which we can reach. Happiness is a choice. People who believe in the power of building relationships would know that the best way to be happy is to choose to be happy.

The most important part of this happiness discussion to me is choosing your own price tags. No one, but you alone can estimate the true value of the things close to you. Years back I had attended the lecture of an advertising excerpt where he was speaking on the value of organizations. How do we estimate the real value of companies? One way, he said was to know how much the company would fetch from the market if it were on sale. This is one of the many ways to find out the true worth of an enterprise. 

Keeping that thought, how much would you value all your material things? One way to find out is by estimating how much that would fetch in the market? So it would be easy to know the value of your gold jewellery and ornaments and your car, farm house, your yacht and maybe your private aircraft? Now compare these values to the values of your relationships. How do you put a price tag on them? How do you put a price tag on the various things you do which do not have a cash back yet you wish to do that over and over again? Like spending time at an orphanage? Like writing a poem? Like living a healthy life? How would you be able to price tag these things in your life?

In this age of Artificial Intelligence, maybe humans will make androids which have feelings. They would be programmed to be happy and sad. They would smile and cry, and play football with passion. They will never chase happiness. But my question still remains, would they be actually happy or merely demonstrate happiness? Or better still they would teach us how to be happy? This – only time would tell (Provided there would still be an ‘us’ left)

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Capt. Shoukat Mukherjee is an international award-winning global trainer, public speaker and Leadership exponent. He is the author of the best-selling book ‘Mind Over Water’, a treatise into leadership development and team building.

You can connect with Shoukat at:

Email: ‘[email protected]

Twitter: @shoukat1971

Fb: @shoukatsmindoverwater

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