Yeh dil bole,"no extra!"

I have seen one advertisement where a water tap is fixed in village and it gets opened one morning. That's a dessert area where one man was walking and he sees water flowing on the white marbles of isolated bathroom. He comes and quenches his thirst. Another woman see him drinking water and she also comes to drink water. And like this entire village arrives there, quenches its thirst, fills the vessels and still the water is not stopping. And then voice over comes conveying a message that - the entire village quenches its thirst in the same amount of water used by urban person to take a bath...

And it was one more 'aha' moment for me. I had read in one philosophical book, we should never overdo. I have heard my parents and grandparents saying that we should never overdo.

Now what do I mean by 'overdoing'? In the above mentioned example, it's clear what is 'overdoing'. Consuming more than what is required is overdoing. Demanding more than what you actually need or deserve is overdoing.

Have you seen many parents nowadays pampering their kids a lot and how these kids deviate from desirable behaviour later in life? Extreme discipline is also bad and extreme leniency is also bad for both these spoil the human being.

You must have heard doctors, nutritionists saying to avoid overcooking because overcooking degrades nutritional value of the food. The same thing applies to human life also. We should never overdo as it reduces the value of whatever thing we are doing or attaining. E.g. when you always, always means almost always tend to be loving and caring with someone, they tend to take you for granted. Sometimes it's required to point out mistakes of others, to confront others.

One more dimension to this 'overdoing' depicts how we attaining or demanding for more reduces chance of availability of that for others (e.g. the very first example where one urban is overusing water which reduces its availability for rural people.)

Today we are becoming almost hedonistic, materialists where we want more and more and more, where we don't know where to stop. In pursuit of 'more', we tend to forget or rather don't even realise that we are depriving someone from attaining his needs. Think about an example, where one sibling is expecting that his parents should attend always to him only and ensures the same (most of the time!). This will definitely prevent parents from giving time to another sibling. This is just a small example but ain't we seeing such examples around us or living the same?

The mantra of happy life is to know that there are limits though we say 'Sky is the limit'. Please don't misunderstand that I am in against of being highly ambitious. I am just saying even ambitions should know where to stop.

Take care.

With love and bright hopes,
Dipti S. A. Shinde