The Value of Everything

In his superbly ethical allegory entitled `The Picture of Dorian Gray', Oscar Wilde has this lovely aphorism  about people who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing. In real life, we do meet creatures (how to all them human beings) of such type. Acharya Atre wrote a delightful story of a child who would travel the same primrose path. The young protagonist of this story demands the price of each and every of his services, and charges a penny or two to his mother for every minor errand he would run for her. Next day, he finds a neat bill near his pillow.It has a huge list of all that his mother did for him. The bill shows no price, but the boy understands thus the value of everything.

That is the way the love of parents is, a value addition that enriches every aspect of our being. The plinth of our personality thus built is so like a fortress that it can survive (m)any pricey tectonic shifts. Our parents sure brought us up in such a value (en)rich(ed)  way. Does that mean  that it made us impractical? Not exactly! Anyways, such ideal impracticality is any day better than hard nosed cost audit of every relationship, I believe.

Aai-Papa, for example, had to forego everything, literally everything, right at the beginning of their marital life. For absolutely no fault of theirs, and because their elders were price wise, they had to rebuild their lives from the scratch. This beginning from Ground Zero, may be, taught them the value of everything.

In our family, for instance, it was forbidden to waste food. A dirty, `food half eaten, half left on the dish' plate was a crime in Aai-Papa's household. Aai's kitchen would never overflow with left-over's of the previous night. Did that mean they were stingy? Not really. It is just they knew the value of everything. Most all great insights about value addition were part of the management of our childhood. So not merely do I love Aai-Papa, I value them. So many moments of true value they `fix'ed in our lives that their nurturing of our nascent identities is priceless. 

Let me end this blog with a quote by Einstein. "Try not," says the famous physicist, "to become a man of success, but a man of value. Look around at how people who want to get more out of life than they put in. A man of value will give more than he receives, 

pratima@why waste thyself on those who valueth not thee?