Money, Maslow and me

It is only morning
but doesn’t seem that.
Can we forward to night?
My cola’s gone flat.

Considering that life’s primary pursuit is happiness, it doesn’t seem I am making a spectacular success of it. At the moment, life seems a series of humdrum days and nights rolling on relentlessly. It is an age old river maintaining its steady course towards the sea, the still surface interrupted only briefly by little fish bobbing to the surface.

There was a time when I thought money would bring joy. An uncle, who is now no more, summed it pretty well when he once said to me, “Upto a point, money is the most important thing in life. Beyond that point, it is the least important thing.” I guess I am beyond the Point. I am neither the Monk who sold his Ferrari nor anywhere near being a millionaire. It is just that I know enough about money and myself to realise that having a million bucks land in my account overnight will not fundamentally alter my state of happiness.

In college, Behavioural Science was a subject hardly anyone took seriously, and generally considered a bit of gas providing relief amid tougher subjects. Looking back, I think it offered at least one powerful tool to understand motivation – the Maslow hierarchy. I don’t recall the finer detail, but Maslow basically said that man is motivated by a hierarchy of needs, starting from basic physical needs such as food and drink. Once these are satisfied, one progresses to creature comforts like a nice car and comfortable house, and then onto the emotional affiliation needs such as love and affection of family and friends, recognition of the community, and so on. Once all these are satisfied, one reaches the apex of motivational needs – the need for self actualization ie. the ability to fully realise one’s inherent potential.

Flashing back to the recent past, I review recent moments of satisfaction. Visit from close family friends (affiliation), playing with kids (same), progressing from being a non-swimmer to doing a few strokes in the pool (actualization?), resolving a somewhat complex problem at work (ditto), writing a piece for this blog (ditto). Hmmm…maybe Maslow had something there.

Hail Abraham Maslow, facilitator of introspection. Long may his memory live.