Standard of Living: A reality or mirage

Everybody in the world is seems to much conscious about the standard of living especially the working and high salary paid class is investing precious time in the discussing and maintaining it. With the changing time standard of living has also changed many faces, many materialistic articles from the list of luxurious category are today included in the list of commonly needed article category. Car [four wheeler vehicle] is no more status symbol but is indicative of Standard of living. Refrigerator an appliances of elites is become the essential household appliances.

Let we think what we do mean by the standard of living, my interpretation of the phrase is not the one that commonly considered by the masses. The usual meaning of the phrase for the masses is a life style loaded fully with the articles of physical comforts. Just think physical comforts are endless and demand for them is intended to grow with the monetary inflow in the life. In the life of a common person income is bound to face ups and downs hence judging the standard of living on this basis is not the proper one. Consider a person using car for traveling the distance of residence and work place; due to certain economic crises he forced to use public transport system for the purpose will you say that it has lowered his standard of living? Certainly most of the people will answer it affirmatively because to most of us standard of living and physical comforts are the synonym. In fact this will generate unhappiness and discomfort and from here the mirage of living standard starts. As we are used to rate our living standard on the availability of comforts and our present education system, instead of rectifying our mistake, is adding more fuel for the endless race of earning for physical comforts and this false interpretation is making our life filled with stress and tensions.

The true measuring scale of standard of living must be counted on the basis of speaking truth, character and obeying the law of the land [My interpretation of the phrase] by a person. As we are become habituate of calculating the height of living standard on the basis of availability of physical comforts hence we are running towards the continuously widening valley of sorrow and distress and our life is in filled with the greedy social and political leadership. Sooner we change our norms for standard of living, sooner we will on the path of coming out of the mirage of living standard and realize the reality of the phrase. Remember it was the not physical comforts but the simple living and high thinking that have made Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, father of nation for a country with over 100 carores of human population.