GINNY AND JOHNNY

GINNI AND JOHNNY

My friend Johnny migrated to the US in the 1970’s. In the months thereafter I received letters—there were no email or mobile phone facilities then—in which he spoke of the wonderful places he visited, the gleaming red car he bought and the fancy shops he went to not to speak of the ’ perfume he wore. ‘ I feel on top of the world’ he summed up. It was clear to me that he was comparing his life style in the US with his lifestyle in India and feeling ‘ swell’. Five years later he was not all the effervescent. He spoke of how life was hard , and how you fought for every dollar. He confessed that he was really a ‘ lower middle class’ guy. It was evident to me that he was now using as reference point his classmates who migrated around the same time as he did and found that they had done better than he had.

GINNI AND JOHNNY

Then sometime in the early 2000’s he was no doubt the owner of a 4 bedroom two garage suburban house and two cars but he seemed more bitter than he ever was. What went wrong? He was now comparing himself with the rich white American and was deeply disappointed with himself. During his recent visit to India he told me that he would have been better off in India !

Now there is in this true story a facet of human behavior that fascinates me.

Look at the way the World Cup winning Indian cricket team headed by Dhoni demanded from the BCCI more than the Rupees One crore that they had been paid.

When eyebrows were raised— and few can raise eyebrows as sternly as Board President Srinivasan—they gave a classic reply.

‘We are not greedy. All that we ask is that if our helpers are paid Rs. 25 lacs surely we deserve more than Rs 1 crore’.

In other words we derive pleasure and satisfaction not just from how much we earn or possess but from favourable comparisons with our reference group. Unfortunately it is in comparison that we end up feeling miserable because no matter how well off we are there are many who will be better off than us.

This applies to the very rich too. Reports say that one ultra rich Indian industrialist plans to build a home bigger than that of his more ultra rich brother. No doubt the younger man feels ‘miserable’ at his financial ‘plight’.

This leads us to a critical question. What should be our career goals ? Should our income and other assets be our true measure, our goal in choosing or evaluating ourselves ?

I may be counterintuitive but I suggest that we eschew financial measures .

Chasing money can lead us to compromise on ethics with disastrous results—the many scams around us are evidence of what may befall us if we chase money obsessively. On the other hand if we keep ‘achieving excellence and tapping our full potential’ as a goal we shall not only keep on the right side of the law but shall achieve a sense of fulfillment .Money will follow or will really not matter much. There is more to life than success and more to success than money.

The B- School from which I graduated has this motto handed down from batch to batch for decades---in a rat race even if you come first you are still a rat.

K.R.RAVI

WWW.KRRAVI.COM