We are all greedy, for something or the other.  We are sometimes greedy that we should have plenty of money, or have sex with more than one person, that is, our life partner.  We are many a time greedy, that most of our father's hard earned wealth should somehow come to us -- we do many things to see that this indeed happens. 

We are very greedy for new kinds of food, and all types of food.  We are never satisfied.

Yet, the question is, "Is being greedy all that good?".

The answer is a firm "no".  

This viewpoint needs a lot of elaboration, and I shall attempt some of it here.

Greed makes us inhuman

While a bit of greed is fine, too much of it, or greed without any limit, is atrocious, and can ruin many a person, disturb harmony in human relationships and in the vital social institution of marriage, make us restless, and in fact, forget that peace of mind is as important as anything else in life.

What makes one greedy is a very big debatable point, but most of greed is only driven by economic forces.  We all want to ensure that we have tonnes of money with us, a very healthy balance that will enable us to feed reassured that "everything is fine with us".  This rat race simply zaps us of all energy and makes us miserable.  Very often, the anger that comes with physical tiredness is shown on the hapless wife or husband or parents or children or even the servant maids.

Greed indeed prompts us to become inhuman, which we become, without even understanding that greed is the root cause of all misery.  One sure way of getting over this problem is to have a balance between our commercial lives and spiritual lives.  Nowadays, everything is available on CDs and even in You tube.  One can hear divine music, or any religious discourse of some Guruji, particularly before we retire  to bed.

Such music has the power of calming our minds, and helping us relate to the other family members in a very normal manner.  Yoga can be very useful too.  Simple exercises in Yoga, which do not take more than ten minutes can be really useful.

We all need to understand that excess of greed is always very dangerous to our mental and physical health. 

Making temple visits

Going to temples or Churches or mosques can be a great relief, particularly on Sundays, during which time, one should compulsorily nap for a couple of hours to get over the tiredness.  Being part of the rat race cannot be bad, as such, but such a rat race being driven by greed is a great problem indeed.  For, the man or the woman goes on putting in all those extra hours to earn that bit of extra money, to satisfy one;s husband or wife or just show off.

What exactly do we mean by excess of greed would depend on specifics of any particular situation.  For example, this author knows a man who makes one hundred thousand rupees a month, and his wife makes a similar amount.  They have booked an apartment in the heart of Chennai, and did not listen to the wise counsel of the parents of the man, who advised him to invest just half the amount in a suburban area.  

The wife put her foot down, citing the availability of top schools nearby, while the man wanted to live in "absolute luxury" in "a very good area, where there are only multinational company executives".

While everything is fine on paper, a huge amount goes towards the EMI of the housing loan, to be repaid over the next fifteen years.  The man wants to repay the loan faster, and even takes up some web design jobs on a part time basis.  The children, just five and three years old, rarely see their parents together.  

All the problems of the couple would have been solved, if only the man had followed his father's advise.  Equally good schools, or if not better, are available in the suburban area as well.  He would anyway rub shoulders with MNC executives who live in that alternate apartment complex as well.

So, what is the cause of the greed?  It is not only the man's ego, but the woman's desires as well.  

If we learn to live within our means and not borrow too much money, at any given point in time, most of the problems associated with greed can be solved easily.  

Get advise

Listening to elders, who are now in their sixties or seventies can offer us very useful lessons.  For example, many a bank executive, would have grown brick by brick.  He would have invested wisely in long-term recurring deposits when the interest rates were high.  

He or she, would have been contended with savings, but would have also invested in the names of their children.  They would even have invested in cheap real estate, that would have been available for a lesser price in the suburbs.  

We often think that such people are outdated.  We vastly underestimate them.  But the truth is that such people have weathered many a storm, would have faced less pollution, less of traffic on roads, would have battled with a less complicated education system, and so on.  Their lessons on coping with stress, can indeed help us to ensure that our greed stays within limits.,

How greed can be meaningful

Greed, for example, is meaningful, if we dream that our sons and daughters should become Civil servants or doctors, or engineers or lawyers.  Greed would also become meaningful if they get into the best of institutions for higher studies --- purely on merit.  Our greed would be meaningless, if we were to pay a huge donation to secure their admission into some good engineering college or medical college.

It is here that we need to learn from our elders.  For instance, in one case, an elderly neighbor prodded my friend to get his son admitted into a fairly good engineering college in Pune, Maharashtra, as his school final public examination marks were not adequate for the merit seat in Tamil Nadu.  The boy went on to learn computer science, got motivated by his friends to take the GRE examination, did so well in the examination, and landed in the USA, where he completed his doctorate as well. And thereafter joined Microsoft. 

The elder person had done his homework well.  Pune offered the boy a different ecosystem, but one which motivated him to excel, in a totally different environment.

How and when we should keep our greed within limits depends on the merits of any situation, but the most important  ground rule is: stay within limits, particularly the financial limits.  This could be true of business people too. For, too much of borrowing can also land anyone in trouble.

Hence, let us all learn how to keep our greed within limits.  We can and should have some greed to help us go ahead in life, but we need a vital balance between our spiritual and commercial lives.