Enviable Bundles of Joy or Easily satisfied souls?

'All I need is a thousand pounds a month to live on and I can live happily if only I have somebody to love ...' said a friend, who had made a remarkable jump, by any standards, from remote Balasore to the greener pastures of Scotland.

'A big house in Vijayawada is the only thing I want so that all of us (his entire family) can stay together ' said another, now researching polymers:) somewhere in the US!

Closer home near Guntur, much further away from the more ambitious environs of IIT Madras, all that most fathers want seems to be to get their daughters married off. And for some very lovely women, just staying close and taking care of their loved ones seems to be the only thing that matters.

I am sure each of them will find happiness sooner than later. And assuming they stay that way, happiness is something they will get to, easier than some others I know, who are perhaps much smarter and importantly a lot more ambitious....

Say, you're the ambitious chap competing hard, always comparing yourself to the rest and you run into one of these friends of mine that I mentioned above. Being very ambitious, you have a achieved a lot but have a lot more to, and as is your routine, you compare yourself to one of them. You have got more wealth, more fame ....
But to imagine that the only thing you cannot match is the contented smile on his face is a painful thought!

While it would be naive to put everyone in the world into airtight containers that are either contented types or otherwise, it is fair to say that each of us will have to make a choice between the two sides - one of which takes us ahead sometimes painfully and the other which leaves us snug in comfort!

There is so much joy in relationships that it seems to override any ambitions of wealth and fame, which are more superficial than they sometimes might seem. If being with someone means more than anything else, as it sometimes seems - to a lot of people, you would be unwilling to change anything that would change that.

So that makes me wonder if it will be your impassioned youth or your conventional self, comparing, evaluating and calculating, that determines how you start off and where you end up, and if you end up happy at all....