WAS going through the newspapers this morning when I saw an advertisement by a bank saying ‘write your own story of happiness with a home loan.’ It showed a young couple holding a model of a large double storied house in their hands and smiling. Is happiness really about a bigger house?
In most housing societies, there are two events which happen and cause a lot of talk and agitation among members, one is encroachments and the other discussion about redevelopment. Encroachment happens when the owner of a home decides to encroach on land, that doesn’t belong to him, either it could be an extension of his flat, or enclosing a common area with walls.
Talks on redevelopment are good, especially when it’s about a building which is already old. But what happens when society members are fooled by lucrative offers by builders and not realistic ones? There’s a possibility of losing your flat, or long waits which could even take place outside courts of law.
All this because you dreamt of a bigger patch of real estate. In all this we believe that happiness lies in more property.
But what if the happiness giving property you dream of doesn’t actually exist between four walls and a roof? What if it is not about a palatial home?
I have heard joyous sounds coming out of a one room kitchen, and often when I used to visit the homes of my workers living in slums, found close comradery and deep fellowship within thatched roofs and tiny spaces, and surliness coming out of a huge mansions where darkness from empty spaces and a foreboding silence greets you on entry.
Let us be prudent when we see such advertisements and aspire to get more property through working unholy hours, taking huge bank loans or by grabbing someone else’s land. We need to check whether that happiness is something we can generate within ourselves and within our family.
We need to realise that more real estate space doesn’t create happiness but utilising the vacuum attitudes within our minds from negativity to positivity from hatred to love from surliness to smiles could make all the difference.
I end with this little poem by Alice Hawthorne: The heart may have its sorrows, And its trials for awhile, But the cares of life are fleeting, Tho’ they rob us of a smile; Yet sweet are life’s endearments, And the joys that ever come, When the soul can find a rapture, In the happiness of home.
Where words are kindly spoken, And where heart with heart can blend, We can ever find a welcome, As a stranger or a friend; Let the cot be e’er so humble, In this wide world as we roam; There is nought to charm us ever, Like the happiness of home.
—(bobsbanter@gmail.com)
