How much do you earn? A lot!

"A streak of light was peeping in,

But my mornings were dark.

Engulfed were the worries of yesterday,

Deep down were their marks.

The light wanted to give me some hope,

But I was failing to let it embark.

Thoughts and action would have found a path,

If only I had allowed that small ray of light, in me to park."

The world of advertising is so fascinating. We have numerous advertisements coming to us in different ways through different platforms. Digital media, in fact, is surviving primarily on the ad revenues that it generates from every nook and corner of a webpage. The digital media advertising alone amounted to about USD270 billion in 2017 (Source: Statistica 2017)

Though these ads do not result in direct sales, why do companies spend so much on these instead of adjusting those spends against giving direct discounts to customers at the point of sale? Creating an image – brand recall, brand equity, loyalty, significance – all of these are the reasons. If we notice, these are all abstract things which ultimately yield tangible benefits for the company and its products.

Have we ever tried attaching abstract gains to our abstract needs like HAPPINESS?

We most often set our goals in terms of materialistic achievements and then aim for happiness, satisfaction and joy from them. It is so common to let financial gains give us happiness, purchasing of a desired object give us satisfaction and many more such tangible things direct us towards feeling of joy. However, every satisfied need leads us to another unfulfilled need/ desire (as per suited perspective).

Guys – are we forgetting something very important?

When was the last time, we turned up to a child’s smile to give our stressed minds some refreshment; the last time we tried helping an old lady to see her beautiful smile of gratitude which gave us satisfaction or the gentle pat on a street dog making it merrily swing its tail in joy?

This is where companies are doing much better than we the Individual Humans. They are targeting our minds through their advertisements and we, on the other hand, are providing our mindfulness to everyone except ourselves. If we start working on realization of such non tangible gains for ourselves, positivity, joy and happiness would so easily be available.

I recently happened to watch a piece of video on the internet. It showed a young boy aged about 18 – 20 years. He was merrily seen roaming about with an ever enthusiastically smile. He stayed among people who had to stretch themselves to meet even their daily needs. This boy was seen giving some money on a daily basis to a homeless mother-daughter pair even if it meant emptying his own wallet completely; secretly getting some bananas for an old lady who was living all alone and had no clue about who kept the fruits on her door each day; he even shared his lunch with a street dog. Whenever he came across anyone who was needy, he put in all that he had to help in any way possible.

There was an old retired man who lived all by himself and was quite well to do in terms of his neighbours. This man observed the young boy for few months and one fine day asked him, “You seem to have something or the other for everyone each day, seems you either have a great paying job or else some illegal measures to get all the money that you spend on the useless creatures here” – referring to the dog and the homeless mother.

The young boy preferred to reply with silence and a merry smile which was always present on his face. This made the old man even more impatient to know what was going on in the young lad’s mind. One fine day, he silently followed the boy to see the place where he was working and what exactly was his job. He was surprised to find that the boy worked as a daily wage labour at a construction site. The old man waited the entire day and an entire week (following him everyday) to see if there is anything else that the boy in engaged in to get some extra money, but found nothing.

He once again asked the boy after a week “How much do you earn boy to show so much charity?” 

This time the boy humbly replied “A lot!”

P.S: I need not explain further about what was included in this ‘lot’ that he was earning; his satisfied smile and contended persona explained it all!