It’s a funny world! You can conquer the space, you can destroy the world in a whisker but you don’t know what you want! You think this is progress, you think this is development! And because you don’t know what you want, you stumble and fail to reach your destination. You have everything but do you have wellbeing?

Wellbeing is not only an individual business; it’s the business of nations too. If you don’t have the social structure and policy that promote wellbeing it will be difficult for you to achieve wellbeing.

Our society still focused more on money and wealth. Our progress and development is defined more in term of financial success than in term of achievement of wellbeing. Wrong goal never can take us to right destination.

Couple of years back I attended a mental health conference where I heard the story of an unfortunate little girl. This little girl was picked up by police to mental health department of a general hospital. Apparently the girl was found naked on a street and was using offensive languages to passer by. The girl was born to a couple who got divorced and then the mother got married again. The girl was repeatedly sexually abused by her step father in front of her mother’s eyes. The mother did almost nothing! The girl was put to orphanage. There too, she was sexually abused by staff of orphanage. I was appalled by the cruelty and injustice done to this little girl. She was bombarded with anti depressant and anti psychotic but as expected, nothing seemed to help her. The learned experts were helpless! The department of child safety, the police department and the health staff were fighting the lost battle. The social structure and the social policy which directly or indirectly glorifies hunger for sex and individual comfort over children’s love don’t have any solution for such problem. Everybody involved in care of that little girl were doing splendid job but all in vain. This was because; the perpetuating factor persisted in the life of that little girl. And that perpetuating factor was her deprivation. She was deprived of her parental love, she was deprived of her peaceful childhood, and she was deprived of her safe shelter! God bless us- we are so cruel!

Individual wellbeing is very much based on social, political and economic context. Human being does have both internal environment and external environment. In his internal environment his body, mind and spirit are in fine balance. Any derangement I this balance causes him illness. Similarly, human being has an external environment with which he interacts 24X7. This interaction too has a fine balance and any disruption of this balance causes him illness. This external environment could be the natural physical world or could be the social, political and economic environment.

Modern science has done wonder but at what price? Modern science rejects faith and spirituality as impediment to development. This is contempt! Because science can’t explain certain things, does it mean that those things can’t exist! This is stupidity. This is utmost contempt and haughtiness. Science has endeavored to help create materialistic wealth. The prevailing materialistic ideology views the human race as racing genetic machines. Everywhere is the rat race to accumulate more fame and fortune. A man with few minutes to live still calculates the arithmetic of wealth. Reductionism, social Darwinism and Atheism rule our social sciences and medicine. But in reality they are creating another intolerant faith (they say they hate faith but what about their obsessive idealism, narcissism and haughtiness?). They contempt existence of God but they themselves want to be God. A funny world indeed!

Medicine is powerful today! Medicine is proud only to learn that still it doesn’t have the solution to epidemics, certain infectious diseases, environmental diseases, cancer etc. The ill effects of drugs, some are known and some are yet not known, the unhealthy, unethical life styles of population are threat to the pride of modern medicine. Modern medicine considers human being as a machine and tries repairing them in such a non human robotic manner! Human being is more than a container of flesh and blood! Human being has a body, a mind and a soul. Can we have a medicine that addresses human illness in its entirety? Can we not just treat the disease? Can we be healer instead of a doctor, dentist or a nurse? I am talking of holistic approach to illness. We talk about this but how many of us practice this in real sense? Are there any organized curricula in medical school that will teach us holistic and humane approach in addressing illnesses?

Our learning is to satisfy our materialistic hunger. Big pay roll, big car and a palatial house are our aim of learning. The magical global communication has adopted the role of social educator. The mass media and entertainment are being confused with the spread of knowledge and wisdom. A spreading global consumerist monoculture is ready to engulf the whole world. Filthy and dirty nudity is taken for beauty and fashion. Sexual perversion and sexual ill behavior is getting approval from the society. If we can’t fix the wrong, let’s legalize it! Media shout for freedom and fairness but media forgets that they are the people who are propagating wrong faster than light.

You know your right but you don’t know your responsibility. Your freedom is the vehicle to do all the wrong while remaining unaccounted for. In name of freedom you are creating individualistic attitude and breaking the cohesion in society. Micro family is the theme of the age! But when it comes to dealing with stressors in life, you look for sedatives, drugs and alcohol. You blame our parents, blame your siblings and blame your society. This is a wild game of fixing blame but not a practice of fixing problem.

Consumerism is replacing the word democracy. We are not addressed as human being, we are not addressed as son of immortal bliss, but we are addressed as consumers. We are number. Democratic process doesn’t interests us for it’s so meaningless. The don of consumer world dictate the formation and functioning of government. No surprise, we the common people are lost. The democratic journey to wellbeing is still a mirage! This is no surprise that we have grown apathy to political system. As a common people we feel so helpless! We know we need a change but we really don’t have any clue how to bring that change. We don’t wish to vote any of the contesting candidates in election for neither of them can bring that change. But some times we just vote. The true meaning of democracy cries in darkness of dungeon!

Civil cohabitation is still a theoretical concept. Imperialism, fundamentalism is still there may be under cover of some kind of idealism. We enjoy hating each other and we enjoy killing each other. We take pride to be the most rational being. We are superior to beast but we are more beasts in our deed. Can we live together ever with peace and harmony? If we can’t, we will never achieve wellbeing. Historically we have proved that faith is powerful though destructive. Can we use the same faith for creation? Can we respect and celebrate the differences we have amongst us? Can we be different but still be the same in context that we are all human being and we are all brothers and sisters?

35000 people die everyday of starvation, yet there are many of us who waste food everyday! 10 million children under the age of five die every year! Depression affects 120 million people worldwide! 25 million people are affected every year from pesticide poisoning! Starvation, malnutrition, environmental hazards are still prominent today. How challenging is our journey to wellbeing?

The painful contrast in the world is a nightmare! In same country we find unprecedented wealth and utmost poverty, unprecedented wastage and utmost scarcity! Inequality, social injustice and apathy prevails our world. We don’t want wealth we want wellbeing. Enough is enough; time is up that we trade our wealth for our wellbeing. Science has failed to ensure wellbeing; Religion has caused us much pain. Let’s try something different, try something unprecedented! We take best of both the science and the spirituality and apply them judiciously in our life. No contempt, no pride! After all we are after wellbeing. We deserve it and we must have it.

The wellbeing is not only an individual issue. The wellbeing is not only a health issue. Human being lives in a society. We all interact with each other and affect each other. Any change in social, political and economic issue should affect all of us directly or indirectly. As a result it will affect our wellbeing too.

Are we not already late enough to think seriously about true wellbeing? Are we not already late enough to bring a synergy between the science and the spirituality? Are we not already late enough to say enough is enough?