What do you gift in your friend's marriage? Necklace, ring, dresses, watch, greetings cards? Or more useful ones like Walkman, books, a pack of condom(believe me, these days people practice it!). Whatever you give they will perish over the flow of time. Whatever gift you give they can not be compared with the Taj Mahal neither they be compared to those given by the Magi, some two thousands years ago. By heart, we all are materialistic. Given an option, I bet, your heart will go for a diamond ring over myrrh. Men cares less about the gifts. They count money, no doubt.
This time, I had an opportunity to taste this human behavior. The subjects were my friends including myself.
There are several types of men in this world. There are various factors which make them different from the other. These factors include family background, education, financial condition etc. Since my subjects were from the families belonging to the same class of people(financially), other factors became predominant than this one. The combination of the factors can create several types of men, e.g. sober and extravagant. One can clearly see that these two characters are two different (and extreme) values of a particular parameter, it is not necessarily always true that a sober person is more educated, mentally stable, financially stout(and hence mentally) etc. but general trend follows this rule. In contrast, an extravagant can be depicted very easily. None of my subjects was of that extreme, I wish they would.
The second kind is more materialistic than the first one. This is just my observation. I don't want to draw any conclusion only from this observation as the sample space is too low to make any generalized rule. But I have come to conclude the following facts which have originated from my life long experience. I have been observing men, from a different perspective, right from my childhood.
Man is born greedy. A child wants to get a better toy than its brother or sister, a boy wants a willow bat as soon as he sees that with his friend, an adolescent boy wants a better girlfriend than anyone ever had, a grown up man wants a better car than his office colleague, an old man wants a bigger tomb over his graveyard than his ancestors ( Egypt's pyramids are the biggest examples) so on and on. These wish lists vary from the person to person with his soberness ( it is just a value of the above said parameter, one should not assume its literal meaning). Education, family back ground and the philosophy play a major role in this part. Since our childhood we have been taught to renounce than to take, we have been taught to help others but to oneself. As we grow up, surroundings warn us not to follow them, they say they are better to be at the books. As we become an adult, we circumspect and learn many more things. As we we grow older and older, the learning from our experience contradicts what we dreamt of in our early childhood. We become more and more selfish. So one must admit that education, surroundings and one's own observation play a major role in this part.
As we become more selfish, we become more materialistic. We develop a habit of taking than sacrificing. Hence we like our gifts to be more precious.
Some of us are blessed, not having too much disturbed by the surroundings and follow the ideologies developed by our ancestors. They still follow the values learnt at their childhood. They still believe that giving brings more happiness than to taking. They expect the gift to be more valuable that its 'value'.
The Magi were the wisest persons and hence were their gifts. But they don't exist today.
3. It rains for 30 seconds at an interval of 10 minutes for a month or two.