The excellent editorial ‘Opium for the postmodern age’ (November 9) brought to my mind the following thoughts. As this newspaper very well concluded, “for many, it is money in the pocket that counts - opium”.
There is too much stress on making money, as if that is all we need to live a decent life. Yet, life experience has taught us that though money is important it is not all. What is the answer?
There are greater values in life that can make us happy even without enough money at our disposal.
Our forefathers were happy with much less than what we have today and with much larger families to support.
A collective effort is needed to encourage Maltese citizens, especially the young, to go back to the basic values of life that society cherished not so long ago.
Honesty, a clean conscience and correctness in earning money with dignity, uprightness, fairness, altruism, tolerance, sharing, true friendship, faith in God, the belief that there is good and it should be done and that there is bad and it should be avoided, that money is not all in life, true love, the great joy of family unity, raising children and reciprocal love, educating ourselves, striving for good health, job satisfaction, discipline, good citizenship, respect for our neighbour and the authority, helping others in need, striving for our rights but doing our duties too, enjoyment of the environment where the sun, the sea, the sky, fresh air and the countryside are all free to enjoy.
The collective effort should come from national authorities, politicians seeking the common good and ready to serve others and not themselves, the Church, the professions, constituted bodies, trade unions, journalists, parents, educators of whatever subject and level, youth leaders, law enforcement officers and all other citizens of goodwill.
We need to go back to basics and learn to forget our present selfish attitude to life based only on making money and more money. We need to learn again to be ready to wait and not expect immediate satisfaction in our life wishes.
A return to the above basic life values will give more personal satisfaction and happiness in life than money can give.