No bike no chick. That’s the rule. Super bikes get you super hot chicks… I want that super bike. I desperately want it. I wish my dad was rich. I wouldn’t be so freaking miserable.” —Vikas, 19 years old.

Now I am really mad. All you die-hard teen tinsel materialists out there, take heed. Take heed too, you self-assured guys who live in your heads all day and night, fingering unfulfilled ambitions and grim satisfactions. Also, you know-alls in your teeming millions — half-smart dudes who are unfortunately not bright enough to know the difference between thoughts disguised as feelings and pure intense feeling itself — you playthings of admen and copywriters, who the market makes patsys, strings along with inane desires, threads their quarterly statements into your life’s ambitions. All you guys listen up.
Are you (A) — as rich as your dad’s bank balance? Or (B) — as rich as your ability to turn on the light in your heart? If you answered A, welcome to the vast vortex called the economic system. Today’s systems have a way of spinning beautiful illusions, making you salivate to their gongs, binding you as a panting willing slave — making you cringe, raise both forepaws, wag your tails anti-clockwise.
Who told you superbikes are needed to get super-chicks? Who shoved that piece of fiction inside your head? It’s a blatant manipulation of your confused teen mind.
True, every channel on TV has thousands of lures, and if you are even half listening, you will be sucked inside the goo. That’s the Catch 22 economic system we inherited, for otherwise, who is going to feed the families of the guys who work in those superbike factories if you are not dumb enough to fall for the super-chick bullshit?
There seems no better working alternative to keep economic wheels spinning. This world runs on runaway desire. In a free market like ours, anyone is free to shove any desire into anyone’s head. You can ask, what’s the alternative? Communism North Korean style? Forget it. Free market and runaway desire is far better than Big Brother watching.
So how shall we break the catch? Shall we ask, where is the limit to desire? Sorry. You can’t do that either. A sucker is born every nanosecond, and as long as there are suckers, there will be marketing managers. So where’s the solution, for God’s sake?
It’s there, as a tiny point of light inside your heart that generates true feelings of joy, happiness, gladness, serenity, satisfaction and contentment. You desperately need to get in touch with that point of light, and figure out how to brighten it up as much as possible. The quality of that light is that it doesn’t run on desire. It is powered from within. So you don’t need superbikes for it to shine brightly. It can make you insanely happy even if you have absolutely nothing — no money, a penniless father, no chick, no bicycle even.
That doesn’t mean you jettison ambition. It means you temper it with sweet sanity. That light is your only shield against the endless onslaught of the system. It’s the only thing that will keep you sane as you grow older. It is the only guarantee that you will be unchained from market forces, and live as a free human being.
Are you guys even listening? I don’t think so. If you are, write to me. Based on the quality of the mails I get, I will tell you all the ways to turn on that light next week.