Money & Happiness: Twins of Life?

Money and happiness are seen as the twins of life’s comfort and harmony and can play a distinctive role in enhancing a man’s life, melting away any harsh realities in their presence.

We can even say that money begets happiness, and in the loving embrace of money, happiness grows stronger and stronger, as a gift of God’s love for mankind.

But is it a solid rule that money bears a very strong and unbreakable link with happiness?

No, I don’t think so. It is true that there should be no obstacles to attaining happiness in the world of the rich – so long as money is available to generate vigor in physical activities.

Money is wisdom in the sense that it helps one lead a desired life of comfort, while poverty is ignorance in the sense that it troubles the mind and weakens the brain so that one finds himself in a total misfit in the game of life.

Money, as they say, is life itself.

If you have money, you have the whole world in the palm of your hand. You will be popular within your society.

Everybody will want to be close to you – afterall wealth is the friend of the world.

You will have access to everything you need; a beautiful wife as your partner; a luxurious home to shelter you; eye-catching cars to help your leg with, and so on.

But actually, as life is not a bed of roses, money cannot be a super- active object in every aspect of life.

After all, it’s an invention of mankind. So if man is limited in capacity, so much more must be his inventions. That’s why we see that the well-off also walk in tight shoes.

Restlessness is the epidemic infecting the wealthy. Too many commitments prevent them from leading a normal life.

Because of their unavoidable social connections, they hardly find time for their family obligations. The young ones, who need special care and attention, are the ones who suffer the most.

No wonder we are witnessing that most of their children tend to become delinquents as a result of an excess of freedom and lack of parental control.

Rebels Without a Cause?

This serves well enough to illustrate the distress and unhappiness in the lives of the wealthy.

So we can see clearly that having money is one thing while leading a happy life is something else.

To lead a happy life, one must be content. A person doesn’t have to be a millionaire in order to be happy, yet one relishes the taste of happiness when he is satisfied with whatever he gets.

With little shared with satisfaction, a man can manage his life well.

With few social connections, a man can find time for his family, where he really belongs.

Recent surveys have found that the level of happiness between the very rich individuals on the Forbes 400 and the Maasai herdsmen of East Africa is almost the same.

Lottery winners return to their previous level of happiness after five years.

Increases in income just don’t seem to make people happier–and most negative life experiences, likewise, have only a small impact on long-term satisfaction…

Marital Bliss

Love is another thing that money cannot buy.

If we say that money is a necessary complement to love, in the sense that it enhances the affairs of both partners, we are quite right, because if there is love and there is money to back it up, there will be some sort of comfort.

But if we mean that money is an indispensable ingredient of love, to the extent that without money, love cannot grow, we are quite mistaken about the role money has to play in love.

In a free society where women are given full freedom to choose, tender love is the foremost demand of most women.

Caring is a natural part of women due to their soft hearts, hence they are inclined so much to tender care.

They confront difficulty in decision-making particularly if there is a variety of choices, but love comes first in the order of their priorities.

It’s true that there are some women who run after money, taking it as the first priority in their criteria for marriage, but that will always stand out as an exception, and we all know what the fate becomes of such marriages–with agony and misery despite their wallowing in wealth and luxury.

This shows another important role of love in filling life with happiness.

A Matter of How

All in all, I believe that for us to understand the relationship between money and happiness, we need to understand the role of money and how it should be spent, because according to psychologists, the possible cause of misery for some rich people is how they spend their money.

Money is a tool that ultimately expresses our core values.

Understanding that value can change one’s life – because, for many, we structure our lives around money, which often defines the choices we make and can shape the person we become.

So, maybe the link between the two (money and happiness) can be drawn from the fact that while money may not make people happy, being happy may help them make money.

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The article is from our archive.