The truth is that we human beings require each time more that we already have. So, rich people complain that money has stolen their happy days and those who are not so financially fortunate say that only money could complete their life, that they would surely get everything else on their own if only they had the means to do that.
The truth lies somewhere in the middle.
It is not accurate to say money brings happiness, because it doesn’t. But at the same time one can not claim money has nothing to do with it. We are never really happy, maybe just for the brief moment when we reach our purposes or complete one of our dreams. But then, very soon after that, a new totally different problem or desire arises to take that happiness away. It’s human nature to be unsettled and uncertain and it is not a bad thing.
Whether we want to admit it or not, we all are happy at certain moments in life, but all we say is that we are never happy. There’s always something to inflict with our self-assurance or way of living that makes us nervous, sad or depressed.
And money is indeed one of those factors. Many people need it just to pay for food and shelter and they are happy if it’s enough to provide just that. But others, and I’m not talking here about rich people, they already have some living assurance and need more money for other desires or things they want to buy. And the list can go on and on as we climb social and financial levels one at a time. Everyone wants something, and once they have it it’s not enough or just too much and too stressful to deal with.
In fact, we should be happy just with what we have and stop thinking about money so much. Money is an important factor in achieving stability and eventually even happiness because we let it, we even push it up to that pedestal. Money does not equal happiness, it’s even worse than that: because money exists happiness is harder to reach.
But then again, if not for money, we’d come up with something else that we would let interfere with our life and cause us an infinite diversity of problems…It’s just human nature.
1 comments:
September 29, 2007 at 8:50 PM
Aschode,
Good points. I agree with the double-sided sword theories you've illustrated.
I blogged about this as well. You might find this interesting:
http://www.slowdownfast.com/blog/the-science-of-happiness-freakonomics-style-can-money-buy-happiness/
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