Many people think that having more money will make them happier.
How important is money to happiness?
Happiness is a sense of well-being, joy, or contentment. It is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude. A number of individuals believe that being wealthier can bring more happiness. This essay disagrees with the aforementioned idea as there are several other elements that evaluate happiness.
To commence with, although money makes life less stressful, it’s not everything. It cannot guarantee happiness in life as we see people from the wealthiest tiers of society who are sitting on piles of money but are dissatisfied and unhappy in life. For instance, many Bollywood stars have ended their lives due to unhappy relationships, isolation and other personal problems despite being well off. A certain amount of money makes it more likely for one to attain contentment to an extent as basic needs like food, shelter and clothing can be met but there are many other parameters that actually help in measuring the real essence of joy.
To continue, every person has his/her own definition for delightfulness as it is completely a subjective feeling. For instance, some people discover elation by earning more and more money, some masses feel happy upon helping the poor and doing charity work whereas others feel happy by travelling or accomplishing certain non-monetary milestones in life such as winning competitions or pursuing their hobbies. Happiness is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and when one is satisfied in all these three aspects, he/she can be said to be happy as a whole. For instance, Irfan Khan, a veteran actor who died recently due to brain tumour was extremely rich but yet lost his life and was heartbroken due to this illness during the last few years of his life. Moreover, elite people are more stressed as they have an excessive amount of responsibilities, the urge to earn more and more and a sense of insecurity such as fear of being robbed or kidnapped which causes a rise in stress levels.
To sum up, people can be tagged as happy if their basic needs are met if they have good health and are living in harmony with their loved ones. For some, it’s about excitement and novelty, where for others it’s about security or even personal growth. I have a strong belief that money can’t buy happiness, but only rent it.
