Does being happy have anything to do with having money?
I’ve just seen a great documentary called Marley which tells the story of Robert Nesta Marley Booker (Bob Marley) and there’s this phrase that he says which I can’t stop thinking about. It is the answer he gives to a journalist who asks him if he’s rich, reffering to money, which is, “Possesions make you rich? I don’t have that type of richness. My richness is life”. After thinking about this words, I’ve ended asking me one question. Does being happy have anything to do with having money? Although happiness is very relative, because it depends in everyone’s personal values, the majority of the people value more friends, family and relationships than money. There’s also this example that I looked up which demonstrates that money is not needed for happiness. Children laugh 4 times as much per day as adults do, and as far as I’m concerned, most children have a rudimentary concept of money at best. It is then when we grow up that some people give too much importance to money, to the point where the need to acquire and to obtain luxuries fullfills their happiness. But again, money can’t buy love or real friendships. On the other hand it is true that a person that struggles through life, because he has no money, will have more worries because he won’t be able to feed his family, pay the rent, or give a good education to his sons. What do you think? Can a poor person from the poorest countries, where poeple have only each other, be more happy than a millionaire in the U.S?
Albert Mateo Pino
Happiness is relative, as Albert said; it depends on your personal values. My opinion is that someone can think they are happy because they have plenty of stuff and lack nothing and I think that looking things with that point of view is being a bit ignorant. There are a lot of people who have less than nothing that are extremely happy with abstract thing which you can´t buy; like feeling you are a part of something like a relationship or family. As the post above says, Bob Marley is a perfect example of a person which looked life for what it gave us, not for how much money a person had. From my point of view, you don´t need money to have happiness. I think, that the good thing about having money would be not having to think about it, not wasting it with things that don´t fullfill you. This is why, as Albert said, children laugh 4 times as much as adult do, because they don´t have responsibilities or things they have to worry about.
ReplyDeleteSo, to conclude, my opinion is that a person form a poor country, which is loved and has people by his side, can be happier than a millionaire in the US.
I'd like to point out that happiness can't isn't a simple thing that can be measured; it is relative as it has been said by Albert and agreed by Ana. As a matter of fact I agree with the people that say that you are only happy at concrete moments, those moments are the moments that make your life worth it. If you're a great supporter of a football team and he wins a really important match you will be euphoric but next day you'll be just the same. You can't have lifelong happiness it's just unobtainable, so we should be more precise when talking about happiness. Could happiness be measured by the moments you are actually unhappy?
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand the great Bob Marley in that sentence doesn’t refer directly to money. I think that when he says that “his richness is life” he is not just referring to those happy moments but also to that hard moments, hard days that will make you appreciate much more those great moments in which you’re flying high. Those hard moments will make you realize who can you trust and will give people a chance to help you, those are the real moments in which you can appreciate life, and as Albert said, the best you can have is good people to help you and you can’t buy that.
All my life I've been thinking about this point. Is there a relation between money and happiness? I've actually arrived to a strange conclusion; money will snatch you that happiness everyone searches for. Why? It’s simple. Usually, one will always want more than he has and if someone is millionaire he will try and get more and conserve what he has so he might suffer and get stressed because of thinking of all the possibilities that could happen to that money. Furthermore people could start standing by your side not why who you are but by what you have. As soon as you become rich you can’t trust anybody, Can you be happy like that? In contrast poor people will have to struggle to live and will appreciate much better the quotidian situations. No one will stay by their side for money and that can give more possibilities to trust them. All the experiences you can gain with the real fight of life being poor can make you make more of life itself. What would you prefer?
I believe happiness is a state of mind. I agree with all the above comments as happiness is quite relative and subjective. This makes me think further and analyse how can we now what happiness is if no one has told us an academic definition of this concept and if it appeals to everybody in the same way. I think that happiness basically is the satisfaction left after drawing a smile on another person’s face.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it is obvious that not having economical problems creates a sense of security amongst people. Moreover, it is extremely sad to see that not having money will make people struggle so much that they will stop eating and die. This is, of course, an example of unhapiness created due to the lack of money.
In conclusion, having money will make you feel secure and is capable of avoiding serious health problems which would not lead to happiness. Despite this being sad and true, I also feel that having a friend or someone you can rely on is much more valuable than having money because if your house is burnt down or you have to live in the streets you will only have your body, mind and feelings and only death is capable of taking away those from you.
We live in a capitalist world, we can’t change that, and richness whether we like it or not is now mostly measured in the possession someone owns, not in other skills which could be as good or even better.
ReplyDeleteA balance between both money and friendship should be found to really consider you happy from my personal point of view. While we can measure someone’s possessions, friends can’t be measured or counted in any way, so that characteristic makes friendship even more unique and difficult to achieve.
But it is also very common to say that money doesn’t give you happiness, but do people really think that? Wouldn’t you prefer living in better conditions knowing for granted that you will have a sure future as your present is? Or would you rather be working extra hours to fulfill some of your dreams? Well, I think people should try to find a balance between both terms as an extreme quantity of money normally leads to people who only want you for interest and lack of money deprives you of opening to more people and getting the chance to know them whether this sounds unfair or not.
Concluding after giving different points of view, I would like to answer your question with another question:
If a thing which you really appreciate such as your IPod is taken from you, what are you left with? And if you lose a good friend, what are you left with?
After having thought of it I certainly think the lost of a friend is much more important as this is an irreplaceable person and you won’t find one the same, whilst you can certainly buy another IPod. Good friends are there in any moment and will end up being a significant part of your life as they are there both in tough and in happy moments. A friend is something you’ve got to work really hard to gain and have to constantly work at it as it can be easily lost, whilst a complete idiot can be the richest man in your country without having done anything to deserve that money. So indeed, money gives you happiness, but it isn’t for any use if you haven’t got friends to share it with or count on them at the moments you need them.
Capitalism is an economic system that is based on private ownership of the means of production and the creation of goods or services for profit. We live in a capitalist society and the need to acquire and to obtain to fulfill happiness has increased, and it’s related with money. I think that happiness is, in some part, related with money, because a rich person normally has an easiest life than someone who can’t even afford to buy food to cover human necessities of them or their family. But to have an easier life doesn’t mean to be happier, although it helps, because the real values of life are others such as family, friendship or love, and these values cannot be obtained with money.
ReplyDeletePeople who have traveled to third-world countries have found that some of the happiest people are those with the least. In the poorest of countries people have only each other, and they can be also happy to feel they belong to a family or to a group of people that help each other with the minimum things they own.
I have done a research and I have read that American families who make over $300,000 a year donate to charity a 4% of their incomes. The statistic should not be surprising, as studies by University of Minnesota psychologist Kathleen Vohs and her collaborators have shown that just glimpsing dollar bills makes people less generous and more egocentric. I find this fact really regrettable because this study makes me think that, in contrast, wealthy people share less than people who haven’t got as much as them.
As Albert said before, children laugh 4 times as much per day as adults do, and, in my opinion, this fact is because children don’t have the need to care about money, and when they grow up some of them give too much importance to money, and they become more ambitious and their life’s become harder.
So, to conclude, I think that a person in a poor country could be happier than a millionaire in the US.
In my opinion happiness can be caused by many different factors, and money isn’t necessarily one of them. From my point of view money isn’t basic for happiness, as Albert mentioned, money can make your life easier in terms of providing food, a house to live in, good education for your children… But the happiness this provides is only relative; this is because all of the things mentioned before are somehow secondary. In other words, a person could live without them and still be happy or even live with all of them and still feel like they’re not content.
ReplyDeleteThere is a famous quote which I really like that says: “some people are so poor, all they have is money”, I personally agree with this statement because it makes us see how money isn’t all we need to live. If we took a look at, for example, an African tribe that lives isolated from urban life, we could be able to notice how the little things that they have in order to sustain themselves are enough to be happy; whilst other people who live in big cities and have enough money to buy themselves whatever they wish sometimes feel as if there was something missing in their life.
Therefore, money can provide relative happiness (or, like Marina said, a feeling of security) but it doesn’t condition it; and, the thought of needing to own money in order to be happy is sadly an idea that the society we live in has introduced to us, almost making us believe that it is true.
Happiness is a very abstract word since every person has its own perception of it. Some people might focus their happiness on success; others might relate the meaning of this word to raising a family and a house full of kids or they might achieve happiness when they love someone but at the same time they feel loved and protected.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to money a part of our society supports the idea that it won’t make us happy. But I think we should consider the fact that having a certain level of wealth will allow us to have a stable economic life. In other words money pays our bills, it gives us the opportunity to afford education and other stuff that we may not notice but which it’s quite necessary in our daily lives. However abusing of it will not give us happiness at all.
In my opinion happiness can only be achieved when we find equilibrium in our lives. Only when we find this physiological and emotional stability we will get close to being happy. To do this we must learn to find a middle point in life when we are satisfied with our job; mentally stable; peaceful with our selves and emotionally content.
In conclusion I must admit it is quite difficult to carry out this task but , in some way, this objective gives sense to my life as I have something to fight for.