Can money make you happy ?

Yes – but ONLY to a certain degree! Money alone can’t make a person happy, for sure – as you know well and lack of money is a misery on the other hand. Excluding the monks dwelling in the forests, for all of us living in the society, money is a must. But, the extent to which the money can make you happy depends on many factors like your life style, maturity, necessarily, etc,.

Money can bring you physical comforts to a great degree but, being happy or unhappy will surely depend on your ‘mental maturity’. If you are mentally mature you could be as happy without money as you would be with lots of money. The main thing is the attitude of the person. Some REALLY wise people don’t care for the money and they are purely happy with the least materialistic comforts they have like food and clothing and a small shelter. They are like the ‘rock of Gibraltar’ amidst rocking troubles and lead a life of joy but, this needs a lot of maturity on the individual concerned. For example, Socrates had no money with him but, he was the happiest – even when compared to his noble class friends who were very rich in those days.

Even the happiness money can bring you will stop after you accumulate certain amount of money – even for the most ‘greedy person’ on the Earth. Getting all the materialistic comforts money can fetch you – doesn’t require more than a million dollars [excluding the costliest places!] and beyond this point money can’t make anymore happy. My point is that, whether you have one billion or one billion billions does not practically increase your materialistic comforts and subsequent happiness.

The money can satiate only your basic needs and REALLY it can’t make you happy, speaking the truth. Literally no person on the globe is happy – irrespective of the wealth they have. But, of course all the persons might not have the same problem and each one has a problem of his own. It is interesting to see that, for the majority of the people the problem seems to be ‘lack of money’ but, this is a ‘problem per see’ only. A person having no or insufficient money is given money in surplus or enough, then that individual will get a different and new problem altogether which hitherto was not there.

This implies that, searching for happiness is like “searching for the horizon and failing to achieve the goal”. You feel you would be happy When you attain to something you are in need of – but, as soon as it is attained again you feel you are not happy and there appears a different problem altogether. Thus goes the search for happiness in the world.

So, the fact is that – nothing can make you happy in the world for ever. Nonetheless, money can make you happy to certain extent when you have certain amount of money and this certain extent is relative and will depend on factors like: how mature you are or your situation or where you live on the planet.

Thus, digging deep in to this point, the age old philosophers all over the world unanimously proclaimed that, ‘happiness comes from within’ and it could never never come from the outer world and here wealth needs no mention separately.

The true means to happiness is to grow ‘within’, to grow spiritually and there is no other way to ‘happiness’. Going after the ‘objects’ of the world could never bestow permanent joy onto you! But, this TRUTH is realized only after a long searching in the outer-world. Unfortunately, “unless the rock is hit enough by the chisel – the statue is not out!”.

Do you like this article…?

Please write your comments on this and share this article on your social networks...!

Thank you..!

# Bhargava Kotur