I love this money quote. It totally answers the age old question of whether it is really true that money won’t buy you happiness?
It always makes me laugh when someone says that money won’t bring you happiness. I’m always thinking to myself, “Well neither will being broke, so what’s your point?”
Typically, the speaker is someone who has money. On top of that the speaker usually doesn’t know 1st hand the emotional strain of poverty both personally and socially. More than that they don’t know the psychological impact of not being able to meet the basic needs of a family.
Sure happiness is not entirely predicated on your bank account. On the other hand, happiness isn’t entirely predicated on any one thing. Happiness is based on a culmination of factors. What money does, however do, is facilitate the actualization of many of those factors. For instance, what parent with money isn’t happy about being able to adequately provide for their children?
Besides that, saying that money won’t bring you happiness further insinuates a rather negative disposition towards money. The statement almost gives off a certain judgmental tone that expects the listener to share a certain disdain for money. Again, this judgment is coming from the speaker who likely has money. This, in turn, indirectly leaves the listener feeling guilty for desiring to acquire equal monetary status to that of the speaker.
Then, even in the event that the speaker does not have money, the alternate is usually that they don’t have money and are thus projecting their dissatisfaction onto you as a result of it. This person purports to hate money and anything associated with it and as a result they want you to share in their misery.
At either rate the speaker is projecting their life dissatisfaction onto you. The expectation is for you to receive their opinions about money as truth. However, you get to formulate your own truths. So ultimately, if the truth that you have declared for yourself is that money will buy you happiness than so be it. Will that truth to be so in love and live life to the fullest my friend.
What about you? Have you held the premise that it is really true that money won’t buy you happiness? How has that impacted your life?
