Money Can Not Buy Happiness

As Shakespeare said and I quote, “the world is a stage where we all have different roles to play”. Nevertheless, we all have some rights and duties towards life in general and people in particular. Some obligations, which bound us to ‘perform’ & ‘act’ in a certain manner. Money plays a vital role in life as this is something that is an essential for everyone who needs to survive because even the essentials of life are commercialized. To acquire even the basic and food & shelter, one has to work day long to have some money to buy it.

This clearly shows that there is no life without money. However, we fail to consider the fact that it only enables u to live with a few things but cannot actually buy happiness for you to live with. Apart from it being an essential, it may or may not take the form of joy. One who has it more than the basic requirement finds it a pleasure to have it but many a times looses his head and his true friends as well. Money only buys the necessities of life but doesn’t have the power of fulfilling one’s deepest intangible desires of love, friendship, trust and being care about.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have the ‘pennies from the heaven’. In fact some can’t even meet their basic needs. This is mainly because of the inequalities that have prevailed in our societies. The unequal distribution of income, which has a vital role to play in this regard, is directly effected by the prevailing socio-political and economic conditions within the country. C. W. Mills, in his book The Sociological Imagination, has emphasized on the aspect of raising the level of overall country’s prosperity.

This, as he proposed, is achievable by making efforts to reach a full employment condition by balancing all the variables in such a way that every thing gets settled in an equilibrium state. A separate school of though which completely advocates the fact that the money isn’t the actual aspect of bringing happiness to one’s life. They say that having money to a greater extent might be the ultimate source of pleasure; however, it is to certain limit. This limit though varies from person to person, but after reaching this point the utility becomes nil.

This demonstrates an important aspect i. e. money brings well-being and actually well being is the actual source of happiness. To reach a certain level of well being, only a certain amount of money might be enough, except for those who merely live for the greed of having more and more. Even several researches conducted and studies performed have yielded these results i. e. the people who have pursued for having more and more of money actually end up working late hours. Such people are going after extrinsic goals i. e.

name and fame and often undergo depression, anxiety and dissatisfaction. On the contrary, people who are after the intrinsic goals such as having a healthy social circle are actually better off. Many a times, when asked, only few people respond that they are dissatisfied. This should lead to the conclusion that the one’s which form the major part of the population should be happy. This is however not the case. Because when asked about happiness even fewer responded positively. Others were either in between or had a near-to-negative reply.

This clearly means that not only the extent of happiness is subjective, but also there are other social aspects/variables that impact on the level of happiness in one’s life. Thus money can buy you a house, but not a ‘Home’; it can buy a cozy bed, but not ‘sleep’; it can buy you a great expensive clock, but not the precious ‘time’ that has been lost pursuing for it; it can buy you the best seller and most expensive book, but not ‘knowledge’, it can buy you a position, grade, seat, authority, designation even, but not ‘respect’; it can buy you the best medicine and treatment, but not ‘health’; it can buy you blood, but not ‘life’.

So you see that money can buy a lot of tangibles and intangibles for the sake of a life that many seek to have; however, it doesn’t guarantee that you will achieve the ‘real’ benefit of having all of it and nor does it ensures that the way you get it, and whenever you get the money you desire, you will be happy with your life. So it’s better not to pursue for money for the sake of it only but rather for the sake of a better life only. References Granovetter Mark and Swedberg Richard (2001). The Sociology of Economic Life. Westview Press

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