There is a disease in all of us. It’s sometimes called consumerism, it’s sometimes called materialism. But at the heart of it, it’s just something really simple – wanting more.
We always want more; bigger house, bigger car, fancier phone, nicer cloths, better food. Nothing wrong about wanting more, but the question is why? Why do we always want more?
A man fresh out of college would be ecstatic at owning his first car, even if it was just a clunky old frame with four wheels. Everyone knows the feeling of receiving a full pay check for the first time. We feel immensely satisfied. We feel like we’ve just received all that we could ever want and need at the time. We feel like we have enough.
But that feeling of enough never seems to last, does it? Suddenly we just can’t live with that squeaky sound from the car, it acts up too much, and driving a clunky old thing around Sri Hartamas just feel like an embarrassment. And that paycheck - a sum that earlier felt more like more money than you ever need becomes simply not enough.
Have you ever wondered about that? Why your first small paycheque could satisfy you the way you current one cannot? Why your old Nokia 3310 with no Bluetooth, no colour screen, no MMS, no Wifi, no 3G, was enough for you back but not anymore?
When we finally work hard, slog it out, and get that bit more, it’s not quite as satisfying as you thought it would be. There still are other better things to acquire. We remain none the happier. In fact, we become more miserable because now that we’ve just got this, we already want something else.
Our needs grow in proportion to how much we have. We get hungry faster and faster because our appetites get bigger and bigger. We find the need to always be acquiring bigger, better and more expensive things just to continue being happy and satisfied. It’s a law of Diminishing Returns. You spend more and more, to gain less and less levels of satisfaction.
The fundamental reason behind all of this is actually money and how we believe that it makes us happy.
We believe in money. And why not right? We’ve all seen the power of money; it’s ability to elevate us, to give us options, to open up doors, to solve problems, to provide instant gratification, to guarantee security, to afford comfort, to pretty much take care of every conceivable worldly need a person could have and so much more. There are plenty of people who will laugh and call you naïve and idealistic for saying that money can’t buy you happiness. They will cite to you many valid examples and situations where money can indeed buy you some form of happiness, or at least contribute to it; giving your family that holiday she always dreamt of, giving your wife that giant diamond ring, giving your child that toy they’ve been wanting all year, giving your parents that massage chair for the back. It’s hard for anyone to deny the essentialness of money and its benefits. There is nothing wrong with trying to earn a living and nothing wrong with wanting to do it well. The popular phrase ‘money is the root to all evil’ is actually untrue and misquoted.
But be weary. While money affords you many good things, it also affords and cost you more than you realize. People who have an abundance of wealth afford for themselves the ability to be insulated from the world, its sufferings and its needs. They become detached and live in a bubble far from reality. Those born into wealthy families are deprived of the opportunity for self achievement, of learning the importance of money (beyond their personal comfort). As a result, they sometimes become selfish, self centred with strong feelings of self importance, yet sorely lacking in self confidence. But mostly, the lack of any sort of suffering and overflow of comfort in their lives mean they forget, or never get a chance to know how true happiness is really obtained in life.
If more money does indeed mean more happiness, why aren’t the richest people in the world also the happiest in the world? Why did Mr. Adolf Merckle who was worth billions of dollars commit suicide, while Mr Matthieu Ricard , French monk living in Tibet clinically declared the Happiest Man In the World? Mr. Merckle committed suicide after he lost the bulk of his fortune. I’m pretty sure he still had a lot of spare change, but still he despaired in life and chose to end it. Mr Ricard monk owns nothing, yet has somehow found happiness. The reason we’re still not happier after having more money is because money is meant to be a means to an end, not an end in itself. But we’ve distorted (or forgotten) that and have made money and material gains an end goal.
Let me try to propose something to you
The road to happiness in life is actually the same road to meaning and purpose. To find one is to find the other. Regardless of how much (or for most of us, how little) money you have, happiness is actually found in doing meaningful things and discovering purpose in life. A man with great wealth will still be unhappy if he cannot find meaningful things to do with their money beyond serving themselves. That’s why you see wealthy people so eager to develop other people, set up charities and fund philanthropic efforts. They are each trying to do something that has a higher purpose. And for normal people who are unhappy, what you’re really looking for isn’t money, its meaning.
What are the deeper meanings things in life then? What higher purpose should we be aiming for then? What ARE the things we should do in life that will make us happy?
There’s no need to try to tell you what these things are. I suspect that deep down inside, each of us personally know what that is. But I’ll tell you this much –it’s not by adding onto ourselves, and its not by making even more money.
Cheers.
Other similar things I wrote here and here
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