Wealth and Happiness

May 23

What Is Wealth and Happiness?

noun ˈwelth also ˈweltth

a large amount of money and possessions
the value of all the property, possessions, and money that someone or something has
a large amount or number

A man takes the elevator to the 58th floor of an office block tower in New York. Once he gets to the top floor he then looks for the service stairway and climbs the final two floors to the very top of the building. Once there access is as easy as pushing the door open. The man pushes open the door, calmly walks to the edge of the building and throws himself to certain death. He was just 38 years old.

After the enquiry took place the man had lost all of his wealth in the property crash of 2008. The man decided life no longer had any value without wealth. He had millions and although in great debt he equated the wealth with happiness. No wealth meant he no longer had happiness. No happiness for him meant no life. He ended his life.

Another man who is now in his nineties made the decision that wealth was making his life miserable. He took a decision to give all of his wealth away. That’s exactly what he did. After giving it all away he went to live on a desert island with no wealth at all. After building himself home from scraps wood he created a self-sufficient life for himself and his lover where they still live today. He felt wealth took away his humanity. Now he has no wealth but claims to be richer than he has ever been in his life. Now he says is truly happy.

It has been said the more riches we collect, the more things we have, and the larger the home, the better the car and the bigger bank balance we have we will be happier people. Yet stories and studies reveal a very different picture. The wealthy have to work hard to create their wealth. They then have to work even harder to maintain and protect what they have. Some build such huge lives around their wealth that if that wealth is removed their happiness is removed with it. Wealth is no guarantee of happiness.

Now I know we cannot run back the clock but let's turn it back a little for the sake of creating a point.

Wealth has always been measured in some way somehow.

A man in a farming village can be considered wealthy if he has the ability to build his own house. The house might be tiny with one room but the fact that he has that house gives him wealth status. Another man lives in a place where no bricks or clay is available to build a house yet if he does the same from stick and grass he is again considered wealthy. Yet another man lives in a small prestigious village.

Wealth is measured by the brand of car, the make of watch and the size and location of his house. Wealth is sought after, spoken about and measured in many ways yet the question we need to ask is does wealth equal or even create happiness? Wealth is a relatively modern belief and yes it is a belief. When I say modern I mean over the history of mankind. Wealth has always been available other leaders like the pharaohs but never really to the average person. Today a lot of average people can and do become wealthy if they make the wealth happen (it won’t happen on its own).

The problem with wealth is if you are really chasing it as your source of happiness and it never arrives you never view your life as happy.

Phillip is a man that started thinking more and more about wealth as a young man. It got so that almost every thought of every day was about and to do with wealth. He wanted more and did everything he could to get more. He saw cars he wanted and felt the only way he could get that car would be once he was wealthy. The same for houses, gadgets and all kinds of heavily promoted items associated with wealth.

Philip saw wealth as his way to becoming happy. The more he tried the less he had, the less he had the less happy he was. He started a business tried another business, took on more jobs, bought more and more on credit cards until the day came everything revealed itself. His wife left him and no wonder his debts in pursuit of wealth had now become so large there would be no possible way he could ever pay them back.

Phillip was declared bankrupt, homeless, wifeless and now had to deal with a long-distance family who was now living with his estranged wife. So the idea of wealth isn’t a bad thing but it can be a bad thing and doesn’t truly equate to a happy life (just ask any lottery winner).

What is the origin of the idea that wealth is the ultimate place of happiness?

Was the idea of wealth created by those that wanted power hence wealth gave the power of the masses or the poor. Some within the poor always wanted to break free so they saw the only way of breaking free to be through an accumulation of wealth. If they couldn’t get that wealth through ethical means they would move forward and take what wasn’t theirs with war, or other unjust means. They related wealth with power and they wanted power because the powerful had everything including happiness. Yet a reality that was maybe harder to reveal in those days showed the rich, powerful and wealthy almost always spent their lives fighting and protecting what they had through a life of paranoid thoughts.

Today’s wealth is very different. Today’s wealth is based around things, materials like large homes, large cars and an external visualization to others of what wealth can create yet it is still related to the outcome of happiness.

The modern wealthy can share all of their life on social media and other outlets for all to see yet the realities are often revealed to be far different from what the perception of that wealth is. The perception can be that here is a man that has everything. The reality is that here is a man that has everything any person could ever need yet he is a man searching for love, fighting addictions of sorts and a man in fear of losing everything.

The even bigger reality is that unless this man has paid real cash for everything he actually owns nothing of what is seen and if he owns nothing he is under the power of others he owns the cash to and that in turns means the rich man is more a slave than the poor man. His life then becomes an endless quest to stay rich or protect his riches. A man can never become his image created by his wealth, as the image is a veneer much like a coat of paint. Paint can be removed from metal yet the metal remains. The metal never becomes the paint does it?

Sadly there are many times when a wealthy person loses his wealth he also loses his identity. He believed that the wealth and riches and watches and homes were he himself. Once he is that deep into the manufactured happiness built around the dream he will find it hard to detach himself from his self-created unreality. It was never wealth he was chasing it was happiness itself but he like a world walking behind him never connected both.

Wealth is sold into humanity as a solve-all solution for almost anything ...

... yet we have seen even in recent times despite the mass of wealth Steve Jobs created he was brought unhappiness from a life shorter than he wanted. Wealth could not sustain his happiness, which as tied to life itself at that point, after all, would he have wanted to die so young?

Wealth can buy many things yet all things are temporary. The thrill and instant fulfilment of the new car brings a surge of instant happiness. The rush is so great the person buying his dream car can almost faint with excitement. Yet the new car becomes an old car the moment it is driven away. The new car then simply becomes another car that brings significance and prestige and of course joy yet that car will soon be replaced with the dream of yet another car. The cycle continues.

How many watches can a man wear?

How many homes can a man live in? How many cars can a man drive at any one time? And if he loses everything; God helps that man unless his heart is tied into reality because let's face some of the really truly wealthy are accidentally wealthy and have dedicated themselves to a life of giving rather than taking. Yes, of course, that takes us into a new thought. Is wealth to be collected and spent as if there is no tomorrow or is wealth something to be shared and given back? I do wonder are we hitting a lifetime cycle now where a previous generation or two since the last world war have seen the result of promises through wealth that have never truly materialized and this is giving birth to a new generation of global citizen that wants to help more, share more and care more? No the corporations that have created new clothing to offer a world perception that they care (when we all know most don’t).

Accumulation of anything cannot bring lasting life happiness it just isn’t possible. I’ve been alive long enough to watch the accumulators lose everything only to finish life in a sad and desperate struggle. Happiness has been a struggle for them outside their consumed wealth. Is the purpose of man simply to take as much as he can from others in his quest to buy himself as much as he can buy himself yet that man that takes has bought into the belief that consumption is the road to happiness.

Wealth isn’t always a bad thing of course. There are those that give away and give back in the spirit of a genuine need to serve others. Yes they have the security of hordes of cash in their ban accounts yet the focus is never the cash or wealth it is the serving of others. But this really takes us back to happiness. There is an ancient scripture that says, “There is more happiness in giving than in receiving”. The older I get the more I would agree. And yet I wonder and ask again has wealth replaced faith as salvation to all things? Once faith is removed (and I don’t necessarily mean church or fixed faith as even the atheist has a faith that reveals itself stronger than a church faith despite he would deny having faith at all) – yet once faith is removed the gap appears and that gap is filled with something. That’s another conversation for another time of course.

As I write I read about a man that had collected 27 famous brand sports cars. His collection was said to be worth millions upon millions of pounds. His garage space was so large that at least 50 cars could be parked at any one time. The more money he made the more cars he would buy. The garage has been built on his88 acre estate at the side of his 20-bedroom mansion. Every new deal he did he bought more, collected more and spent more. His monthly outgoings became so great they began to overtake his incomings. He could still pay for things but it became a struggle for him. Eventually, a downturn in his marketplace saw orders and deals fall rapidly.

Once they began to fall so did his personal wealth. Now the real problem was although everybody thought he was rich beyond belief he never actually owned anything. Every car was leased, his home was mortgaged to the hilt and his bank balance had run totally dry. Eventually, he was forced into bankruptcy. The strange thing was this; the man claimed bankruptcy created a new sense of genuine happiness for him. The pressure to continue to play the role had been removed, as had his debts.

Wealth cannot be a road to happiness.

It cannot be and never will be. The mantra of wealth has changed. A new generation will see wealth as a service and not gathering anymore. How do I know that? Because the natural laws that we cannot control (and barely understand) do not allow endless taking and not giving back into human society. The natural law of humanity always finds a way to reveal what is true and what isn’t true. The new generation will see this, are seeing this, have seen this and are making changes the wealthy would never even dream of. Just look at what can be seen on the web through Ted Talks with children being more change-makers than any distracted and deceived wealth chaser could ever make. Happiness and wealth as sold to you buy the mass media have no connection yet that is up to you to think about it.

I hope this helped, provoked and pushed you into thought.

Leave your comments below.

Philosophical, Writer, Futurist and playwright.

Alan Forrest Smith