Can money buy happiness?

Most of readers of this blog may answer this question by saying “Yes”, but actually the answer should be, “yes, but to some extent and depends on how you define happiness.” For some people, happiness may be just helping others in their times of need, or taking care of any family member in sickness or old age, while some may get happiness by taking care of animals. For some of the teachers, instructors or professors, happiness is helping a helping a really struggling student. I have been teaching computer science for more than twenty five years, and I get more satisfaction and happiness when my students are able to complete the projects or test with a better grade after getting my help, than getting a check for a few thousand dollar as a profit on my investment after a year.

I am sharing with my readers a column on this topic that was published in a newspaper in Pakistan in 1992, to show that my answer is still the same, as it was in 1992.

A very simple definition of happiness is that it is a state of mind at a particular time that makes a person feel something special and satisfied.

But it is a temporary state of mind. Sometimes a person may spend his or her whole life for something that he or she thinks will make him or her happy, but a sudden change in the environment or circumstances may convert the whole exercise into a sad incident.

For example, a person struggles all his life to save enough money to marry off his daughter. He is sure that this will make him very happy, but just on the day of the marriage a robbery occurs in his house—and his life’s struggle becomes a source of shock and awe, that may have long term effects not only on him, but on all his family.

It is really a pathetic that in today’s society happiness has been linked to material things and there is no end to it. A few years ago, many things were considered luxuries of life. A common man never dreamt about them, so he used to enjoy life and was happy most of the time.

Modern inventions snatch happiness from the society. The high cost of latest electronic gadgets causes unhappiness in most homes, till they purchase these luxuries of life. If they are not able to purchase these luxuries through legal means, people resort to illegal means. Thus, corruption, over invoicing, adulteration, narcotics, kidnapping for ransom, murder and in infinite list of crimes are committed to get the luxuries of life, in order to bring the state of mind called “happiness.”

A number of intellectuals have defined happiness in different ways. Robert Grudin in his book Time and the Art of Living says that “Happiness may well consist primarily of an attitude towards time.” What a nice way to link your happiness to the proper utilization of your time. We rarely realize that when we are deeply engrossed in a very interesting book or a movie we rarely have time left to worry about anything else. When we do not have to worry about anything we are happy. So therein lies one way to achieve happiness.

Happiness is associated more with the internal peace and tranquility in a person than with the number of electrical gadgets in his house, or having a few thousand rupees in the pocket or a big bank balance. There have been a number of occasions in my life when I had all the comforts of life and enough money in the bank, but I was very unhappy, because I had a small quarrel with my wife the previous night on some minor matter.

Human beings are social animal, and thus there is a constant interaction among them. So much of our happiness depends to some extent on other people in our lives. We should try our best to limit this dependence of our lives. We should try our best to limit this dependence on others.

Yes, money can buy some happiness sometimes, but it is not possible to say that money can buy all the happiness, all the time.

(published in the weekend edition of the daily Dawn, Karachi on 18^th September, 1992).

So, what do you have to say about this. I would love to have your comments, and may use it in some future blog.