There are many famous and time-worn sayings that often crop up in daily conversation. For instance there’s “Many hands make light work.” Sadly, I only have two, but I get the point.
“A stitch in time saves nine” is another. I don’t sew, so I couldn’t vouch for this one. Another familiar old saw is “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
” I don’t cook, but I have broken a few eggs in my time, clumsy me. One I can truly relate to is “It was like herding cats.” I attempt that with our two on a daily basis, with varying degrees of failure.
“Money can’t buy happiness.” That old saying has been around a long time, but a recent study took issue with the fact that cash can’t provide us with contentment. The study, conducted by a senior fellow at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, showed that rich people are happier than those in the lower income brackets.
Mark Killingsworth sampled more than 33,000 employed Americans between 18 and 65 with annual household incomes of at least $10,000. These folks answered questions, ranking their feelings on a scale called “satisfaction with life.” He found the happiness gap between wealthy and middle income individuals was wider than between middle- and low-income participants.
“The difference in life satisfaction between the wealthy and those with incomes of $70,000-$80,000 was nearly three times as large as the difference between $70,000-$80,000 and the average of the two lowest income groups,” the study said. The study also found wealthy folks were “substantially and statistically significantly happier than people earning over $500,000 each year.” That’s funny, I thought people earning more than $500,000 per year were pretty darn wealthy.
Killingsworth, however, was comparing them with those he calls the “ultra-wealthy,” or people with a median net worth between $3 million and $7.9 million. Now that’s rich.
So, according to this researcher, money apparently can buy happiness. Or not. Personally, I don’t buy it.
Money can buy comfort, ease, luxuries or the simple necessities of everyday life. Money can buy cars, houses, yachts, fancy vacations, private jets and even a politician or two, but happiness? I think not. What constitutes happiness? According to Psychology Today magazine, “Happiness is a state of well-being that encompasses living a good life, one with a sense of meaning and deep contentment.
” Would I be happier if I had a zillion dollars? Not if I had no one with whom to share the riches. When my bride and I were first starting out we had plenty of love but no money. Of course all our friends, who likewise were poor college students, had no money either.
But some of our happiest memories are of the times our friends would come over for dinner. We would prepare a feast, which involved cooking hot dogs on the hibachi on the patio of our married student housing apartment. Somebody would bring chips, somebody else would bring something to drink and, voila, a pauper’s banquet.
The fare was meager, but we couldn’t have been any happier if we had been supping on filet mignon and truffles. Happiness comes from the heart, not the wallet or the bank account. Money can’t buy a beautiful sunset or the laughter of a child or a warm hug from a friend or a baby’s smile.
If you require large sums of cash to ensure your happiness, I feel sorry for you. Your pursuit of more and more riches just might leave you with less and less in the way of happiness. Happy people are open, humble, patient, compassionate and grateful.
Happy people don’t hoard their happiness, but rather they share their joy in an attempt to make other people happy. Happy people don’t think only of themselves, don’t hold a grudge, don’t feel that life owes them something and don’t sweat the small stuff. Happy people smile, a lot.
They can’t help it. They are happy, after all. Happy people don’t feel sorry for themselves, don’t insult or denigrate others, don’t consider themselves better than anyone else.
It is hard to be in a bad mood around a happy person. I know. I have tried.
My bride is persistently happy while I, in contrast, am a grump. But she gets the better of me every time, darn her. Not that happy people are always blissful, gleeful and joyous.
Life has a way of intruding on happiness. But when life threatens to drown them, happy people manage to bob to the surface and tread water until the flood subsides. I don’t believe money can buy happiness.
Stuff? Sure. But happiness? No. Now, if anyone would care to try and prove me wrong, I would be more than happy to take your money and risk being rich and miserable.
Hey, it was worth a shot..
