Loving money

Happiness is complicated, and we humans don’t quite understand what it is. We think we are searching for happiness, although we might be happy just as we are. Everyone is trying to get happier, and to make more money. Does that mean money equals happiness?

What is happiness?

 We humans search for the perfect happiness, but we never actually find the happiness we are searching for. Real happiness is most often experienced when searching for what we think is happiness. Humans experience happiness differently and there is no right or wrong answer to what happiness is. Some people feel happiness when they score a goal on the soccer field, or when they have a child. Kids might feel very happy when they get a brand new PlayStation for Christmas or a new bicycle for their birthday. We don’t understand what happiness is because we are greedy, and always want more than what we have. There are many happy people, for instance in Norway. Here we are rich, and we have what we need. Still most of us think that if we raise our salary to 1 000 000 nok a year, we would be happier.

Does money mean happiness?

We definitely feel happiness from money, mostly when buying new things. When a child gets something for Christmas, or when a women buys an expensive new purse. But do we feel happy when buying something, just because of the money? Let’s say we have two persons, one with just enough money to buy a laptop he really wants and one who has won the lottery and has enough money to buy a car. If both of them were to buy the same computer, would they feel the same amount of happiness? Probably not, I think that if you had just enough money for the computer, you would be a lot happier than if you had loads more. Why? It has something to do with our greed. We don’t feel happy with what we have, we just want more. That is why money does make us happy, but only to a certain degree.

Work – Money or joy?

When youths think about work, and what they want to do when they grow,. Most of them think that they should get the highest salary possible, independent of what type of work it is. But would that make you happy? As already concluded, loads of money don’t make you happy. So if you have a boring job you are not happy with, and you make huge amounts of money,. Then maybe you won’t be happy at all.

“I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life” - Steve Jobs said in his inspirational speech at Stanford University. Everybody wants to be happy, but they have understood it wrong. Maybe if you had a way lower education and did what you enjoy doing,. You would have exactly the money you needed, and a job you enjoy. That may be the real happiness.

This article is mostly theoretical, and may not be 100% right. But we can be pretty sure that happiness is something we don’t quite understand. We can say that money is a part of it. And yes, money will make you happier, but only to a certain degree. Work is important for our happiness, and how much money you make may not be that important. Most of us feel happiness when searching for what we believe is happiness.

We would feel the absolute most happy if we had an okay paid job which we enjoy, just enough money to do what we want to do, but still believing that you are searching for the perfect happiness,. Which we don’t really know what is?