Life, happiness and money............. If you think money can’t buy happiness, you simply don’t know how to shop! When I was a kid, back in elementary school, my instructor of English course asked the whole class a simple question, ‘What’s your aim in life”. Many of my fellow students came up with clichéd answers of how they want to become doctors or engineers or pilots or big businessmen just like their dads. But my reply was particularly different from what our instructor had in mind. Was it my innocence or sharpness, that has remained a riddle for me throughout these years- but nonetheless my response was different as I remember myself saying that I want to be happy in life. My sole aim in life was to be happy. Having faced 30 years of life with all its phases, seasons and stages, along with stringent realities and bitter truths, I cannot agree more with my younger self. I want to be happy and pursue this aim and this only. You all might just be thinking how rhetorical and clichéd this sounds and that there are thousands of other immensely important tasks required of us in life and there is no way that one subjective cliché word could become the totem of our lives. But I tell you my dear fellows, it is but happiness that ought to be derived from life. But wait, the best part is yet to come… I am not restricting you to define happiness in any particular term or limit its essence. I ask you to define happiness for yourself and then work hard in its pursuit be it money, family, friends, travel, adventure or just a quiet satisfying evening at an orphanage. Your happiness is yours to define and no one should dictate the terms of your happiness because when they do, you lose the actual value of happiness thus derived. Along my way, I have been told and retold that money is not everything and that happiness cannot be bought. I do not completely agree with this statement. Money can make you feel better about yourself and it can provide you with a cushion to fall on, however the only thing that should not be ignored while you are busy making money is the realization that inside each one of us beats a pure heart which will not beat faster on account of the ticking of a fancy watch or a pocket full of money but swells up in a simple ordained moment of joy that can or cannot be bought from money. The realization that there is more to us than we see, that our inner self is the better judge of our actions and that our soul gets contentment from purity and authenticity will get us through the darker times of our life and this realization would make us richer than any worldly material wealth will ever do. You are not a machine whose entire purpose is to start up and follow a stringent process over and over again. You are the best of the rest, the most brilliant creation of God, so do not waste your life spending a mechanized life trying to be someone you are not. Find a purpose in your life and then beat the odds to achieve it. If you think money can bring meaning in your life then show everyone you are right. Prove that a rich successful man could be the most righteous, upright and perceptive person. If you have a conscious inner-self you’ll find out that there is no big joy than to touch someone else’s life in a meaningful, compassionate manner and that the biggest of all charities is to spread joy and bring a smile on someone else’s face and trust me money can play a big role in that. So next time someone tells you that money cannot make you happy tell him that you really do not know how to spend it right and that you might not have given your first pay-check to an orphanage, or paid for a poor man’s meal because if you spend it right, money can be the most meaningful means to a great end. However there is one important thing to remember here, that money is not the end in itself… yes money could be used as a means of reaching that end but deep down we all know that the end could not be this objective, materialistic or tangible. The end ought to have more meaning, the end ought to be satisfying, soothing and fulfilling… the end is, but happiness.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Dec 2013 04:33:36 +0000