Money Can't Buy Happiness
Isla Wilson
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"Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation?" - Jane Austen
When on the topic of happiness, the song In a Mist by Duncan Browne comes to mind. The song isn't explicitly about happiness, or anything of the sort — in its own sense, it seems tragic. The lyrics allude themselves to infidelity and temporary love, neither of which seem "happy" at all — but it's in these remarks to his memory that the speaker finds joy. A fleeting joy, one constantly bating itself from his mind, but a joy nevertheless.
There are certainly troubles that get in the way of things. We find ourselves relying on simple pleasures, like memories, to feel elated again. A memory can distract us at any time of the day — at work, at home, at school.
Other things work to make our time easier — spending time with the people we love, helping them, helping strangers. Kindness makes people happy. However, it isn't enough.
If you were to ask someone what they wished for most to be happy, the answer would most likely be money. Over 60% of Americans spend their lives living paycheck to paycheck — among them was a young woman named Megan Robbins. When Megan was twenty-nine years old, she'd spent years working through a divorce, hopping from home to home and job to job out of desperation for her two daughters. The idea of happiness was a pipe dream only achievable through money they could never have.
By Christmas, she was at a loss. There were no decadent trees or rows of string lights where they lived. There was no Christmas feast.
She grew up with hesitance to rely on others, but her only goal was to make her children smile. And if seeing them smile meant asking for help, then that was really alright. With her sister, she signed up for the Salvation Army's Angel Tree Program.
"I remember they asked — do your kids want bikes? And I said no! Bikes? No, they need coats. We didn't have coats. And I mean… you didn't just get coats. You also got a lot of toys. They were so kind. We rounded all of the gifts up in the living room, and you were both so happy. We didn't really spend a lot… but you thought it was the best Christmas ever." she says. They were poor, but, at least for that moment, they were happy.
The Angel Tree Program assists over one million children across the United States. 12% of Americans are below the poverty line, which is nearly 35 million people.
There are hundreds of studies proving that money does not ascertain happiness, though lots of people would say the opposite. Centuries of money-focused culture have made people believe that it is the only thing. The Easterlin paradox, however, states that countries do not grow happier as they grow richer. Happiness is a universal feeling.
Well, money can certainly buy happiness. Can it, though? To what extent can money create integrity and love? Research published in PNAS shows how Indigenous peoples without an established currency system report incredibly high happiness levels. "Prior work would suggest that family and social support and relationships, spirituality, and connections to nature are among the important factors on which this happiness is based" (McGill 1).
For Megan, it was seeing the joy she could bring to her children which made it memorable for her, too. She says she wished she had had more money to make her kids happy, but her presence and effort was what really mattered. Had she spent hundreds of dollars on Christmas yet been absent or away, it would have been all for nothing. What mattered was that she was there for them and that she loved them more than anything.
Money can buy vacations. It can buy expensive things. But it can't buy love and it can't buy the time you choose to spend with others.
When you ask people what the key to happiness is, a lot of them will probably say money. When you ask them what happiness is, they may say the same thing.
Or they may say that happiness is what you do with your time — the time you dedicate to others, the time you dedicate to yourself. They may say that happiness is all of your time from the past, present, and the future melded into one.
Happiness at its fullest is a melting pot of love. Your entire life is love. It's all we have.
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