Can money buy
happiness
Money has certainly made life convenient but we shouldn’t
confuse convenience with happiness. Money might be able to buy predisposing
factors to happiness but not happiness per se. Worth of a thing can be gauged
by the placement of value by people. Money to a toddler won’t make him happy.
Money can buy a candy that can make a kid happy but not the money itself. Now,
candy can be presented to the kid from a plethora of ways like baking,
stealing, borrowing, the kid finds pleasure in biting into the candy and not in
finding the source of its appearance. Money doesn’t make him happy but the
candy does. It’s like saying money can buy a house but not
home.
Money is a recent development, imagine the era of
prehistoric civilization where there was no monetary concept, were our
forefathers grumpy and sad all the time without even an iota of happiness in
them? Well, if you still argue that money can indeed buy happiness, let’s
exhume a rotting carcass from a graveyard, cram a billion Ngultrums* in his
coffin and place the corpse back. Let’s return the day after and see if the
corpse’s smiling.
Happiness is not a product at a sales counter that money can
buy.
Karma Thukten
2nd of February, 2021
Lamaigoempa
