If you think it would be great to be rich, famous and successful, well, maybe. Or maybe you will end up being stabbed to death by your own son like Rob Reiner.
If you think it would be great to be born rich and handsome and never have to struggle, well, maybe. Or maybe you, like Nick Reiner, will drift into the life of a homeless drug addict by the time you are 15 and then end up murdering your parents with a knife at 32.
Fate cannot give you happiness. Money cannot give you happiness. Fame cannot give you happiness.
Only you can do that.
You do not have problems because of evil billionaires or immigrants or the Elite or the woke mob or the Illuminati. You have problems because everyone has problems. You struggle because life is a struggle. If you think money would fix your problems, consider the Reiners. If you think you just need a break, well, Nick Reiner got plenty of breaks.
If your heart is sick, no amount of money will cure you. If your mind is sick, success will not fix you.
If mind is healthy and your heart is full of love, then you will thrive.
3 comments:
Money is a resource that can be converted into options. It can be well utilized, or poorly utilized, but it's still a resource, and people still need it, because people need options.
People complaining that they don't have enough money are complaining that they don't have enough options - because they lack the basic resource necessary to obtain options in our society.
Telling poor people to be happy with their lack of options is disgusting behavior for someone who has ample options that others simply do not enjoy. Telling them that they don't NEED options because they would just use them badly anyway is wildly condescending and hypocritical, on top of being nauseating.
Your privilege is showing, and it's not pretty.
Imagine we were instead talking about fresh water, and we lived in a society in which millions of people barely had enough water to survive, and a select handful had their own private ocean-sized reservoirs.
Imagine someone who has never gone thirsty look down on those who are barely getting enough water to function, and then telling them their general lack of water doesn't cause their problems, their negative mental states and their using it badly causes their problems.
Imagine that individual patronizing the water-poor by telling them a cautionary tale of a man who more water than he could ever drink, but who died by drowning.
Imagine that individual telling others to just be happy with less water, remain positive, and just use their limited water wisely and efficiently, and then they will thrive. Nevermind that the individual in question has no such onus placed upon himself, and gets to enjoy the luxury of his own water use inefficiency without risking sickness, calamity, or even death.
Do you begin to understand, John? I sincerely hope you do.
Phenomenal response, G. Verloren.
John, in some ways, you make a fair point: it is possible to be rich and unhappy. There are people born into rich families that make terrible decisions. There are also plenty of people who aren't rich but have loving families and fulfilling jobs.
But be careful about suggesting that there's no connection between wealth and happiness at all. Of course there is! There are plenty of poor people around the world who live brutal, depressing lives that you and I can't even imagine.
The problem with the 'money can't buy you happiness' mantra is that it lets the speaker off the hook. It's basically saying wealth inequality, let alone poverty, don't affect whether a person has a good and meaningful life, and therefore we don't need to worry about them.
Rob Reiner's tragic death may tell us something about the inherent unpredictability and fragility of human existence. But I don't think it tells us anything at all about whether or not there's a connection between money and happiness.
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