CAN YOU BE HAPPY WITHOUT MONEY?

Admittedly, an answer to the above question isn’t so easy to pinpoint. This accrues from the numerous ways individuals define happiness and money, as well as how much of it is enough. Let’s quickly take a look at my concept of these two words; happiness and money. Happiness is a state of mind of an individual where one feels inner joy and satisfaction with situations or events occurring in one’s life. It is a feeling of ecstasy and the absence of worries. Money refers to any legal tender which is accepted as a means of exchange and a measure of value of goods and services. In today’s society, money comes in the form of physical cash (notes and coins) and in virtual form (electronic money). People with huge sums of money are classified as being wealthy or rich. Conversely, those who lack it so much are termed as the poor. Middle class refers to people with average income; not too much, not too little. We can clearly see and infer from the above descriptions that the amount of income a person earns or possesses is what determines their societal class, and ultimately, it is your wealth which communicates the level of respect you deserve in our human society. The big question is, should this be the case? Why should people be respected based on their net worth? Well, get used to it.  It might rather be smarter of you to start thinking of how to get money instead of pondering on a broke question.

Abject poverty is something no one yearns for. Frankly speaking, destitution creates a whole lot of misery. Life becomes so uncomfortable anytime a person goes broke for a while. Money is undoubtedly, a basic necessity. In our world today, nearly everything can be bought with money. Let’s name them. Luxurious cars, mansions, high quality food, beautiful ladies, private jets and several more. It is unfortunate but factual to state that, sometimes money could even buy life. During the period of slave trade, rich merchants used money to buy people as slaves. Even in our modern times, human enslavement hasn’t completely stopped. Millions of people have died underserving deaths at the hospitals due to their inability to foot high medical bills. For the wealthy, it isn’t any big deal to go for heart transplants, plastic surgery and other expensive operations when there is a need.

So far it does look like money rules the world, even though, there are biblical texts which accuse the love of money as being the root of all evil. I wouldn’t go that far to say the desperation for money is the main cause of transgressions. For instance, it is unconvincing to say that an armed robber who attacks people on the highways took that decision primarily because of his insatiable desire for money. Interestingly, it is rather the lack of money which fuels the spate of these atrocities.

I am yet to hear that a rich man has been caught stealing money. It is mostly the poverty-stricken who carry out these heinous crimes. Statistics show that extremely broke people have a high tendency to commit suicide. How about the countless people who have died in starvations due to lack of money? Wow! The points seem to defeat the question of whether one can live happily without money. Additionally, many people, including broke guys like myself have lost our pretty girlfriends to rich dudes before. It was so disgusting and shameful when I watched a gold digger prank video on YouTube where a married woman with kids, totally denied his husband in front of a guy with a Lamborghini car. There you go. Some women are so unpredictable, untrustworthy and very manipulative. No one should ever trust his girlfriend if you are not financially secured, aside your good looks. Many women are ready to dump their cute but broke boyfriends to go for a rich buddy with an elongated occipital region. No two ways about that. So I advise people who aren’t gifted in looks to look for money. When your money is ready, the girls will come.

How will you be happy if a rich sugar daddy snatches your girl from you, simply because you don’t have a fat bank account? Or is there someone who will be happy to lose a sick family member in a hospital because you can’t afford the cost of treatment? The truth is that poor people prefer to be happy at all cost and therefore, some sit idle and blame their plights on governments or their forefathers, for not doing enough for them. I am a motivational speaker, so I tell people, including myself that, you have no excuse to fail. The only excuse you have is that you are dead or you weren’t born. That is all. There is an idiom which goes that, an army marches on its stomach. This means that, food provides energy for any physical activity.  It is impossible to even enjoy laughter when one is hungry, meanwhile, laughter appears to be a manifestation of happiness. Again, there is a cliché that, it is only a fool who sleeps with his roof on fire. However, I hope this isn’t a quote from the bible which tells us that we shouldn’t worry about tomorrow, because, tomorrow will worry for itself. Conflicting this a bit, I don’t mean to be blasphemous, but I tell people that, your current actions dictate your future. So if you are doing nothing today, you probably have a bleak future. Case closed.

Finally, the points established so far indicate that happiness is fairly tantamount to wealth. This rubbishes the claims that money is closely associated to evil, even though, the desire for riches sometimes lead people to engage in unprintable deeds such as money rituals, prostitution and inhumanity. Billionaires such as Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and co., have spent huge chunks of their net worth on philanthropic projects. Obviously, there is nothing sweeter than money as it mostly creates a lot of comfort. I can’t remember the last time I was happy when my girlfriend asked me to send her 1-cedi credit, meanwhile, hunger was killing me. Ha-ha! LoL, that is just by the way. A Jamaican dancehall artist, Alkaline, rightly puts it, “It’s all about the money.” 

If I could rewrite the Ten Commandments, one of them would be this: Thou shall not be poor.

I end my contributions to the topic here. Work hard and think hard. One day, it will work.

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Thank you.

Writer: Robert Abalungo (Bob Bright)

BSc. Physics, KNUST

Contact: 0549086173

robaba73@gmail.com