Is money equal to happiness?
No. If it was, then everyone who was rich would be glad, not sad. Unfortunately, if we look around, the lives of many of the rich and famous are riddled with problems, misery, and even suicide. Surely, happiness is not solely dependent on wealth. Yes, happiness is the goal of life, but happiness is not just about being rich. It is a myth that ONLY money makes people happy.
Not everybody wants money to be happy. Some may seek happiness in other forms of achievement be it sports, art or literature. Artists and sportsmen are also passionate about success that is ultimately nothing else but happiness. Even a politician is seeking happiness through his achievement in public life. But to each of them, money, wealth, and achievement are very important. It seems like their ultimate goal of life is achievement, money, success, wealth, and eventually happiness.
Material pleasures, of course, make us happy, but do they create unending pleasure? Such pleasures could make us happy for the moment, but they fail to create fulfillment or grant us the peace of mind that takes us to the true peak of happiness.
A few are fortunate to transcend from achievement to fulfillment, to stop seeking happiness from pleasure, and to live a life of contentment and fulfillment in peace and tranquility. In most cases, making money is such an addictive habit that the achievers forget that there is also something called – Making a Difference.
How does it matter? Even I was making money. It was just money, money and more money – whether it meant to have deposits in the bank, gold that glittered, or properties and assets that made ones net worth sparkle. We become blind to everything else in the chase to make money.
However, I was fortunate that my success opened new doors that gave me more happiness and more joy than money ever did.
I started serving the poor on the streets of Bangalore. In the nights, I would take food packets and distribute to the people who were hungry, sleeping on the streets, or distribute blankets to these people freezing in the chill winter. This gave me a very different kind of happiness, a joy that I realized money couldn’t buy. I was still making money and enjoying the exhilaration of success. But I was fortunate that my humanitarian heart gave me more quality happiness from the compassionate work that I was doing.
There are people in this world whose happiness does not stem from wealth. To them, making a difference is far more rewarding than making money. They would make magnanimous contributions to service groups rather than invest in personal assets. These are very few who are fortunate to realize that happiness is not just about being rich.
All these years, there were seeds of compassion and inspiration in me, but I was racing down the achievement track to be happy. By now, my retail stores were generating more profits than I could spend. No doubt, I was extremely happy, but there was no peace. Life of success is a life of problems because achievements attract more challenges than one can imagine.
I was just going to embark upon a new project called Kemp City envisaged on 200 acres of land, with an amusement park, a casino, a golf course, hotels, restaurants, shopping malls, and everything one could dream of. It would be connected to the city via helicopters and special shuttles. But then… the question came to my mind, “How would this improve the quality of my life?” What would it