John McLean
Section 9
Installment 2
For my second installment I choose a chapter titled
“Happiness, Money, and Giving it Away” which directly addresses the question,
can making more money make you happy. From just looking at the title I was
certain that the answer to this question would be different with each person.
Personally I love to travel and am determined to see the world, but traveling
can be expensive. As much as I hate to admit it, making more money would let me
travel more, which would make me happier.
However this chapter made a few very interesting points, the
main of which being a study conducted by Princeton University that found that
“Americans in the middle-income range have a level of happiness that is almost
identical to well-off American families” and that people that had a higher
income “spent more time in actives that are associated with negative feelings,
such as tension or stress”. These activists were defined as commuting to and
from work or simply being at work longer. I was able to associate this to my
former neighbor. While he makes a good living and now lives on a golf course,
he drives an hour to work each way and is not particular happy at his work.
Because he spends so much time in his car he isn’t able to enjoy the golf
course he now lives on, also because he is not happy at is work, he is stressed
to a point that even if he did have time to enjoy his new golf course he would
probably not enjoy a round of golf and would prefer to just eat dinner and
watch TV.
The chapter offers an answer to why my neighbor might have
stuck to his stressful life instead of quitting and just playing golf, which is
“making money gives us something to do that feels worthwhile, as long as we do
not reflect too much on why we are doing it”. But if you work to only make
yourself feel worth while then I would argue that we you not living to your
full potential, and would bring up Warren Buffet. Mr. Buffet has worked hard
for many years to build a massive fortune of $42 million, and was ranked the
second richest man in the world. It is also known that despite his massive
fortune Mr. Buffet lives on a tight budget and does not spend massive amounts
of money at one time. So why continue working after making his first few
millions and live a happy life in the same manner? In my opinion its pointless and his work went
in vain since he would never use the money. However it is also important to
know that he did not let his money go to waste, while he did not necessarily
enjoy his money as I might have, Mr. Buffet has given the single largest charitable
donation even when compared to John D. Rockefeller. While this might be a
stretch, I do believe that Mr. Buffet did live to his full potential by
continuing his work to help the lives of others. While I no longer believe that
simply earning more money will bring you more happiness, I would argue that
money has the ability to allow to do what makes you happy but is not
necessarily important to happiness itself.
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