Pauline's Blog: Does money actually make us happy?

I remember when I was a kid, on my birthday, first of all my mum would always wish me good health, followed by happiness and success. Even to this today, she still tells me that health is the most important gift we could ask for. I must admit I didn’t understand what she meant back then. I was hoping she would wish for me to become the best student in my classroom, the prettiest or the richest and most successful journalist.

I felt that having lots of money was more important. You could buy everything and be happy. You can even “buy” your health, I believed. At least that’s what the TV films and the society I grew up in made me think.

In Greece, where I come from, when there is a problem or an issue in our lives, we take a deep breath and say “on top of all is health” and everything else can be solved. Instead of cheers we toast “to our health”.

Yes, I do agree that health is very important, but can we not “buy” it? I mean if we are rich we can pay for better doctors, go to better hospitals, have the best medical therapies or buy the best medication on the market.

I am thinking that if two people, one very poor and one very rich, both have the same serious illness and both need to go to the hospital and be treated, who’s more likely to survive?

The poor person might not even be able to afford the hospital fees in some countries, while the rich person can travel the world and find the best specialists and professionals.

See for example Ashya King’s story, when his parents abducted him from a hospital in Southampton, so he could receive a better – and more expensive – treatment abroad, against medical advice. The boy received a costly proton beam treatment and managed to survive.

I sometimes also feel that our main purpose on earth today is to make money, so we can survive. From six years old until 18 we go to school and study, we learn things so we can get into university. Then at university we study a degree, do work placements so we can find a job and have money. It seems like all our lives we are working to make money, become rich, enjoy the material luxuries and have a stable life for ourselves, our families and children.

So it is obvious that money does matter a lot in every person’s life. How happy can it make us though?

In 1964 The Beatles sang “I don't care too much for money, for money can't buy me love” and indeed money cannot buy everything, like I used to think when I was younger.

January 2016 has been a very sad month in the “celebrity world”.

Legendary English musician David Bowie passed away on January 10^th, at the age of 69 after secretly battling liver cancer for several months. Later, on the 14^th of January, Harry Potter’s Severus Snape, actor Alan Rickman died from pancreatic cancer. On the same day, René Angélil, singer, manager and husband of superstar Celine Dion died after a long, 18-year battle with throat cancer. Only two days later, Dion’s brother, Daniel died from the same disease.

All these people had a few things in common; yes they all died in January 2016 and yes they all died from cancer, but they were also all rich and famous.

Maybe money helped them “buy” a few more days of their lives and live a little bit longer, but the ending would have been the same whether they were rich or not.

I realise that my mum has always been right; health is more important than money or any material object. If you are healthy you can work hard and maybe become rich, but no matter how rich you are, if you are not healthy you will not live long enough to enjoy your money and the rewards of your work.

I suppose money makes us partially happy because if we are rich, we don’t have to care about money, about jobs and how can we pay our bills. We would probably only worry about how we could become even richer.

I think it is a common misconception that lots of money does make us happy. Of course I don’t underestimate the power of money and its importance in our lives, but what if we don’t have special people around us to share our happiness? And I think one of the main ingredients to happiness is health.

Maybe we could have both happiness and money – although it is very rare – but for sure money alone won’t make us happy.