“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they
don’t want to impress people they don’t like.”— Will Rogers
***
If we have money – lots of it – we think we can be happy. Sure, money can buy happiness, some people claim. They can always use money to go to another country, to buy what they want, to use other people for their own contentment.
But at the end of the day, you may conclude that money isn’t everything. The happiness you get from having money is not at all total happiness. Once the money is gone, happiness is gone, too.
You get to know your friends – if they really are your friends – once you don’t have any money. They are your friends only because you have the means, the capabilities, the power, and the wealth.
Let me tell you a story told by Willi Hoffsuemmer. Read it silently and learn a lesson or two from it:
There was once a poor shoemaker who was always in a good mood. He was so happy that he sang from morning to night. There were always children standing at his window and listening to him sing.
Next door to him lived a very rich man. He spent his nights counting his money, and then went to bed in the morning, but he could not sleep because of the shoemaker’s singing. One day, he figures out how he could keep the shoemaker from singing.
So, he invited the shoemaker to come over and see him. He did. To his great surprise, the rich man gave him a little bag filled with gold coins. When the shoemaker got back home, he opened the little bag. Never in his life had he ever seen so much money.
The shoemaker counted it all out carefully, and the children watched him. It was so much that he was afraid to let it out of sight and so he took it along to bed at night. But even there, he kept thinking about the money and could not sleep.
So, then he got up and took the bag of money up to the attic. But on second thought, he was afraid it was not safe there. So, the next morning, he brought the money downstairs again.
He then thought of hiding it in the fireplace. “But I’ll just put it in the chicken coop. No one would look for it there,” he said to himself.
But he was still nervous about the money and so he dug a deep hole in the garden and hid it there. He was so preoccupied with the money that he never got back to making shoes. Nor could he sing any more. He was so worried that he could not produce a single note. And worst of all, the children did not come around to visit him any longer.
Finally, the shoemaker was so unhappy that he dug up the money and hurried back to his neighbor with it. “Please take this money back,” he said. “Worry about it has made me sick, and even my friends do not come to see me anymore. I would rather be a shoemaker like I was.”
Soon, the shoemaker was again as happy and contented as before and he sang and worked the whole day.
If the story makes you contemplate with your life, then here’s another similar story but different which was written by a certain De Mello:
A barer was passing under a haunted tree when he heard a voice say, “Would you like to have seven jars of gold?” He looked around and saw no one. But his greed was aroused, so he shouted eagerly, “Yes, I certainly would.”
“Then go home at once,” the voice said. “You will find them there.”
The barber ran all the way home. Sure enough, there were the seven jars – all full of gold, except for one tat was only half-full. Now the barber could not bear the though of having a jar half-filled.
He had all the jewelry of his family melted into gold coins and poured them into the half-filled jar. But the jar remained as half-filled as before. This was exasperating! He saved and skimped and starved himself and his family. To no avail. No matter how much gold he put into the jar, it remained half-filled.
So, one day, he begged the king to increase his salary. His salary was doubled. Again, the fight to fill the jar was on. He even took to begging. The jar devoured every gold coin thrown into it and remained stubbornly half-filled.
The king now noticed how miserable and starved the barber looked. “What is wrong with you?” he asked. “You were so happy and contented when your salary was smaller. Now, that it has been doubled, you are so worn out and dejected. Can it be that you have the seven jars of gold with you?”
The barber was astonished. “Who told you this, your Majesty?” he asked.
The king laughed. “These are obviously the symptoms of the person to whom the ghost offers the seven jars. He once offered to me. I asked if this money could be spent or was merely to be hoarded and he just vanished without a word. That money cannot be spent. It only brings with it the compulsion to hoard. Go and give it back to the ghost this minute and you will be happy again.”
See, happiness is not just about money and wealth. I know, some of you will still argue that money matters when it comes to happiness. But having lots of money means wanting more. You can never be satisfied with what you have. You will long for more wealth. And in the end, you lost completely the happiness which you had before.
