Try this. Randomly meet people and ask “What do you want in life?” most if not all will reply, “good job, own house, lots of money that can fetch all I want’. Today good life, happiness or success is somehow equated with being moneyed or affluent. All our modern day pursuits, be it education, jobs, marriage, child rearing practices, even lifestyle and relationships are geared around this ubiquitous commodity- money. Today’s needs need money. Most often we measure ourselves and allow others to measure us based on what we have rather than what we are. Prestige, power and Status of individuals, society and nations are all determined by accumulated wealth. This makes wealth the most hotly chased goal, yet it remains ever elusive, since reaching satiety level in acquiring it is rarely ever possible by most of us.

However, does affluence really bring happiness as is so ardently believed? Research has shown that money and happiness actually have a curvilinear relationship. This means that, while money to an extent indeed provides happiness and comfort, after a level, money and happiness become unrelated and beyond certain level money may have an adverse effect on happiness. This phenomenon is perhaps evident if one looks at some of the human indices around the world. For instance, to gauge a nation’s happiness level its suicide statistics becomes a telling point and not its GDP and economic conditions as is normally done. Clearly the lesser the suicide rate higher is the happiness index and vice versa.

Let us look at the figure below provided by WHO, which  strangely shows some of the more affluent countries like Japan, Switzerland and Denmark having higher rates of suicide compared to India that ranks among the poorest of nations. In fact, United States, one of richest countries in the world has the same suicide rate as that of India.

Ironically, human pursuit of wealth in search of happiness seems akin to the foolhardiness of Tithonus. He was a Greek mythological prince who asks Eos, the Goddess of dawn for the gift of immortality, which she readily grants him. But he forgets to ask for eternal youth along with immortality.  Alfred Tennyson, the Victorian poet in his poem “Tithonus” very poignantly described the agony of the ever ageing prince who carries the burden of “immortal age” sans youth.

Aren’t most of us like Tithonus? Isn’t happiness dependent on small everyday pleasures rather than wealth?