Can you be happy without money?

[Liibaan]

Many of you are probably think it is impossible to be happy without Money. For instance, majority of you with certainty will say "Yes, we are happier" as your paycheque grows or as you may receive significant raise from your employer or in some cases from welfare system. Whatever your case is, I found this topic very interesting and worth discussion.

 

Happiness can be looked at as a mixture that contains many solutions, ranging from visible components to undetectable atoms. Furthermore, these components and atoms come to homogenous and diverse combinations and have different magnitude from individual to individual.

 

However, the ultimate question is could money be out of the picture.

To formulate a viable answer, first it is important to excavate the nature of the surrounding of being happy human being. First, what are the elements / atoms that make us happy? What are the favorable combinations? Is there an ultimate point of happiness?

 

Here are some of elements / atoms that perhaps found in the pool. It is easier to classify to quantitative and qualitative factors, which possibly retain inflating or deflating consequences on individual’s state of happiness: Quantitative factors are, for example, wealth accumulated, person’s current income, person’s investment, outstanding debt, married or not, number of children does the person have and so on. Qualitative factors are more decoding person’s emotional feelings, for instance, is your job meaningful to you, do you find what you do pleasurable, how close are you to your family members e.g. to your wife, to your children, are you spiritual for the right reason, how do you interpreter pain, how do you define loss / failure and so on.

 

In Fact, all above variables play different roles in the model some are exogenous and others are endogenous. In order, to incorporate them in this broad model in a favorable form it’s very important to measure their magnitude with caution. However, for the sake of précis, I will make two key break-downs. For simplicity, will interpolate how individual’s state of mind and state of their bank account correlate with individual’s ultimate currency –Happiness.

 

As the bank account gets healthier the less constrains out there, to build satisfactory environment around us. This directly will lift our state of mind; this could be view as a linear line with positive slope. Moreover, as we adjust with changes and increase our consumption with fix income the line will get flatter as slope approach to zero. At close ranges of income it is notable to see indifference of state of mind because lifestyle in which we can obtain with that close range of income is ultimately will be the same. Therefore, the individual is not happier; zero slope mean zero change in qualitative measure of happiness.

 

Is there an ultimate point of happiness? I doubt, naturally we are hunt and gathers, therefore, as long as there is a room to accumulate extra unit of wealth so does our welfare utility increases. But, does that mean we are better-off – happier. During the course it is likely that individual’s marginal utility of return to fall. Now the interesting question is what will substitute to improve degree of happiness as money becomes irrelevant?

[RedSea]

This question has already been given an answer in the Quran, so there is no dispute. If you ask what that is? well let me pull out by Quranic text and I quote from Allah Subxanahu watacalaa "God promises those among you who believe and lead righteous life, that He will make them sovereigns on earth, as He did for those before them, and will establish for them the religion He has chosen for them, and will substitute peace and security for them in place of fear. All this because they worship Me alone, without setting up any idols besides Me. Those who disbelieve after this are the truly wicked" (24:55).

 

If money was the key to happiness, we wouldn't have seen the millionares and billionares commiting suicide. Happiness comes from our hearts and could only be gained when Allah is satisfied with that individual, one could have the mountains worth of gold and still wouldn't be enough to make him/her happy, it's a fact that has been proven already.