Does money equal happiness?

Let me explain the words in the sentence before I answer the question. Equal is a verb used in mathematics to show that 2 quantities are the same, so 2 equals 1+1 or 100=50+50. Happiness is a noun that comes from the adjective happy. Happy is content or in a good mood. An example is I am happy when I play football because I love to play football. Happiness is the noun form of happy. So the question, one more time, was, Does money equal happiness?

This is an impossible question to answer because there is no one answer. So today I will break this question into 5 different ways to think about it. Are you ready? Let’s get started.

The first question I have is, What is happiness? Can we define happiness in different ways? One person might say that happiness is feeling good. Another might say that it is laughing. Another might say that it is reaching a goal or achieving something that you wanted to do. There are many different definitions of happiness, so before you can answer this question, you need to think about what happiness really is, and I think that we can see that happiness is defined differently by each person.

Let’s also consider the differences between short term happiness and long term happiness. Short term is something that happens for a short time, something now and in the moment. Long term is something that takes many years or that we will feel at the end of our lives. If we are looking for short term happiness then we will do whatever we want to do right now. Usually this can involve money because money can buy us as activity or an object that will make us happy right now. But if we think in the long term, this happiness usually comes from another place. I can go and run for 60 minutes and I will probably not feel happy because I will be tired and my feet will hurt. But tomorrow I will feel happy because I will know that I am more in shape than the day before.

Different people will have different opinions on this question based on the conditions of their life. One condition that can change the way a person thinks is their wealth, or how much money they control. A rich person can usually buy everything they need and most things that they want so 1 more dollar will not make a big difference. A rich person will be more likely to find happiness outside of money because more money will not make them happier. But a poor person who cannot buy the food they want or the house they want or the car they want may find that more money does bring them happiness.

Another condition that can change a way a person thinks is their age. A young person, let’s say 25 years old, has lots of life to live and lots of time to use money to buy things or experiences, so for a young person having money will help them live a happy life. If I have money I can buy a plane ticket to go to visit a new country and this can make me happy. But for an old person, or an elder, they will have less time to live and money will affect or change their life in (fewer) ways. They will probably value different forms of happiness like their family or their children or their experiences and their memories of these experiences. When an old person dies, their money will do nothing for them.

You probably already know my opinion about this question. It’s true I don’t think that money equals happiness, because of my definition of happiness. For me, happiness happens in the brain. It is a response to something that happens around us. Money does not change my emotions. Money doesn’t change my reaction to things happening in my life. This is just my opinion and I know that many people would agree with me, and many people would disagree. I'm asking you today to think about how different conditions and different definitions will change the way that people respond to this question.

I have a proposition for this question because it's an interesting question, but I think we can change it to make it more compelling. What if we substituted the word money with power