Money Doesn't Buy Happiness

I can speak to this not only as a truism but also as a life experience.

Money might buy you security but it doesn't buy happiness or real friends. I have been rich and I have been poor but mostly I would say I have been somewhere in between. My favorite parts of my life were when I was probably the poorest but had the most friends when I was under 40 years old. I liked being about 30 to age 37 the best where you know what's going on but your body doesn't hurt that much yet and you still have a lot of energy to do things.

No. Money only buys security. It doesn't buy happiness or friends or true love or anything that really matters that you absolutely can't do without (unless it is a life saving medical operation or something like that).

When I was happiest in my life I just got married for the second time and bought 2 1/2 acres of land 10 miles from the nearest small town and built an A-frame house at 4000 feet on the side of Mt. Shasta. I had a son from my first marriage who was about 5 years old and she had 2 kids from her first marriage that were 6 and 8 years old. The next 4 years we home schooled those kids and cross country skied in the winter and hiked and swam in the mountain lakes and streams in the summer. We had lots of friends that had similar interests within 20 miles of our land and gas was very cheap so we were happy. But we didn't have a lot of money, we bought organic food in bulk with 25 to 50 gallon drums of organic peanut butter, 25 pounds of organic rice and about 20 pounds of organic potatoes and ten pounds of Carob powder for making chocolate(carob milk) by mixing the carob powder and milk. We bought 25 pounds of organic powdered milk and another 25 pounds of various kinds of pasta. These were our staples. Since we were lacto ovo vegetarians we also ate cheese and bread and olives and all kinds of canned goods as well.

We owned our land outright and so we didn't have to work that hard then to get by. (Sounds like a good idea for this recession too, huh?) Only now I'm old and rich and think back fondly of being a contractor and raising and home schooling 5 to 12 year olds and hiking, skiing and teaching them about life and nature whenever I wasn't working.

Yes. Eventually, we couldn't make enough money easily to live like that so remote and had to move back to the northern California coast and buy a new business to put our kids through public school and high school in an affluent area. But I and my wife lived a mutual life long dream of living remotely in the country off the grid with a water spring on our land that we used for baths and for washing dishes and the like. We had an incredible view of Mt. Shasta and watched the sun set on it every day winter and summer, a wood cook stove and Aladdin kerosene lamps to read and study with at night ( no electricity). It was a very good life, with no phones to bother with either(cellphones hadn't been perfected yet) 1980.

So what then causes happiness? I would say being free to follow your dreams and your bliss in life causes happiness.

I my case being able to for those 5 years to live my dreams has enabled me to put up with the rest of my life no matter how good or bad it got. Totally being allowed by life to live my dreams culminated in my whole family going to India and Nepal for 4 months. Though eventually, we divorced after being married 15 years those years made the rest of my life worth living.

When I remarried in 1995 and had another daughter my life has been very secure and contented. But always I think back to those 5 years where I actually lived my dreams and no one got in my way and I home school my kids they way I would have like to have been treated rather than the abuse I received in public school. I loved college just not public grade school through high school. I think most of all I didn't like watching kids beat up and bloody for getting A's. No one beat me up because I was always very big for my age and people knew if they got me mad enough I would put them in the hospital, so people left me alone mostly. I protected as many kids as I could but you can't be everywhere all the time. Many A students were beat up every day when I grew up. Many A students just got C's because they couldn't deal with the beatings. Public School sucked and still does most places. Happiness is home schooling if you have brothers and sisters and friends.

For me, growing up, happiness would be be home schooled in the mountains or on a beautiful beach somewhere with friends and dreams. If I was a kid that would be my ideal dream. But then again, happiness might be different for every person if they really asked themselves. If they ever really allowed themselves to think about what would make them happy. What would really make you happy. Just realize money doesn't make anyone happy, only safe and secure. That's all.