According to popular belief, happiness cannot be obtained through wealth.
Whoever first said this obviously never experienced the struggle of coming home without enough money to feed their family. They also never had a tin can filled with all the money their family needed to survive, a tin can that used to hold wafers. All their lifetime earnings were contained in that rusty, old tin can. They never had to take their fourteen-year-old son out of school to help prevent their meager house from being taken away by heartless government officials who, like predators, prey on those with fewer resources.
Whoever coined this statement likely enjoyed a comfortable, perhaps even luxurious, life and made it as a casual remark that eventually gained popularity as a profound philosophical phrase. This person did not experience a life without money. However, I do. And perhaps they are right, money cannot buy happiness, but it certainly provides an opportunity for it.
What wore me down was not the absence of money but the absence of hope for anything more. The prospect of my children having empty aspirations and facing monotonous lives in the steel and factory industry not only for the rest of my life but also for their own, forming a relentless cycle. There was no opportunity for them to have a better life than the one we were shamelessly living. Dreaming and fighting for wishes seemed futile.
There was no hope for the better future that we so wanted for them. However, I woke up a new man, in a new life, with a new and renewed future after a one-dollar lottery ticket rewarded me with five million dollars and my family with a life worth living. Our home transformed from a shack into a house with painted walls and a refrigerator.
Every day, my son felt exhausted not from working long hours, but because his teachers assigned homework every night. In addition to having a safe in our house for our precious belongings, we also had a bank account to store our money. However, despite all this, something was still missing – my life didn’t feel complete.
Despite my efforts to fill the void in my life with money, it reverberated through every aspect. Deep inside, I longed for a simpler life filled with family joys that money couldn’t provide. Sadly, those moments had become rare. Our busy work schedules deprived us of family dinners and even affected our relationship as husband and wife. The intimacy we once shared was slowly diminishing, evident by the fact that we no longer slept in the same bed despite living in a four-room house.
Even though I believed that attaining financial stability would align everything, I discovered it actually distanced me from becoming the person I aspired to be. Yet, despite the uncertainty about my future, having money did grant me the long-awaited freedom.
It granted me the ability to dream bigger and strive to turn those dreams into reality. The common belief that money cannot bring happiness holds some truth in my experience of having lived in abundance and scarcity. While money cannot directly purchase happiness, it does provide a sense of hope.
