Why must we make money? I have written a few stories around money on this happiness blog around money, and I realize a lot of them have revolved around the idea that it doesn’t buy happiness. I will leave the links to the stories at the end of this post.
But they say that the world revolves around money. So, there has to be a lot of good to money. There is, and I agree. In this story, I will share everything I know about why it is absolutely essential to our lives.
Let’s get started- why must you and I make money.
1. A fuel to live a good life
You cannot live without money. You have a car and you are going somewhere. Money is the fuel in your car. You cannot move without the fuel. Your life gets stuck, and you are stuck. Do not, therefore, disparage money.
Make money so that you can move towards your goals, spend money on them so that you can keep doing what you want to do. If you don’t have money, you cannot do whatever you want to do.
We must make money to be able to live our lives in any way you want to live. No money, no life.
2. It does create the foundation for happiness
Money may not buy happiness directly, but it helps create the ecosystem for you to be able to create happiness. You can pursue your passion, which takes money. Or, you can start a business, and every business takes some sort of an upfront investment, which you can only do if you have cash in your bank account.
It helps you eat well, afford housing for yourself and your family, which are basic human needs, without which you cannot rise towards the higher ladders of the Maslow hierarchy.
So, it does enable happiness, if it doesn’t buy it. Sure, someone may have a lot of cash in the bank and not know what to do, with it, which is a question of motivation or purpose. But, having funds in the bank is not a bad thing to have at all.
3. Money is not evil
It is a tool, just like technology. It is not by any means, evil. Money is only evil, when it is put into objectives which could be harmful for humans like terrorism or unethical businesses like unrestricted mining which leads to erosion of natural resources. You may also say marketing smoking and alcohol are unethical because they, after all, reduce life spans are depressants in the name of stimulants. Is the money the companies that make these products evil? That’s anyone’s answer, and you could answer this, depending on your morals.
It is a tool, and when it’s leveraged in the benefit of humanity, it could and does make the world a better place. Think of the profit google makes from its search engine, or the money Apple makes from their products. They have made the world a better place through innovation, and it is good money to have.
4. Money gives you cushion to fail, well, till you succeed
Countless people in the world are never able to do things that make them happy. In order to do what you want; you need a financial cushion- savings in the bank or cash reserves in the case of business.
If you want to pursue passion projects, you will need to keep aside some funds. You can use that to fund your passion projects, or just to fund your survival during the period you are experimenting. Cash gives you that cushion so you will not perish, while you are trying to monetize something that excites you.
5. Money could buy you freedom
If you make enough cash that you have met your basic needs, and have saved for the hard times, that may come, you could become free to do anything you want with your life. Most of us are NEVER able to reach this point, since life becomes a struggle between survival and actualization, and we get stuck in the cycle of survival, never being able to actualize. To actualize is to find true happiness.
If you have enough money from any source that it can fund your life, you are free to do anything you want with your life. This allows you to experience two of the most important emotions any human being can experience: freedom and happiness.
6. Money buys everything it can buy
It may not buy love or happiness directly. But it can buy you a house, a car, a factory, a club membership and everything that makes life convenient, creating space for both love and happiness.
We do need everything it can buy, so that we can focus on what money can’t buy. Unless we can afford the basics of life, and have our basic needs in place, we would not be able to go to things money can’t buy. We will continue to struggle with survival.
Maslow, again, would agree.
7. Money is essential for survival
In order to sustain your survival, money is essential. Everything that we need to survive- food, shelter, water comes with money as the medium of exchange, and hence survival is dependent on it.
If you cannot survive, you cannot move to the higher order needs of life, which could make you happier in the long run. Considering you don’t have money, your survival could be at stake. If you are an artist, you need some cash to keep making art. You don’t want to be a starving artist.
Starving artists die, in oblivion. Oblivion is not quite a great place. You don’t want to belong there.
8. Money makes you feel confident
When you have money in the bank you feel confident about taking risks with your life. They say the greatest risk is taking no risk at all. If you don’t take risks, you won’t be able to grow. You can only take risks when you have some cash to risk. If you have none to risk, you would go the safe and secure way, of trying to find a job, and staying at the job that you may or may not like. It is not a bad idea to accumulate some savings in the bank before you decide to take some risks, to move to a job or a career that would make you happy, if that’s the only option you have.
It gives you the confidence to take risks, risks that could improve the quality of your life.
9. Pays for the lifestyle that you want
If you want to live a lifestyle that gives you good company, great food, shelter, travel etc., you need the cash to afford all of that. It affords a lot of things that could make life more convenient, and creates the foundation for long term happiness.
You want to live a lifestyle that makes you happy? Get to work, and makes some money.
10. Money does buy a certain kind of happiness
When you have savings in the bank, you can invest it in your important relationships, in businesses you would want to build, in your artistic career and in buying things that make you happy. You would be free to do things that you really want to do, and spend time with people who make you happy.
It may not buy love, or happiness that comes from actualizing yourself, but it does create the foundation for everything that truly makes you happy in life.
Therefore, we must make money, so that we can continue life, and keep doing things that make us happy.
In Conclusion
I wrote a piece about not dying a starving artist sometime back. An artist who loves his work for his work, and does not try to commercialize it, will perish, without even being able to do that work he dearly loves. So, the artist must find ways to make money from his work. A company that doesn’t make profit from its operations will perish, and will not be able to fulfil whatever grand mission it has. So, the company must make money. A charity organization that saves children from the street by raising money from corporations will close if it doesn’t succeed in making money. An employee who is not able to perform his duties to the satisfaction of their employer may lose their job, and ability to run families.
Money is a basic necessity of life. Our personal lives and professional lives cannot run without money. When you have enough money in the bank to run your life, you have freedom to do anything you want. So, work really hard to make money, because it enables and does buy a lot of happiness.
Why do I write this happiness blog?
The purpose of this blog is to help you find your happiness. Please read the other posts on the blog, and follow so that you get updates when new posts are published. Please share the post with your friends so that they can also find their happiness. If you have any feedback for me, please leave it in the comments and I would be happy to work on it. If you would like to support my writing and this blog, you may please send a donation through PayPal here.
I appreciate the time you spent in reading the blog and wish you happiness.
Love,
Amarvani
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