Money As a Proxy for Happiness

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.”
HOSEA BALLOU

It is considered rude to ask someone how much money they make. Salary and income are not things people talk about. So, instead of talking about how much they make, people flout it by buying expensive cars, homes, clothes, and adult toys. Yet, if you have someone who makes a good bit of money but doesn't live a materialist lifestyle, he is considered odd and demented.

I believe you need money to be happy. Epicurus and Aristotle would agree with me. I will also say that being happy and also rich is better than being happy and not rich. Happiness depends to some extent on material means. But those material means can never be a substitute for happiness. Yet, people confuse the material things with happiness such that they pursue those material things to the detriment of happiness. Let me elaborate.

Let's define happiness as surfing. In order to be happy, you have to ride waves with a board. The action of surfing is what produces the happiness. The surfboard is the material means needed to enjoy that activity. This is why I can say that happiness depends upon material means. But let's say that you have a surfer who obsesses on having the best surfboard out there. He works hard to buy the top name brand board. Or he buys numerous boards. The result is that he spends more time obsessing over the boards than he does surfing. Now, this is an absurd example since I don't know of any surfers who do this. But substitute "surfboard" with "motorcycle" or "McMansion," and you begin to see my point.

I started to figure this out when a former coworker of mine who rode motorcycles pointed out how so many people were buying motorcycles they didn't ride. He owned a Suzuki, and he rode the shit out of it. If it wasn't raining, he rode it to work every fucking day. He rode it on weekends in groups. But it wasn't a Harley-Davidson. The reason as he pointed out was that Harleys break down frequently relative to the Japanese bikes. He said that every Harley owner need a trailer to haul their bike to the shop. He went on to point out that these people owned a brand more than a bike, and they rarely rode the things except for a couple of hours one weekend out of the month.

That guy opened my eyes to a reality I had not seen before. Life is not about what you own but what you do. For him, that Suzuki was cheap transportation to and from work and a means to explore the country for a fraction of the fuel cost. For his peers, their Harleys were merely symbols that they had money to blow on assuaging a midlife crisis. A motorcycle should be about freedom. For everyone else, it was just an expensive toy and another payment each month. The Harley is bought more for the sake of vanity than actual transportation and enjoyment.

His insight on this showed me the necessity for minimalism when it comes to happiness. I grant that you need material things to be happy. The clincher is that you don't need that many. In fact, having too many things actually interferes with happiness. For instance, a second hand Honda that runs like a top and is owned free and clear is going to be more enjoyable than a brand new Harley you are making payments on. This is because the Harley necessitates you working more to meet those payments. This is when a material means ends up becoming more of a material burden. It is what the proud new homeowner discovers when he realizes he must now devote a chunk of his weekend to maintaining his lawn and bushes or face the wrath of the HOA.

I can't dictate what each person needs in the material sense to be happy. I'm not a motorcyclist, so I need neither a Harley nor a Suzuki. Those things you need to be happy are an individual judgment. But you can see a formula emerging here. Have what you need--no more and no less. Let's move on to the money thing.

Once people start buying shit they don't need, they realize they need money to buy this shit. So, they start focusing more and more on the making of money. It is one thing to think of material things as a proxy for happiness. It is another level of stupidity to see money as a proxy for happiness because it can buy material things that might lead to happiness. The result is that these people are driven to make more and end up buying a few things. But it ends up being about the money itself while the material toys are more to convince others that they are living the good life.

Happiness is the end. It is the purpose and point of life. Happiness comes from doing activities. It doesn't come from what you own or how much you make. Naturally, those on the material trip will say this is a cop out by people who either can't make money or are too lazy to make money. It is akin to the ugly guy saying he prefers not to date supermodels. It can't be a preference if it isn't an option.

I think having more money increases your options. Options are an unqualified good. Having more options at your disposal is better than having fewer. But limitless options do not result in limitless choices. At some point, you have to pick a channel and watch it. Once that choice is made, it is fundamentally no different than someone with fewer options making a choice.

I learned this from experiencing the envy of married men. I am single with no kids, so this gives me way more options than a guy with a wife and kids. I can literally move, change jobs, or do whatever the fuck I want at any time. Yet, I choose to live in my hometown and work the same old job. I bank my dough, and I spend leisure time writing a blog. Those married guys see Indiana Jones when the reality is Homer Simpson. My life is not much different than some family guy living in the burbs. I could live a more exciting life involving whores and misadventures, but it wouldn't do me much good. I know this from watching Charlie Sheen. I have more options, but my choices are not much different than their choices.

The same thing applies to money. I have met millionaires, and I was astounded at how so many of them live just like the rest of us. This was the insight of The Millionaire Next Door that pointed out that the most popular vehicle choice of millionaires was not the Mercedes but the Ford F-150. We make similar choices when we flip through 300 channels of hi-def entertainment and settle on a black-and-white rerun of The Andy Griffith Show.

We can't exercise all the options we have before us. Increasing our options is not going to increase our happiness. Having more stuff is not going to increase your happiness. Having more money is not going to increase your happiness. Happiness is not having lots of options or necessarily making the right choices. Happiness is being settled on the choices you have made. It is watching Andy Griffith without the regret that you might be missing an epic MMA battle on Spike.

It is regret that haunts all our choices. This is why Americans with so much material abundance report such high levels of unhappiness while people with fewer choices report higher levels of happiness. The antidote to this is to read Ecclesiastes in the Bible. The author of that book had it all--wealth, women, projects, etc. He indulged it all and came to the conclusion that it was all vanity. None of it was ever satisfying. It is the same insight you come across as you flip through channel after channel, but there is still nothing on you care to watch.

The rich people I have found that seemed happy were the ones who were engrossed in their work. The wealth was just a byproduct of them pursuing their passions. Whenever someone tells me about the money they are making, I see an empty life. When someone tells me about the work they are doing, I see a full life. When someone tells me what brand of motorcycle they ride, I see an empty life. When someone tells me of the experience of riding that bike through the mountains, I see a full life.

Minimalists are just as prone to this as any vain materialist. For them, life revolves around their Macbook Pro and their iPhone. I confess I do all my work on a second hand desktop running Windows XP with a tube monitor and use a dumbphone with the name of a cellphone company on it that no longer exists. I can afford those Apple products, but I am a thrift store minimalist. The reason I rock it Salvation Army style is because I get so much out of so little. If I ever bought a motorcycle, it would be a used Honda circa 1980. I would spend about $500 on it. I would ride the ever living shit out of it.

This difference between what you have and what you do is very important. I don't know if I have managed to get this point across even though I have touched on it many times. Being defined by what you own is like defining Eric Clapton by the guitar he plays. If you played a Fender Strat, would this make you as good as Eric Clapton?

Happiness is about making the most of what you have. Whether by choice or circumstance, your happiness depends largely upon yourself. Truly autotelic people can find an infinity of creativity and achievement in the simplest of means. Limitations can be just as useful as options. I am always amazed at how the older movies seem so much better than the CGI creations of today. This is because they had to rely on good stories and acting instead of eye candy. In the realms of art, poverty is a distinct advantage.

When people acquire these proxies for happiness, they are settling for a counterfeit existence. We have wealth without taste. We have information without knowledge. We have sound without beauty. We have spectacle without meaning. More is not necessarily better. Like they say, it isn't how much you got. It is how you use it. Happiness is knowing how to use what you have to its fullest potential.

The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.
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