Does Money Bring Happiness?

According to the latest report from the Gallup organization, which measured “positive emotions” in 148 countries (surveying about a thousand people in each), the wealthy population of Singapore is the least happy in the world, less happy than Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. In this study, Singaporeans, who enjoy one of the highest GDPs (Gross Domestic Product) in the world, were the least likely to report having had positive feelings.

Respondents were asked whether they had rested well, whether they had been treated with respect, whether they had smiled or laughed a lot, and whether they had done or learned something interesting. In Singapore, only 46% of those surveyed answered “yes” to these questions, compared with 55% of people in Haiti and Afghanistan. Even in Syria, 60% of people answered yes. Months earlier, in another Gallup study that measured people’s daily emotions in 150 countries over three years, Singapore came out as the least emotional country.

Coincidentally, a few days ago I saw a news report showing luxury apartments in Singapore with elevators that carry wealthy Singaporeans’ expensive cars (Lamborghinis, Ferraris and the like) up into their living rooms. In the video, the apartment’s owner sat alone in his enormous living room, “enraptured,” gazing at his car. One of the comments from a Venezuelan on that news story online said: “What I’ve got in my apartment are my son’s little toy cars, scattered all over the living room.” When I read that comment I laughed a lot, and I remembered the movie starring Nicolas Cage, The Family Man, about a successful stockbroker who lived alone in a luxury apartment. Suddenly he is given the chance to see how his life might have turned out differently, and he wakes up in a house with a wife and two children. After everything this man goes through with his family (a real ordeal!), he decides that this is his happiness, and he does everything possible not to lose it. I think money is indispensable for meeting our basic needs, but it is not indispensable for giving us happiness.

Here in Venezuela we have a great many problems, it’s true, but people radiate happiness when they are with their families, even when we are flat broke. There is nothing we like more than being together as a family; getting together to eat whatever each person can bring (friends, godparents, distant cousins and so on); all sitting “squashed together” and making a mess of the living room with popcorn and whatnot to watch a movie as a family; kissing our children’s cheeks until we are tired (did you know that this lowers cortisol and raises our levels of happiness?).

So even though our stress levels may shoot up in traffic, in the endless hopping from market to market or pharmacy to pharmacy, every time we have to pay for something and have no money, we look forward to getting home to kiss our little ones, to talk with the older ones, and to plan the next birthday, anniversary or any-excuse-at-all celebration, as an excuse to get people together at the house or apartment, where we will most likely have to climb the stairs because the spare parts can’t be found for the elevators that have been broken for several years.

That is how we live here, and that is how we are happy, in spite of everything! Who can understand us? Only we understand ourselves. Well, God understands us too, because He is always with us and knows that everything is for our good.