SURVIVAL OF THE RICHEST?

“Money is power. The sole purpose of human existence is to make money. With money comes happiness. There is no life without money. Money is everything.”

This is the message that is most commonly put across today. It is a fact that a person earning five thousand a month gets less respect than someone earning five lakhs a month, irrespective of whether the former works harder. “How much is the starting salary?” is a common refrain heard when young people choose their career paths. Anything and everything is possible with the right pieces of paper in hand, right from a good education to, as movies would have us believe, getting out of sticky situations with the law. That song from a recent hit farce movie sums it up. All we live for now is Money. Money enables us to possess smartphones and iPods. Money enables kids to show off on sports bikes. Money helps get kids into elite colleges, even if they don’t deserve a place.

It is undeniable that those pieces of paper possess enormous potency. But is that what man wants in order to be happy? Somewhere down the line, humankind had confused having money with happiness and passed down that legacy, managing to corrupt the successive generations. Whoever said “Money is Happiness, Happiness Money”?

I was very troubled upon hearing a 7-year old tell me “I wanna be billionaire” in reply to my question. Of course, he’s just a kid, but for some, these priorities don’t change as they grow up. We really need to stop believing in the omnipotence of money if we are to put ourselves back on track. We must stop comments like “Study hard now, you’ll get into a good engineering college. Study hard for another four years, you’ll have a ready made job at the end, 50,000 minimum. Bas, life settled!” Is this really all that is to life? Does happiness mean possessing incalculable amounts of Money? Is Money so important that people are willing to sacrifice everything from their health, to their friends, and in the end, their lives itself? Some introspection is much needed in today’s world of survival of the richest.