The Joy of Being Endowed

If you have whatever you want handed out to you (whether by nature, parents, government, or whatsoever), and you wish otherwise, don't ever think about it again and consider yourself lucky.

You don't want to start from the bottom or have nothing from the get go.

Yeah, I get what you mean. Certainly in financial terms, the 1% of the world's population who own approx. 50% of the global wealth shouldn't be complaining about a lack of money. Plus, these people could increase their emotional "wealth" by helping the poor (or the 75% of the world's population who own 3% of the wealth worldwide).

This rich person stereotype which we're discussing often does have enough food on their plate, a stable roof over their head, and clean clothes to wear everyday. However, what they may be lacking are stable, emotionally-nourishing relationships with their family. Often they obey the consumerist culture which we're currently under, buying a ton of supposedly "sentimental" items in order to fill that dark emotional void deep within which is created by a lack of strong relationships with their family. So, in that sense, their lives are not all fulfilled as they emotionally speaking are having to go from the bottom up with many of their core relationships.


However, the rich can afford for therapists to sort out these emotional issues, whilst the poor cannot afford extra food to support their hunger, otherwise they wouldn't be classified as "poor".

Agreed! So many rich people seem to think that what will make them more happy is more money, or the next flashy physical object; a new handbag, a better car. Actually, they just need someone to deeply and profoundly connect with them.

It’s an easy mistake to make, especially for people who weren’t always rich. They see how much happier they are now that they’re stabler, live in a nicer place and get enough food to eat, they attribute that (rightly) to having more money, and they assume (wrongly) that the association between money and happiness continues upward. It doesn’t - it plateaus after that.

Yeah, so true! As shown by this correlational scatter graph between wealth and happiness:

Wow I was just talking from experience, I didn’t know someone had actually made the graph