Money!

What are our options for the meaning of life? What can be the real answers to the question of what we are here for? What could be the purpose of our life on earth?

I pondered on a few common answers. The first one was wealth. I thought that was a common goal for many people’s life. Getting rich could drive one throughout his or her whole life.

My family was kind of poor when I was at elementary school at Hong Kong. I remembered asking my father to give me fifty cents to buy soft drinks, and it took me thirty minutes to annoy him before he finally gave me the money. My father’s financial situation did not improve much when I was at middle school. However, money was never an attractive candidate to be my goal of life, or an answer to the question about my meaning of life.

It is clear to me that money could not buy happiness. I could still have bad dreams, catch a cold, or even lose my life in a car accident. Furthermore, I could spend a few hundred dollars to buy a great meal that really satisfied. If I had a billion dollars, would I get a better meal? I would be very happy to enjoy the same meal that costed a few hundred dollars anyway. Would more money get me an even better meal? Probably, but I was already very happy with my few hundred dollars meal.

Besides the fact that wealth did not necessarily bring happiness, it also could not answer my question of meaning of life in the first place. Perhaps money could make life more comfortable, but still it could not tell what life was for!

No, wealth could not be the answer to the meaning of life.