#207 MONEY CAN'T BUY HAPPINESS

Do you like stories?  Here's a story with a good message.  There's an eastern tale of a wealthy king who ruled a vast domain.  He lived in a magnificent palace and had a luxurious court.  But in spite of all his authority and power, and in spite of his expensive possessions he was an unhappy man.  Among the servants of his court, there was a renowned sage the king would go to and ask counsel of, particularly in times of difficulty.

This sage was summoned to the king’s presence one day, and the king asked him how he could get rid of his depression.  The king told him he wanted to be happy.  How could the sage help him?  The sage told him there was but one cure for the king.  He told him that his majesty must sleep one night in the shirt of a happy man.  Messengers were immediately dispatched through out the kingdom in search for a man who was truly happy. 

But as the story goes, everyone who was approached was not completely happy; something robbed him or her of it.  At last they found a man, a poor beggar who sat by the roadside truly happy.  And when they asked him if he was truly happy, he confessed he was a happy man.  Then they told him what they wanted; the king must sleep one night in the shirt of a happy man.  And they told him they would give him a large some of money to buy the shirt.  Would he sell them his shirt, so the king might wear it and be happy?  Well the beggar burst into uncontrollable laughter and told them, "I'm sorry I can not oblige the king, you see I haven't a shirt on my back."

There is a point to it all -- money can't buy happiness.  Andrew Carnegie, the multi-millionaire, admitted that when he said, "Millionaires seldom smile." John Jacob Aster, a man who left behind five million dollars, but a man who had been a martyr to melancholy, agreed with Carnegie when Aster said, "I am the most miserable man on earth." Money can't buy happiness.  There are a lot of us who think it can though, and that's why men like Carnegie, Aster, and Solomon astonish us.

It is said that Solomon was actually the richest man in the world.  He, like the rest, tried to buy happiness with money.  His story is in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes.  He said, "I build me houses, I planted me vineyards, I made me gardens and parks, I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruit, I made me pools of water, I bought men servants and maid servants.  I also had great possessions of herds and flocks, and I gathered me also silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces.  I got men singers and women singers, musical instruments and that of all sorts, so I was great and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem.  Also my wisdom remained with me and what ever my eyes desired I keep not from them.  I withheld not my heart from any joy for my heart rejoiced because of all my labor.  Then I looked on all the works of my hands and on the labor I had labored to do," and then he said, "Behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun."

I don't know how much richer Solomon was than Carnegie, Aster, the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, or the queen's family in England.  But Solomon, like the rest, tried to sleep in the shirt of a rich man and found it wouldn't make him happy.  Money, possessions can't buy happiness.  Happiness is a state of mind acquired only by the man who tries to give instead of get.  The happiest one is the one who has peace with the god he can give to -- the god who made him in the first place.