Satisfaction and wealth creation: are they mutually exclusive?
The last five years will go down in history as one of those periods when the value of material wealth was so eroded that governments had to make billions of dollars worth of bailout packages available to prevent the closure of mega-companies with multi-million dollar billings.
The collateral effects of this “economic collapse” or “international financial crisis” as it is now notoriously known, have been devastating: millions of jobs lost around the world, people losing their homes and other possessions, as well as pensions the elders. citizens shrinking before their very eyes, to name but a few. There is at least some question about the sustainability of the value of money and wealth.
The value of “stuff”
After decades of searching for material, an effort in which many millions no doubt enthusiastically participated, some questions inevitably arise. How can the value of the “stuff” we have so passionately accumulated and attached our status and position in life to erode so spectacularly during our sleep? And if we can no longer trust tangible things, what can we hold on to? This has caused deep sessions of introspection and complete revalidation of the value systems of not a few inhabitants of planet earth. Many of yesterday’s billionaires have literally become today’s poor.
Contentment
How much is enough? This question was addressed by Arthur Simon in his book with the same title. I’m sure the answer could be different strokes for different people. But is the state of “satisfaction” at odds with the desire to create wealth and security for the future? I find the definition of satisfaction in the Compact Oxford English Learner’s Dictionary for Students quite illuminating with regard to the question in the title of this article: “the acceptance of something as adequate despite wanting something more or better.”
It seems then, on the basis of the above definition, that contentment does not exclude the desire to achieve something more or better. Whatever the circumstances (if any) that led to your possible feelings of guilt regarding the pursuit of improvement and wealth, it seems that one can be content while also wishing for better things for oneself.
Satisfaction and the pursuit of wealth, it seems, are not mutually exclusive.