I believe for some people, “money talks” or “money makes the world go round”. Indeed, in some cases, money is everything. For as long as we live in this world, money is crucial for survival, and it’s difficult to live without it or with little of it. Money is truly an important aspect and necessity in life.
In one of my most loved and very famous Japanese comic, Ushijima-kun, the protagonist, Mr. Ushijima who is a loan shark, also said, “Money isn’t everything, but everything needs money.” – which I very much agree with.
But, there are things that money cannot buy.
For example, our precious and priceless memories from our past. So if a person, no matter how rich he or she is, wants to have happy memories, no amount of money can buy someone else’s memories and make it their own. Even our current advanced technology cannot obtain this objective.
Another thing money can’t buy is “true love”. There are different forms of love which can be bought, especially if someone is fixated on “money” only. Someone can get married for wealth, and many young women do marry rich old men. In such cases, money can buy a certain kind of love, but remember, it is not “true love”.
As for time – well, I guess we can buy time because now days there are many physical things that save us time, such as gadgets, equipment and even services. Some of the most popular time savers are our PCs, phones, trains, Amazon accounts, etc.
Next item: Happiness. Some people might say, “We can’t buy happiness with money” but “happiness” in some circumstances may be based on “money”. There are many materialist things that can make us happy. Traveling, gadgets, experiences and food, all can be accessed with money and make us pretty happy for a time.
How about health? Well yes, it is very difficult to buy a “healthy body”, no matter how much our technology has progressed over time. There are still illnesses that aren’t curable with medicine or technology so money will only go so far in helping us with our health.
The next one is a good personality. I think we can buy our personality. Personality is not something we are born with, it’s something that is acquired and developed. It is accumulated over the course of our life. It is greatly influenced by our environment, people around us, and decisions we make. So the amount of money we have will influence our life style and so it will indirectly develop our personality.
Next, “Talents and Abilities”. I think this is very difficult to buy. Unlike personality, talent is something we are born with or inherit. As they say, it is a gift from God, or from your parent’s good genes for that matter. Although it may be difficult, and may take a lot of time and effort, there is a chance to acquire talent by developing skills through hard work which may take a certain amount of money to be able to do. But, this will entail a lot of hard work and dedication, not just money.
We have to remember, among all the factors considered, “life” is among those that we can’t buy. After being born in this world, you already are gifted with the one thing we cannot sell – life itself. Even if someone want’s to buy it with all of the world’s riches we cannot control life with money.