10 things that money can't buy

[K.Karthik Raja]

10 things that money can't buy

This rich miser... but you have heard that one before. No? Alright.
This rich miser is about to die, so he tells his family to lug up a
suitcase full of cash to the terrace. Says he will grab it on the way
up. So he 'cashes his cheque', as the saying goes. The wife goes
upstairs and finds -- what else -- the suitcase still where she left
it.

"The fool," she says, shaking her head. "I told him we should keep it
in the basement."

Here is how mankind tells money, quoting from the Book of Job: "Thus
far shalt thou go, and no farther." Here are the ten things money
can't buy.

1. Family and friends

The greenbacks won't bring you any closer to your family if you are
far too busy earning them. Nor will they guarantee your family
understands you at all. (Mummy's cooking is a sub-group in this
'things you can't buy anywhere' list.)

There are exceptions to this. You might just pay off irritating in-
laws to stay out of your hair, or order a hit on them. But in the
normal course...

With friends, it works the same way, only more so. If your wealth
draws them, they aren't real. If they don't stay, or your life has no
place for them, you are on your own. With real friends, you've almost
got it made.

2. Home

Get married, start a family, have kids. Will they grow up into fine
people? Have you got the hang of father/motherhood? Is your home
really your castle, a cocoon of comfort? Or is it just a house with
people in it? The card really stops here.

3. Happiness

Alright, cliched, but it gets truer as the years pass. There is always
something missing whether you are on the beach at Algarve or adding
the newest antique wood furniture to your collection. If you can't get
at the root of it, everything you can get is merely a narcotic.

4. Peace

Here is the big one, ever since they started asking smart questions to
beauty contestants. The small peace is inside your head and that is
elusive enough to come by, for which you have antacids and Ketorol,
which only push it away for another day. Also think world peace and
other big matters. What if they nuke the city? Kidding.

5. Immortality

If you can make it for three decades on top of the Forbes list, that
is a measure of fame. But to be truly immortal requires other things,
other ways of striving. Ever wondered how some dirt-poor hardscrabble
guys have instant recall value centuries afterwards? And literal
immortality is yet several pages farther in human civilisation's sci-
fi book. Best you can do is get a ticket on Sir Richard Branson's
[Images] space taxi.

6. Respect

You can smirk at the poor ants down below on the street, but they will
pull faces behind your back if you are the sort who is perpetually
asking for it. Dignity is the most fragile of public possessions. And
God help you if they know about the skeletons in your closet or that
you were called Stinky as a kid. This is one asset you really need to
work on all the time to earn...

7. Talent

Another cliched, misused, misunderstood word, like creativity, and
maybe no one knows what it is anymore, but you are either born with it
or not. No way you can get a bill of sale on this one. What you do
with it is of course your business. History has been very frequently
marked with astonishing examples of creativity outdoing... well, money
and everything else. Possibly the best example is Lenoardo da Vinci
and a certain portrait of a woman. He took 16 years to paint it, did
not bother to name it, packed it with himself wherever he travelled in
Europe, refused to sell it to kings and counts. It was ultimately sold
by his assistant after he died. Someone down the line decided to call
it the Mona Lisa [Images].

At the other end of the example is Vincent Van Gogh. All that talent
and he sold just one painting of the nearly thousand he made,
struggling with poverty all along. Didn't make a difference either
way: in 1990, his Portrait of Dr Gachet went under the hammer for a
current equivalent of $ 136.1 million, making it the fourth most
expensive painting ever sold.

8. Health

Sure healthcare costs being the way they are, you need all the money
you can lay your hands on when it comes to facing the bills and pills
and the doctor scaring you with a dozen different possible diseases
you have never heard about. But, viewed sanely, a good efficient
treatment is not that much of a substitute for a good healthy life.
Isn't it better not to need healthcare in the first place?

9. Love

It matters, that little empty feeling when you are sitting with a
Sauvignon Blanc (for choice) on your balcony on a Saturday evening and
twenty sober thoughts in your head, and no one to tell them to. That
feeling of intense loneliness can neither be bought off, papered over
or told to keep quiet and leave the room. Someone says, "Money can't
buy love, but with all the other things it can, I'll give love a
miss." Your call. You still have the Sauvignon Blanc...

10. Character

In case it matters. It is a sneaky creature, goes by other strange
names like virtue and righteousness and at one time, if we remember
reading correctly, a certain generation used to call it "true wealth".
We don't really know whether it is around in these times but if you
are looking to have it, it has to come from within. Or some such
thing...

Meanwhile, enjoy what you have, but as John Buchan says, "Sit easy on
your comforts."


K.Karthik Raja
Research Analsyt.