In modern times, love and money have become inextricably intertwined. A girl judges her lover by his relationship with money. Is he generous or tight-fisted? Is he a spendthrift or a planner?
Long before that — at about age seven — a girl begins to realize the difference between her and a boy and starts to depend on him for juice and candy. If he isn’t able to buy them for her, she looks for someone who can.
Once she grows up she looks for the young man who wears expensive clothes and owns a car. Later she learns to link the model of the car to the extent of his wealth.
Women detest stingy men, and research has confirmed that a miserly man is stingy with everything, his feelings, money, friendships, and this sort of man strangles a woman and makes her feel that she is living in a prison — she is not free to buy, travel or enjoy life.
A woman may love a spendthrift, who spends everything in his pocket, showing off in front of her family and friends. But at the same time she may be wary of such a man because she realizes that in the end she may pay the price for such extravagance. Such a man, as the experts say, has a childish side that he cannot control and is selfish. He satisfies his every whim and spends in order to attract people’s admiration — a woman usually prefers a generous man who knows how to spend and how to save. She feels secure with such a man because he makes her present pleasurable and her future secure.
The financial basis that governs human relations rests on the need for the presence of a party that makes money and a party that spends it — the story begins when a child learns that it is his father who brings in the money and his mother who spends it. He observes which of the two gives him more — bestowing his love on that party and siding with that side in case of a clash.
Women have entered the work force and make money too — they must share in the expenditure. However, the rule is still that the man is primarily responsible. The saying goes that a man must make more money than his wife spends, but I say that the woman must spend within the limits of what her husband makes. In any case money is only one side of the triangle in the relationship between men and women in love and in marriage.
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Is happiness an instinct that a person is born with or do circumstances interfere and disturb the purity of that instinct? Does modern medicine help man change his life for the better? Are feelings of fear and insecurity responsible for man’s misery and his constant need to amass money and influential friends and thereby enhance his social status?
In his book “What Happy People Know,” author Dan Baker researches those feelings of fear that reside in a seldom-used part of the brain primarily responsible for feelings of unhappiness. He also looks into how people can become happy. Baker heads an organization which trains people to overcome the genetic impulse toward negative response in order to be able to live happily.
Baker confirms that modern man wrongly believes that he will achieve that much sought-after happiness by panting after material things. Yet whenever he attains some of these aspirations he is back again hankering after even greater ones and thus finds himself running around in circles of relentless pressure and insecurity.
The author advises people to manage their lives and not let their energy go to waste by running after money, status and power — it is a fruitless search that will only lead to a loss of control over one’s life.
Baker tells the story of an influential businessman who came to his clinic complaining about his children, wife and employees and seeking help. After listening closely to his story he gave him some advice, the gist of which was that he should visit one of the hospitals treating children suffering from cancer. After doing that, he felt much better because he had come to see real human tragedy compared to which his problem seemed extremely trivial.
As for the simple advice the author gives at the end of his book, it doesn’t require much effort on our part: It is to manage our lives well and not place ourselves in an endless circle of desires, demands and hopes.
Arab News Features 21 March 2003