Happier: Post #5- The Ultimate Currency

Happiness: The Ultimate Currency.  The story about Marva Collins’ creation of the Westside Preparatory School (an inner-city school of renowned success) and her unwillingness to take a posh government job (deciding instead to stay where she was at Westside) illustrates just how smart she is. For her the Holy Grail was teaching her students to go on to bigger things, not financial success or the power of a high government position. The author proceeds to make the point that happiness—not fame, fortune or beauty—is the “ultimate currency” in life. Both David Meyers and Daniel Kahneman have demonstrated that material wealth and happiness are not correlated. Wealthy people are no happier than most others. Except in rare cases of grinding poverty, average folks are as happy as their wealthy peers. Unfortunately, according to Daniel Goleman (author of Emotional Intelligence), each successive generation of the 20th century is becoming more depressed, bereft of happiness due to a lack of emotional intelligence and development.