If lack of money is the root of all evil, can it then be argued that money is indeed the root of all evil? Could that have been the point of the saying originally, that money is the root of all evil insofar as not having any money can force people to commit heinous crimes to obtain money? People are always exploring the question of whether or not money can buy happiness. Somehow it seems more worthwhile to examine the impact not having money can have on people’s lives. It’s often pointed out that there are people who have no money who are still happy, still content with their lives, while there are people who have millions who are not happy and not content with their lives. Indeed happiness is not something you can purchase, so anyone seeking wealth because they think they can buy happiness with money might consider how much easier it will be on them to forget about trying to get rich and just focus all that energy on the quest to find happiness. They’ll probably find happiness sooner without the stresses and burdens of having to worry about money. And when they finally get the money they want, they’ll soon find after they’ve filled their lives with things, and gotten over the excitement of the new car and the new house, that the same unhappiness they were trying to run away from is still there.

So if all you want is just to be happy, it might do you good to stop telling yourself that being happy means being rich because it doesn’t and the sooner you stop telling yourself that it does, the sooner you can apply your efforts to trying to find out what being happy means for you. The real truth is that being happy doesn’t mean the same thing for everybody, and you won’t necessarily start being happy all of a sudden the day your financial fortune changes, unless, for you, being happy means being successful in business.

The reason some poor people are content and don’t seem to have worries even though they’re only just getting by, managing to pay the bills and eat, with no money left over for anything, is because that is really all they need is the security of having the bills paid, knowing they have a roof over their heads, food to eat and each other. That’s enough for some people. It’s not everybody who needs to live like Sheikh Hamad, the Foreign Minister of Qatar, who owns a $195 million dollar 20,000-square-foot penthouse at One Hyde Park in London (This according to Forbes). Some people can still be content and filled with joy even while a treat for them is being able to share an occasional Friday night Kentucky Fried Chicken Variety Bucket with their family while congregated around a folding table in a living room cum dining room in a 1-bedroom apartment in the Bedford Stuyvesant government projects in Brooklyn.

That being said, not having money to afford the things you want in life when you are not someone who can be content with what little you have as long as the bills are paid and your loved ones are all in good health and you can once in a while splurge on KFC can be excruciatingly depressing. But is it necessarily to your credit that you are unable to find value in life unless you can afford to live like a king or queen? Is it necessarily healthy to determine the worth and value of your life based on what you have and what you don’t, where you live, what you drive, whether you can afford to spend 3 nights in a luxury suite at the Ritz Carlton on Central Park South in New York City or if you’ll feel the pinch from 3 nights at the Super 8?

But we live in a society where worth and value is measured according to what you have and what you don’t by way of material possessions, whether this should be the practice or not. Yes, some people can be poor and still content, but most people want more, and that’s where the obsession with having more creates a problem of money becoming a thing that corrupts indirectly. Because not having money can make people very stressed out, frustrated, desperate, angry, jealous and fill them with a myriad other negative emotions that if left to grow unchecked and uncontrolled can lead to "evil" actions.