Health or wealth, which is better ?


These are words of wisdom and none would question their validity. But there are times when people do value money over health. When a person has been deprived of a thing for too long, he longs for it: and as money is the commodity most in demand people want money to fulfill their needs. It can help rent or build a house. It can buy medicines, clothes, fruit and food: it can pay for the small pleasures of life as well as the big ones - from a cup of tea to a holiday abroad. Aesthetic and cultural enjoyment - tickets for the latest play, an evening at the opera, an expensive book, the latest L.P. - all these money alone can buy. There are far too many things which are out of the reach of the middle and the working classes. A good education, expensive sports and games like skating and golf, traveling in comfort, owning the gadgets which add comfort to life - these are things which people with limited incomes cannot buy. The unprecedented unemployment of the thirties was responsible for a great deal of human misery and resulted in the loss of self-respect and dignity. It also forced people to recognize the worth of money and resulted in a disproportionate attachment to the material world. There is no denying the value of money and the pleasure of enjoying it: but there are basic issues involved. If money can be got only after a huge amount of sacrifice, is it worth it? Is it really necessary for human beings to go on increasing their needs and temporary pleasures? Or would it be wiser to impose a self-restraint on one's needs? People get so busy in getting money that they forget how to enjoy it. Engaged in getting money, man has no time for his family or his friends and at times no time even for his health. On the other hand, the pursuit of money may adversely affect both his physical and spiritual health.