Do You Have Enough To Be Happy?

Greetings friends!
I share here the secret to happiness and the solution to climate change. Properly understood, it would usher in world peace. I have never wanted my words to be understood more than right now.
Despite living in times when most of us are objectively massively better off than at any time in history (more on this in a moment), subjectively many are unhappy.
Why? It is the comparisons we make with other people that drive our dissatisfaction. Interestingly, these same comparisons are the key to happiness, if only we make the right ones.
There’s rich and then there’s RICH
I proposed recently enlisting the aid of the wealthy to help combat climate change. I wrote about the global 1%, a group of not quite 60 million adults.
Some readers focused instead on the “uber Wealthy,” referencing the few thousand billionaires in the world (a mere 0.004% of the global 1%). They seemed more concerned about a handful of these billionaires not paying enough taxes.
- “Good people generally don’t become billionaires.”
- “The uber Wealthy will not be allies in solving the problems we face as a civilization.”
I won’t rebut such comments here, although I’m sorely tempted because class warfare is a distraction. My aim is pragmatic problem-solving, not finger-pointing. So for the sake of argument, I accept that many people are resentful of billionaires.
Here’s my advice to everyone who wants to be happy and solve the world’s big problems: Let it go.
Let go of resentment. Let go of envy. Let go of hate.

We are all silver medalists in the Olympics of life
What you see in life depends on where you look. Do you contemplate the many ways in which your life is full and wonderful? Or do you cling to slights and perceived unfairness like a miser clutching his last coin?
Does “income inequality” make you mad? Consider that by any objective measure, this is humanity’s golden age. We enjoy more health, wealth, and leisure than at any time in human history. We have more material goods than could have been dreamed of even a few generations past.
What does it matter to us living like kings that a few have even more stuff? Yet many nonetheless live miserably in self-imposed dissatisfaction … because they are looking in the wrong place.
The experience of Olympic medalists handily explains why. The bronze winner is elated, while the silver medalist feels emotions ranging from despair to contempt to nothing.
In short, the silver medalist looks to the winner of gold ahead of them and is bitter. In contrast, the bronze medalist realizes they’ve beaten out everyone else to make the podium and is delighted.
That’s exactly what comes to mind when well-off people complain about billionaires. They’re bitter silver medalists in the Olympics of life.
The irony is they’re already rich. Certainly rich enough to be happy.
Here’s what “rich” means for ordinary folks
53% of all adults in the world have wealth of less than $10,000. That’s 2.8 billion individuals. Congratulations, dear reader! If the value of your financial and real assets minus your debts exceeds $10,000, you are in the top half.
Oh, and if your number adds up to $100,000, you are doing better than 87% of all the adults on the planet. Read more about the ordinary wealthy here.
People don’t think these amounts of money make one “wealthy,” despite it putting them in the top half or top 13% of the world. Many view even having the $1 million necessary to crack the global 1% as laughably insufficient. How can this be?
I wrote about happiness from another angle a while back, offering readers a choice of being wealthy, intelligent, or beautiful. I used the top 1% for each measure to make it appealing. No one questioned the benchmarks for intelligence or beauty, but many thought $1 million was far too low.
While it’s clear that the cost of living is a genuine factor, people’s complaints about $1 million being too little bring to mind the sad silver medalist.
The 1% (and 5% and 10%) could work wonders if we only let them
Back to the climate and solving the world’s problems. If money is necessary for problem-solving, it helps to go where the money is. And it helps to get that money voluntarily given because why fight people when you don't have to?
That was the premise of my latest article on combatting climate change. It’s logically sound. If readers found it emotionally unappealing, I was either not clear enough or (possibly) they were focused on the wrong thing.
If class warfare dooms us to unproductive infighting, what would happen if we learned to let go of resentment, envy, and hate? Wonderful things. We would be more open to appreciating the bounty we have. We would be less quick to criticize others.
And when people are not fighting each other over silly things like first and second place, we’d unlock humanity’s potential to focus on collective problem-solving.
Let it go.
Be well.
If happiness was a choice, would you choose to be happy? To find out, read more of these weekly newsletters.
Member discussion