For Free — Why You Still Believe Money Buys Happiness

Let me ask you a real question — you happy, bro? If the “Harvard Confessions” Facebook page is anything to go by, I’d say no. In fact, I’d throw “a fifty” on it, because you’re spending your free time reading a column called “Happiness, the New Lie” — not exactly uplifting.

Another question — have you ever been in the following situation? It’s Taco Tuesday and you’re sitting with some friends at the dining hall. Today you were actually excited enough by the prospect of a good meal to skip your regular UberEats order. Your mother, however, did not raise no fool, and, by the time you take a look at the mounds of slop on your tray, your previous optimism has given way to your more accustomed friend, numb complacency. You’re even hungry enough to give the paprika-blasted roast cauliflower florets a try.

Suddenly, one of your friends looks up at you and asks, “How are you?”

Though it is perhaps the single most common question asked at Harvard (with the exception of “Which consulting firm are you interning for this summer?” and “Do you want to pull an all-nighter and bang this p-set out right now?”), you realize you don’t know how to answer your friend. Here ensues the next installment of our weekly existential crisis.

Some smart alecks thought it would be funny to call this apparently ubiquitous phenomenon the “quarter-life crisis.” I’ll tell you what it really is — it’s you realizing you’ve been played your entire life, but not having the guts to admit it. You’re thinking, why am I still working so hard all the time? Wasn’t this supposed to be the promised land? This is Harvard, for Christ’s sake!

At the same time, your parents are probably checking up with you (and your grades), your schoolwork isn’t slowing down one iota (and there’s always that one exam you could be studying for), and you’re surrounded on all sides by good little worker bees, who hardly ever complain and are somehow always doing 10 times more work than you while still being just as insecure about their future as you are. Twenty years of schoolin’ and they put you on the day shift.

So how you are is less a subject for polite conversation, and more something you should be chatting your shrink up about (and guess what, there’s a wait for that, too!). At the end of the day, you probably just lie to your friend and pretend like your inner life is not in tatters. And since you can’t really “find the time” to talk about it with anyone, the crisis continues unabated.

Deep down, you know that you are driven by fear. Because you know what happens if you don’t do well at school? That’s right, you magically turn poor and become the embarrassment of your whole extended family. You’re going to graduate from Harvard, for crying out loud! If you can’t be rich, you should at least be famous.

When it’s 3 a.m. and you still haven’t finished the work for that 9 a.m. deadline, you sacrifice your last shred of dignity upon the altar of wealth, status, and power, confident that one day all your propitious offerings will have the deities of capitalism smiling down on you and you’ll know you’ve earned your spot in heaven on earth. The fact that you’re miserable hardly matters when you are quite literally the chosen one.

Now, I know I’m preaching to the choir when I say that people at Harvard have a genius complex, but think about it — what if you didn’t need to work so damn hard all the time? What if “How are you?” became an invitation again instead of being this looming accusation you’ve spent your whole life walling yourself off from?

Think about your expectations for life: What would it be like if you worked a “simple” job, like a firefighter, or a librarian, or a bartender? Would it really be as disappointing as you think? Why do you keep telling yourself you need to become a CEO, or a super-prestigious doctor, or the next big thing in politics? If you really think any of that is going to make you happy in the end, you should really be asking: How is that different from where I am now?

You know, folks, I’ve heard it’s lonely at the top. And I can tell you for a fact it’s lonely on the way up, too. Hell, I bet if you stopped for half a second and chatted with one of the many homeless people out along Massachusetts Ave., they’d tell you it’s lonely out there, too. Money won’t buy you happiness for one simple reason — nothing can. And I’ll tell you one thing that beats the hell out of happiness — truth. So next time somebody asks how you are, tell ’em. You might just learn something, you insufferable nerd.

Ben A. Roy ’20 is a Classics concentrator in Kirkland House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.