Money Can't Buy Happiness

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Money Can’t Buy Happiness In the novel Siddhartha, written by Hermann Hesse, a young man spends most of his time living searching for more knowledge and eventually achieve an enlightenment through eternal bliss and finding his Self. Self is this state of being where you suppress all your emotions, pain and thought, basically self-depriving yourself of everyday material to attain enlightenment. In the chapter By The River , Siddhartha has a thought after changing his mind to commit suicide. He reflects on how he learned as a kid that material and wealth are not good for a person, and how he just experienced it, after many years of preventing it: It is a good thing to experience everything oneself, he thought. As a child I learned that pleasures of the world and riches were not good. I have known it for a long time, but I have only just experienced it. Now I know it not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach. It is a good thing that I know this. (80) Siddhartha was raised differently from the ordinary people. He learned to live with only a minimal amount,living off bananas at one point ,and being able to go days without any resources. As a son of a Brahmin, he was taught at a young age to go into deep thought, to fast and to wait.Others are raised opposite to him, not so disciplined and very materialistic. Thats what separates him from others, materialism and wealth can control someones life and drive them in a different direction. It can bring happiness to one’s life for only a limited amount of time, then like almost all things, it comes to an end. I can relate to this thought through my own experience with materialism. Over the years I have purchased many things that have been useful and still last to this day. But last year, I went through this phase of buying many shoes, Nike shoes specifically, which appealed to me alot. I
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